The morning started off with breakfast.   Papa Bear hung out with us before the 9AM ferry.   Turns out he has been zeroed at VVR for the last 5 days.   He just likes the place.   If we were staying he was going to do yet another day.    Soho insisted his package would arrive in time….turns out it didn’t.

I got a bit of Papa Bear’s story.   He has 2 kids and a bunch of grandkids.   Somewhere along the way, Papa Bear retired, bought and RV, loaded up his dirt bike, and began roaming the Earth.   Last year he and his RV was apparently parked in Thousand Oaks (my home town) in his niece’s driveway.    He pops on and off the grid for months at a time.   One of his kids asked when they should be worried about Grandpa.   Papa Bear told them to wait 1 month before getting concerned.   What a character.

While waiting for the mail run, I spent most of the day talking to various JMT’ers.   Met this retired physician named Larry who gave me the 411 on the Camino De Santiago.   It will be perfect for Alice. 

One of the JMT’ers is a dude named Zach.   He is hiking with a couple of his friends.   Zach is a consultant in the tech space with a focus on marketing and sales.   Really bright guy.   We had a long discussion about the state of media and how all the choice tend to reinforce individual biases.    Overlayed with that are orgs like facebook that splice in their own business agendas with content delivery.    It is a brave new world.   Hope the millenials come up with some new ideas.   20 more years of seeing cat pictures, myopic political arguments, and conspiracy theories will drive me to an early grave.

Zach offered to let Soho and me shake down his pack to save weight.   Zach was good natured about it, so it made it fun.  The big discovery was a brick of moleskin.    We suggested keeping one strip and big roll of duct tape.  Probably ID’d 2 or 3 pounds that could go.   Hopefully Zach will toss his boots soon and get some trail runners.    

I spent a little time updating my notes recent hiking days while watching the group dynamics of the young JMT folks on the picnic table next to me.   It was like watching PCT’ers after the first couple weeks.   Pretty soon trail names were getting thrown around.   One gal got the name Small Doses which was a stroke of genius, imho.  Another already had the name Luna which seemed to fit.   Zach got “Barn Mitzvah” after his cowboy themed bar mitzvah.   Not sure about that one, but it bugged him so it got a lot of play.   Mark, one of Zach’s friends got “Stubbs”.   Seemed to fit. 

Luna was hiking with a dude named Nathan from Austin who was full for randomness.   He decided to wash dishes that night for a free meal and was debating whether to stay for a couple weeks to work for some cash.   Fun times.   That night we played some game called Cards against Humanity.   It was fun, but honestly this group could not be offended by anything in the deck so it got a little dull at the end.  

Oh, back to Soho’s stupid resupply box.   Well I was in the store around 1:30 buying yet another snack.   The gal behind the counter takes a call from the guy driving the mail pickup van up the hill.   He ran out of gas.    The van has two tanks….apparently both empty.   This is the same dude that drove the ferry yesterday.  The owner winds up grabbing a 5 gallon can and takes off to save him.   The guy finally arrives at 3:55 with Soho’s package.   The ferry leaves at 4….assuming the driver still has his job.  I just shook my head….we are staying the night.

I crashed a little early tonight, but the fire pit was raging.   Someone was passing around a bottle of scotch…that is bad news.   I walked by their pit at midnight to hit the bathroom and they were still going strong.