Almost ready to go

I think I've got all my resupply boxes packed.

• I have one for Hikertown with food to get me to Tehachapi.
• There's one for Tehachapi. Even though there is a store, I have odds and ends to supplement what I can buy there.
• I'm sending one to Kennedy Meadows that includes new shoes, my tent and a bear can.
• I'm sending one to Lone Pine that has food for the stretch from Tuolumne Meadows to South Lake Tahoe. I can opt to forward the Lone Pine box to Tuolumne Meadows or have a go at the High Sierra again. Either way, I'll have to supplement it with stuff bought from Lone Pine.
• Then I have a big box to send to my mom's house of all my leftover food, the giant containers of Muscle Milk Tony bought me and some other odds and ends that I'll divvy up for Oregon and Washington when I get there.
• Additionally, I have two boxes with fresh shoes. I'll just ask Tony to send those to me when it looks like I'm going to need new shoes. Hopefully that will be roughly Ashland and Cascade Locks. Whatever is the logical start point of those two states.
  

I'm currently listening to my music library of Irish tunes while I study for my final exams next week. Every time I hear a good tune that I think I can learn, I'm looking up the music on thesession.org. If the sheet music is any good, then I'm copying it to a file that I'll print out to bring with me so I can practice some new tunes. I'm also including a list of all the tunes I already know with a few opening ABCs for the ones I tend to forget. Maybe this time I won't get stuck playing the same small batch of tunes over and over again because I forgot what I know.

I think the last things to take care of are these:

1. Print mailing labels
2. Put initial packages in the mail
3. Leave a pile of packages for Tony
4. Edit my web site so that it'll embed my PCT blog posts
5. Go

Being real

I just read this paragraph on someone's blog:

I want to ride the physical world out of vertical achievement. I love the material plane. I love being a body. I want to live ten thousand more lives. I want to smell the decaying leaves in fall and feel the sting of rain on my face and hear distant thunder and eat pancakes and walk in hot sand and lie in the sun, and sneeze and bleed and sweat and shit and fuck.

Instead I find myself in a climate-controlled building focusing my attention on the rules for transfer of information that keeps us all in climate-controlled buildings focusing our attention on the rules for transfer of information...

I think this is why I hike the PCT. To be real and physical.

The days are counting down. It's almost time to go be real for a while.

I just realized I packed a whole bunch of a certain item for lunch and have not ever tasted it to see if it's any good. I am going to have it for lunch today. Tony and I did a pudding test last night. We made pudding with powdered milk and freeze-dried raspberries. I learned that you have to let it sit a lot longer than 5 minutes so the raspberries have a chance to soften.

(Update: The item is tasty. It's dried lentil soup prepared by adding water and letting it sit in the sun for a little while. Eat with chips, pita chips, crackers or tortillas and a touch of olive oil.)

I have to admit that I'm not completely ready with my resupply preparations. What I mean is, I haven't completely thought through some of it. And my bounce bucket has too much stuff in it. I need to think that through, too. I'm really putting things off to the very last minute, aren't I?

Alternate route

All the trails above Santa Barbara are closed because of the Jesusita Fire. Someone has even managed to close all the trails that aren't officially closed. I started to worry that if they don't open the trails in a week and a half, I'll have no way to begin my hike to the PCT.

So I got to thinking. I remembered that one day Tony and I were hiking one of our trails and noticed a small new trail had been cut as an offshoot of the main trail. We decided to follow it and ended up on a road with a water tank. So I went online to Google maps and found the offshoot trail and the road with the water tank. I figured I could walk up that road and sneak onto the trail. Unfortunately, that road appears to be a private road that goes closely by several rich people's homes. No doubt they would call the cops on me with my backpack and all.

So I panned the map around and found another road with a trail I have never seen before that leads to a trail that I recognize. Another secret trail sparing the rich from having to drive to the trailhead! This one isn't as close to the rich people's houses. I think I could sneak by quickly before anyone saw me.

So my route may change. I may spend a little more time winding around the front country trails of Santa Barbara in order to get my hike started. I'm not going to let the paranoid moneyed people prevent me from taking a walk in my public forest.