Monday, April 05, 2010

I'm just a trail angel now

It's kind of exciting that The Man is going to be hiking the first 700 miles of the PCT. The day to drive him to the border is fast approaching.

It's going to be very lonely here at home with the birds all driving me nuts because they misbehave unless he is home. But I'll be looking forward to the weekends so I can drive down to the trail and try to meet him or maybe to drive to other spots on the trail and hand out lemonade or maybe even do an overnighter here and there.

The plan is to drive him to Lake Morena after work one day next week. Then the following morning, drive him to the border and bring the car back to Lake Morena. Then I'll dayhike down the trail until I meet him and then we'll walk back to Lake Morena together. Then we'll spend the night at Lake Morena together.

In the morning I'll do it again, this time driving to Mt. Laguna and then hiking south on the trail until I meet him and walk back to Lake Morena.

He's hoping he can time his hike so that he reaches Warner Springs on a weekend. Then I can drive down and meet him and soak in the hot spring with him. Somehow I think that's probably not going to work out, but we'll see.

He wants me to come visit if possible, but it's probable that he'll never be anywhere I can get to on a weekend. But if he is, then I'll make an effort.

I remember that I worried about doing my hike alone and wished he could come visit me, but after a while, I liked it that I was doing it all by myself. I think he'll enjoy that, too.

It's fun looking forward to being a trail angel of some sort. I at least want to try and wait by some road somewhere with cold drinks and see him come by with his new hiker trash friends and his new hiker trash persona. It would be fun. I hope it works out I can do that at least one time.

2 comments:

  1. Piper,

    It was always part of retirement plan to do the PCT and them become a "trail angel". From all I gather from your posts, walking the trail is the easy part. The hard part seems to be logistics. In my case, since my significant other will not appreciate me leaving for six months, I doubt she will be a good trail angel.

    You could be an official trail angel for people. You could faciliate people doing the PCT. You could mail stuff when it needed to get mailed and all the other stuff you need to do. And in the end, you could make a modest profit. Logistics is one of the things about the PCT that is daunting to me and I'm sure others feel the same way. You could provide even a greater service than what you're already providing for probably a lot more people than you think. Just a thought. Thanks for the great blog.

    -jimsonrat

    ReplyDelete
  2. That is an interesting idea. I could probably help out someone here or there. It would feel a little bit like preying on people's fears though because before you go out there you freak out about the whole resupply thing. Then after a few weeks on the trail you're like, oh, I get it. And then you kick yourself for planning too much!

    It seems like the people who need the most help are the ones from out of the country who can't really afford to ship stuff from home.

    ReplyDelete