I woke Jenn up at 4:41am. We were in the middle of a tent city set behind Mike Herrera's cabin. I'd had three beers before bed but I was ready to go. I let the air out of my pad and the hissing mixed with the grunts, snores and hacks like a tornado of whatever. We were packed up and on the trail by 5:20, escaping the property in the cover of dark. I wanted to see the sun rise that day and even though my motivation was to beat other hikers into town on Easter weekend to secure the last remaining hotel room, I believed my aims to be noble. The sun did rise, and as it did I saw before me the vastness our feet would have to navigate before the day ended. 25 miles separated us from a pick-up truck that was leaving the paradise valley cafe at 4:00pm. It was our 7th straight day of hiking, most days were made up of 20 miles (or foot centuries as I like to call them) or more. I figured I had one more day in my legs and the promise of an off day in Idyllwild would get me through. Holy shit I was wrong. I broke down pretty much from the get go. It was ugly. I think I had the first cramp of my life. It was a Charlie horse and I argued with Jenn over what a Charlie horse was and then I got another. In my other leg. So my day was filled with dead legs but that worked itself out after some electrolytes and some man time. But then came the diarrhea. A hiker named Puppy had warned me of this. And maybe it's because I judged her silently for having an itchy butt and diarrhea, that I met a very similar fate. I yelled at Jenn to keep hiking as I dove into a bush and let it go. The dynamics of pooping in the desert fully clothed are more complicated than they should be. Let's just say it's not pleasant. My day got better after I unloaded the unpleasantries, but only slightly. The miles ticked by like time on a broken clock and the cool temperature of morning was long gone. My pants, the ones I've owned for 7 years, that are made from cotton, are torn in the ass, and have had 3 different buttons sewn on, are giving up on me. My sweat pulls them off of me with every step and I'm forced to hop-skip and yank to get them back over my hips. We climb for an eternity into Anza and some how make it through 20 miles. In the distance we see Lucky, a gentleman in his late sixties who puts the hurt on us daily, lounging behind a bookcase on the side of a dirt road. As we get closer it becomes clear the book case is filled with gallons of water. It wouldn't be the only trail magic of the day. We all chug and refill and move on. My brain was baked. I have a bad habit of not wearing sunscreen or drinking enough water and sometimes I get loopy. I can usually trick myself into thinking that I feel good and press on as if I were fresh as a dirty sock, but on this day it was all slurs and spills and visions of the Tortoise who I'd passed on day one. No seriously, I saw the Tortoise, laying in the sand in Anza, 150 miles from where we last encountered one another and once again I asked, "are you good?". And once again the Tortoise refused any assistance. I tried doing the math to make sense of it all, but I was never good at math and it just made things more confusing. I concluded the Tortoise isn't real and I moved on. 5 miles to go and there is a piece of paper in the sand held down with rocks. It says: Cold Sodas down the hill. I went down the hill. Lucky beat me there and he smiled from behind a can of generic sprite. I grabbed a generic coke and so did Jenn. Then I dug through the hiker box and found blueberry pop tarts which I consumed immediately. Under the pop tarts was a box of postcards. I wrote one to my parents and left it in the hiker box. We moved on. The last 5 miles were hard, but it was all comical at that point. The top of the mountain never came, the road never showed itself, it rained, we smiled and we somehow ended up at the Paradise Valley Cafe with an hour to spare. We drank beer and ate burgers like crippled savages. A whole crew of hikers we've been leap frogging was there. Thank god I'd reserved that room on the trail.
We arrived in Idyllwild at the doorstep of the Manzanita Cabins. A lady with an emphysema voice checked me in and told me she'd quoted me the wrong rate and I'd need to pay in cash. I was too worn out to argue. I got the keys, stepped into the room and that's when I had my mini-melt down. Any one who's known me for an extended period of time is familIar with these. They occur rarely and are usually set off by inconsequential things, but under the surface they're brewing. Today it was a hotel room i'd overpaid for that was no wider than my armspan, with a bed covered in plastic, a carpet that smelled worse than me and a TV that still had antennas on it. Didn't this lady know who I was? I fucking hiked 25 miles today. I marched my over-privileged ass into her office and politely told her I'd only be staying for one night. Which I did.
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