Alice dropped me off at the Oxnard Amtrak this morning at 7:30.   Boarded train and headed South to San Diego.     I’m writing this bit while on the train.  

Last night there was a little send-off at the Castorena’s.   Lots of “good lucks” and “I know you can do its”.   Got a load of blessings as well.   Suppose I can use them.  Fortunately, not too many tears from all the sisters.   The message sunk in that I’ll be an hour’s drive away for the next 5 weeks 🙂    Mia, the nurse, gave me a bunch of skin weld and needles from the hospital.   After 20 minutes of conversation about the importance of having a sterile needle on the trail I remain…uh..skeptical.  

Big Joe did a last minute pack breakdown with me.    He managed to pull a few more ounces out.   Dropped a pair of socks and bunch of first aid stuff.   Got plenty of duct tape substitute.  His daughter Sophia offered negligible value-add, but the entertainment is always welcome.  

Joe gave me “the look” regarding my solar panel/battery combo I put together.  It is soo heavy (1lb + 10oz bats).   I’m just having a hard time parting with it.   The last 6 months I have devoted so much energy into measuring its output at varying sun levels, the charge times of the batteries I strapped to it, charging times on my devices, etc.   I’ve worked out a pretty good system of lightweight devices but I need reliable power to pull this off.    I’ll describe it in more detail sometime later if it works out. 

On a positive note, he fell in love with my zpacks sleeping bag.   I know the feeling….the thing feels like it is made of helium.    If I have a positive report, Joe’s card will have an extra $500 on the balance. 
So, my thoughts about getting started.   

The last two months have been very busy packing, selling, moving, transitions at work, etc.   In the middle of this chaos my Dad suddenly passed away.  Heart attack.  I think about him a lot but I avoid going too deep.   It will hit me pretty hard at some point on the trail that I won’t be able to share the stories.   Dad always had a uniquely cynical yet good natured opinion on my adventures.    I’ll miss that….nobody I’ve every known had the same mix of intelligence and humor.   I’m already getting sad, so on to other things.

The final 2 weeks simply sucked.    All the prep had lined up.  Alice and I were settled into our temporary lodging, folks at work had taken over all my stuff, all my gear was dialed in, resupply planned, and…. I was bored.  Then the anxiety set in.   Would I get injured?   Snow in the Sierra.   Blisters.  Sunburn.  Poodle Dog bush (look that one up sometime).  

My cousin JD hit the trail on the 13th and is carrying a tracker.   I’m checking the thing every couple hours.   He is making good time.   He has powered through the blisters and foot problems.   I’m worried about the first week and he is already at mile 200.   Every time I check, his dot is further North.   

I’m the leap-before-looking guy and I’ve had 2 uninterrupted weeks to do the opposite.   No, this has been going on for 2 years.   California had a record snow year and for the first time in 2 decades I DID NOT SKI.  Not once.  Afraid I’d blow out my knee.  Now I get to worry about walking through all that snow in a couple months.   

Motorcycle rides offered an  outlet for a while, but recently I’ve been riding like a pussy.  Off-road I barely keep enough speed to hit second gear.   On-road, I’m get beat (well almost) by a Darrell’s shitty 650 KLR because I’m afraid to drop deep into turns.   On a mountain bike last week I hesitated to  ride down some wide gradual stairs to the beach.   

A typical multi-day outing starts with circling a place on the map and trying to get there.  The planning phase involves getting dressed.   Now the only map I look at is the one with JD’s stupid DOT on it.   

There is a John Muir quote that says “Sometimes a man just needs to  jump over the back fence and go walking” or something like that.   This would be much easier if it was a decision made and executed in a couple weeks.  Or even better in a day.    2 years of preparation is just too much misery. 
Thankfully all this crap is now over.   I can start walking and see what happens.    

11 days left!

The last 2 months have been a whirlwind.   FInishing all the repairs on the house, lining up a management company for the property, selling my dirt bike, dumping all our crap, storing what we plan to keep, moving into in-laws place, and finishing prep for the hike.

Held a blowout garage sale a couple weeks ago.   Everything not boxed was dumped on the ground outside of the house, then the vultures started circling.   I learned a few things about being a good buyer….they show up before we start with a wad of cash.   Folks were hovering outside our house before 6am to get the first crack.   

One dude in particular was clearly the alpha.   He picked up my Denon stereo and 5:1 speaker setup, couple of my older Shoe helmets, and other electronics.  I liked watching him.   He zeroed in on most the high-value stuff.   We got into a long negotiation over the old gas grill for $10.   He just wanted the propane bottle, but I wouldn’t let that go unless he took the grill with it (heh).   That was pretty much the theme for the day, reverse bundling.   I’d give folks a price for something and require they take something else with it.  EVERYTHING MUST GO !!!

Alice did pretty well jettisoning our clothes, appliances, and furniture.   It was hard keeping the scavangers in check.   Since the kitchen/dining room was open, folks would drift in there and start picking through the boxes we had tagged for storage.   Even had a gal offer $3 for a half-empty bottle of chile pepper flakes (SOLD!).   Man what an experience.  

After that it was a trip to the goodwill and a couple to the dump.  Purge complete. 

My buddy Darrell and I did a little final ride before I put my GS in storage.   We got into some dirt roads he found out by Lake Hughes.   Crossed the PCT at mile 471.   I’ll be walking through there in a month or so.    Darrell asked after the ride if he was getting better or if I’m getting more cautious.   It’s mostly me I think.  Don’t want another injury before starting.   Sucks…feels like I’m losing my edge.   Have to reclaim my mojo during the hike.

Here’s a pic of Darrell digging through the trash.   

His bike key was on the tray…we never found it.   Probably submerged in a pool of ketchup and syrup at the bottom of the bag. 

On Thursday I loaded up the cable boxes, filled up the sunroom fridge with beer for the new tenants, and cleared out of the house.    We are now officially homeless.   

We have moved into a room with Alice’s parents.   I spend the weekend finishing the resupply boxes, addressing, and numbering them.  Ready to go. 

Here is the resupply plan. 

My cousin JD started the trail on April 13th.   As of today he has hit the point I pre-hiked over Thanksgiving last year (Scissors Crossing, Mile 77).  He’s a bunch of foot blisters, but is keeping a good pace.   Starting tomorrow he will be ahead of me.     Next update will be from the trail !

    

Thought I should create a couple updates before I start the PCT around the prep. 

At work, I have been transitioning teams and responsibilities over to various folks.   This is been going on directly or indirectly since I decided, and convinced Alice to let me,  do this hike at the end of 2014.   I feel our Knowledge Advance cloud product is finally getting over the hump and reaching maturity.    So I can take off with a clear conscience.

On the home front, we made a few decisions.   We will put our house up for rent in April.   Alice and I will move in with her parents for a month or so, after which she will stay/roam around with her sisters and cousins on various trips while I head into the wilderness.   Our lives are going through a mid-life cleansing 🙂    She is an amazing partner.                    

It is getting pretty busy here at the soon-to-be-rented Baum household.   I generated a short list of things to fix around the house then Alice turned it into a long list.    Put in some new gutters a couple weeks ago, replaced drywall over the infamous kitchen crack with plywood and patched.   Working on the patio now.  

Meanwhile Alice got us a storage place and we are boxing up stuff.   The last 2 weeks has been going through file cabinets and shredding all the financial crap we have been saving for the last 20 years.   Every time I open a cabinet to pack, I find another 20 pounds of “important papers”.   Last week I completely filled a 75 gallon garbage can with shredded paper.   It is amazing how complex modern life can be.

Buying a house, paper.   Need car insurance?  More paper.  How about some property insurance?  Here is a 70 page document describing….I have no idea….seems like mostly reasons why they won’t pay a claim.    Old Tax returns, bank statements, proxy votes, vehicle emission tests, car warranties, recall notices, and on and on and on.   

A special treat was re-skimming through a couple of  investments that went into bankruptcy/reorg.   What an amazing pile of paper that was.   Page after page of sentences beginning with “WHEREAS” and a few “NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED”.   They could have summarized it on a post card…..40 cents on the dollar per bond.  

WHEREAS there is a pile of paper sitting on the floor, NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that it will be placed into the shredder.   

If I was going to hang around longer, I’d probably try to compost this stuff and get some real use out of it.

 

Was a big online party when the PCTA opened up their PCT application page on their website at 10:30am on Tuesday.    By 10:35 it was unresponsive and by 11:30, all the good dates had been snapped up.   There was panic on the /r/PacificCrestTrail subreddit and the PCT facebook page.    2,000 applications by days end from what I read.    I managed to get my preferred date, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.  

I have been exchanging $$ for pounds off my pack weight.   New zpacks bag, lighter thermarest pad, some cuben fiber stuff sacks, and a few other knick knacks.   Dropped base pack weight down from 30.5 lbs to 23.  That worked out to $94.66 per pound.   I could lose 2 more by switching to a ULA pack, but I think Alice is reaching her limit. 

Bought a bunch of freeze dried food and trail mix which got distributed into 8 resupply boxes.   Packing about 10,000 calories each.   I figure I’ll sort out where to ship them while on the trail.      

 

Worked out that I will have to leave the trail at Scissors Crossing on Wednesday.  My goal of Warner Springs will have to be left for another time. 

Had my pack all ready to go for the morning.   Jumped out of bed at 5:30a, showered, and was out of the place by 6:30ish.  Was all layered up due to the chill, but at least no rain.   The big challenge on this segment will be water.   There are only three somewhat reliable places between mile 40 (Laguna) and 75 (Scissors Crossing).   So I guzzled almost 2 literes before leaving and had 2 liters in the platypus + 3L in bottles.   

What would have made it a GREAT start would be a breakfast burrito at this place…. 

 

Munching granola bars, I reconnected to the trail and headed south.   The scenery was groovy.   Wet, but no standing water.  Pine trees in the mist.   Cool brisk morning.   Pink Floyd was the right music to power this segment.    

I was making good time but my zen kept getting interrupted by 5 minute warnings from my phone about pending calls on my work calendar.   7:25 ding….Support Escalations call.  8:55 ding…something or other, 9:55 ding…our daily QA call.   Forgot to delete all this stuff before I left, so I got a chuckle out of it all.   

 

Around 9:30, I stopped at mile 48.   This place was supposed to have a working faucet.   I kept stomping on valve, but no water.   Opened up the ground cover hatches and finally found the culprit.   Valve was closed and the good people of the park service had put a gigantic lock on it.   Thanks alot.

 

Decided it was time for a little brunch.   This was where I spent my time during the daily QA call.    Maybe I should mark my time in the future based on things I would normally be doing at work?   

 

 

Walked along for a bit and ran into a Luke and his dog out for a day hike.   Nice kid had a good chat.  He blew past me and never saw him again. 

 

Next attempt for water was at 52’s Pioneer picnic area.   Only thing I found was a horse trough with some water from a rusted tank on the hill.   By then I was down to 2 Liters, so I loaded up on the horse water.   Hope my filter works.   

 

I ran into a fox watching me from a rock in the middle of the trail.   His head was poked up above a bolder only 30 feet in front of me.  Perfect picture.   So I grabbed my iphone, got through the password, turned on the camera, and….the f^$%#ing thing started prompting me to reconfirm my iCloud email / password.   By the time I figured out wtf was going on the fox took off.    I snapped a couple of photos of him climbing the rocks.  If you can find him in the picture, you get a prize.   Thanks alot Apple. 

 

Here is a cool pano of around the area where the fox may or may not have been seen. 

 

The trail was a mixture of easy walking, sandy/smooth rock and sprinkled with a sections of densely spaced, loose, fist-sized rocks on steep downward slopes.   There was little room to manuever, so I kept having visions of making the wrong step choice and ending up with a twisted ankle.    Had a couple close calls here.

I’m realizing that to do this hike, I have to keep up a brisk pace (~3 mph or so).   Given the trail is almost all single-track, it requires a lot of concentration.   I tend to only look about 10 to 15 feet in front of me and I’m always thinking about the next 2 to 3 steps I’ll take.   If I give more than a glance at the scenary, there is a danger of making the wrong step.   I almost rolled my ankle on one of those moments.   The only time to take it all in is during the pauses, otherwise it has to be concentration on the next step. 

 I find it fascinating that this is similar to off-roading on my GS or snow skiing.   All three activities have a cone allowable action where the actor can adjust the motion of the object  (me) with the terrain limited by physics (weight, speed, and vector).  Off a bit and it can be corrected.  Off a lot and you crash the bike, splatter on the slopes, or, in this particular case, roll your ankle and press the SOS button on the Delorme. For hiking the cone seems to extend no more than 10 feet, for skiing moguls (at my skill level) it is about 20, and for Enduro riding on this kind of trail it woud be about 50 to 75 feet.  I’d like to get into my theory about the width of the cone in this model, but you are bored already. 

Anyway after things are dialed in and working on semi-automatic, I get into a zone where a portion of the visual/cognitive gray matter is dealing with the present while some leftover bit is available to wonder about other stuff.  What to write on this blog. Who comes out here and works on these miles and miles of trail.  Why my wife puts up with all my shenanigans.  Is Pink Floyd’s music better without Roger Walters (I think yes, btw).  

And that is the cool thing about hiking.  I get to hang out with this wierd bit of myself.  

So, I found this toothbrush on the trail.   

 

For miles I’ve seen only one set of fresh North bound footprints.   The guy (I think) is wearing heavy boots and using poles.   I grabbed the toothbrush hoping to reunite the two and get a good story + pic.    Well the boot prints headed off to Sunrise Trailhead at mile 59 and the toothbrush was left on a conspicuous rock.   

Kept hiking through dusk.  I like night hiking with the headlamp.   Limits visual interference in the cone.   What cone?  Go back and reread my hiking theory!!!!   

Had a nice view of San Diego’s lights in the distance from a ridge top.   My photography skills blow, so here is a black picture with a smear of light for your amusement. 

Found some really nice campsites next to a wash in a deep valley around mile 63.   I have a bad feeling this the mico-climate here is going to be colder than the surrounding area, but it is too good to pass up.   Did 22 miles today !    Only ~13 more till my pickup.      

Woke up at 6am.   Man I am sore.   It is not the localized sort of sore, it is the full-body kind.   Popped some vitamin I and loosened up a bit.   Everything was clean and dry ready for the day. 

I checked outside to see if the storm had passed and saw this instead.

It is cold out there.  And windy.  And the rains supposed to continue until 5pm.  And…I’m STAYING IN THIS ROOM TONIGHT.  The guys at the store/cabin rental got a good laugh at my decision.  I suppose it was worth it, since they gave me a $30 discount on the room tonight.    Always a bright side. 

I am loaded up with frozen burritos and hot pockets for the day.    Going to do some replanning since I’m not going to make Warner Springs by Wed.    In a little while I’ll watch this tiny ass TV for a bit.    

 Spent some time at the store chatting with John and his brother who own the operation.  Got a lot of lore about PCT’ers coming through in the herd during April and May.   Folks throwing up from the climb, begging for rooms, buy out all his supplies, and other sorts of mayhem.   He told me that before the Warner Springs resort closed, it was known as the best hiker boxes on the route because folks would throw their entire pack into the box and head for the airport home.   

I’m rather relieved that I’ll miss it.   I’ve been thinking one of the benefits of sectioning the first bit is to by-pass all the nooblets (of which I am currently one of).   I figure that after 150/200 miles, a significant number of folks who “read some book and decided to hike” will be gone.  Then it is left to the rest of us who really want to do the whole thing but haven’t a clue if we can.   That about fits my profile.