Days 25 - 28: Zero days in Irvine
And on the Zeroth Day I arrived back in Irvine in the Night, and after confirming that the Apartment was still Here and *not* Burned Down, and that the Car still Started and was *not* Dead, I promptly got in the Tub and Soaked a Long While.
And on the Second Day, I Cleaned my gear, then ran Errands and Updated gear. As Chief had said at the post office in Big Bear Lake: after hiking 1100 miles of the PCT previously, you'd think the gear would be dialed-in, but nope, still making adjustments! Well, I have much fewer miles on me, so many more adjustments to make! And so I drove from this shop to that shop, getting this thing and that, and that took the Afternoon.
And at the end of the Second Day, I got my second Moderna vaccine shot, and then went to bed Early.
And on the Third Day, I woke feeling pretty ok but slightly achy, so on advice of my doctor I took some Tylenol and that seemed to help. And then I Slept the morning Away. But by afternoon I was feeling fine and back to Errands, which had now Expanded to include finishing up a bunch of blog Posts.
And at the end of the Third Day, I had a Whatsapp call with the Family, and unfortunately I just kvetched because I Wanted to head back to the trail the Next Morning and there was still so many Things-I-Had-to-Do and how was going to Get-It-All-Done. And standing in my local Ralphs afterwards, and seeing they were Out of Mariani Philippine Mango, and they were Out of Smart Water 1-L Bottles (!), I realized I was Not-Going-to-Finish-in-Time, so decided to take a Fourth Day. And, yes, I felt Bad, but really, what could I do?--I simply was not Ready.
And on the Fourth Day, I took it relatively Easy. And I Finished many blog Posts (and got to Enjoy the process of writing), and I investigated some photo Processing apps. And I finalized my gear list Updates, and I Found the Philippine Mango and the Smart Water, and I repacked my Bag. And I even Cleaned up the Apartment, in anticipation of Leaving.
And on the Fifth Day, with not Everything--but Enough--Done, I headed back out to the trail. And that was the zero-day hiatus in Irvine!
Some notes:
-- With all apologies for the co-opted Structure; the Copy is no where near as nice as the Original.
-- Here are the gear updates from this round:
* Fuel canister valve: There is always half-spent fuel canister in hiker boxes, so instead of buying a new canister and adding to the pile, I figured I'd invoke a trick from Columbia and get a little valve to siphon from one canister to another. There's an additional trick of using temperature to transfer the gas pressure in addition to the liquid fuel, but the key thing is the valve. I'll try it out in full in Wrightwood.
* Sleeping clothes: I've had trouble sleeping some nights on trail for being too hot. My sleeping bag is already pretty toasty--it's a 10-degree bag--and then I was wearing extra warm thermals while sleeping in it. I've tried various combinations of opening the bag in the night, using it almost quilt-like, etc., but I'm going to try some simple shorts and see how that goes.
* New socks: I had previously been using medium-sized Darn Tough socks and they felt a bit tight. So swapped to large-sized socks; hopefully they'll be a bit more comfortable.
* New shoes: my Lone Peaks had about 200 miles on them before starting the trail, plus the 300 or so from the trail, and that's the 500-mile lifetime. So time to swap! Luckily, it seems my feet haven't expanded too much yet--lots of other folks on trail have upgraded to larger shoes--so the same size still works.
* Music: I find myself singing a lot on trail when I'm by myself, only I'm also finding that my repetroire is decidedly lacking. Especially in certain settings: walking up and down the rolling hills amongst the redwoods, most of my Simon and Garfunkel songs didn't seem appropriate (hmm, between Richard Cory, A Most Peculiar Man, and Old Friends?--can we get something a bit more chipper?). So decided to copy my entire CD collection (in MP3 form) into my phone and I'll carry some headphones and I will find--man alive but I *will* *find*--some appropriate songs to sing out of tune to myself. There's a whole art to finding songs-to-sing-while-hiking, which maybe I'll write about (or maybe not, as likely I'm just being too picky about the whole thing).
* Food bag: I'm going to try the Dyneema food bag for this upcoming stretch. It looks to be easier to work with than the Ursack, and can hold more. And I've found myself sleeping with my food bag in my tent anyway: often in the deserts especially, there's no place outside to tie-down the Ursack. Either the bushes are too short and brittle, or there aren't any bushes at all and its just barren. So if my food bag is in the tent anyway, let's see if the convenience of a Dyneema bag is big enough a deal to justify dropping the Ursack. (At least for now: when I get to Oregon and the "little bear"--the squirrels and rodents--become much more bold and aggressive, I may switch to the Ursack out of necessity.)
* Sawyer Ring Adapter: Technically part of a "cleaning kit", this is just a plastic ring that screws onto the Sawyer output on one end, and onto the top of a Smartwater bottle on the other. This is based on Doug (of CalTrans) watching me filter water at Mission Camp and remarking that it looked hard. Why don't you just the adapter?, he asked. The adapter? Yeah, this thing, it came with my Sawyer, he said, and with it you can screw the Sawyer directly onto the bottle and don't have to worry about aiming and lining things up all the time. It lets enough air in?, I asked, because I knew the tricky bit about my old system was you have to tilt the Sawyer nozzle to let air in, but do so without spilling water everywhere. Yeah, he said, just don't screw it on tight and there's enough give in the threads to let air through. Well, it sounded good, and he looked good, so I'm going to give it a try!
* Gaiters: Swapped for a new pair since the old pair had a tear in one and the Gear Tape wasn't sticking anymore and was now just highlighting the problem.
* Bandana: Swapped for a new one since the old one had a tear in it that would rip a little more every time I tied the bandana (I use it to keep the back of my neck from getting sunburned).
-- One of my biggest concerns on trail is weight. I find it very easy to lose weight--it's relatively simple when you don't enjoy eating--but I've heard the horror stories of guys (usually--girls often gain weight) checking in at the 3-week mark having lost 15 or 20 pounds. I really can't afford that. I had weighed 141 pounds when I set out, and with some trepidation I stepped up to the scale on the morning of the First Day and saw: 136. Not bad! Probably need to eat more, but only 5 pounds is not bad! And I was back up to 141 a couple days later.
-- Oh, and in case I haven't made it obvious, the hiker hunger has definitely kicked in; it did so at about Whitewater River or so. So I'll wake up in the middle of the night feeling hungry, and then I'll feel hungry in the morning before I get going, and then throughout the day. This is natural: it happens to everyone, the only question is when. Oh, and keeping yourself from eating your entire food bag on day one--need to prevent that too! But I'll try to carry some more snacks and, inevitably, I'll give in and start carrying pure candy (just for the calories).
-- It's strange, though: on the First Day I ate a lot of high-calorie junk food and that night, for once, the stomach complained. So I switched over to "healthier" foods, i.e., stuff you have to cook on a stovetop or oven. The junk food is no problem on the trail, but evidently the friendly confines of the apartment were enough to switch my body back over. You're eating *what* now, it was asking. I understand when we're in the *woods*, but you're *here*, in the lap of luxury, and you're eating *what*? The only thing green about that is the bag it came in! And the stomach, well, the stomach just wasn't having it.
-- Speaking of food, Eugene isn't going to like this but I've stopped carrying Justin's Peanut Butter packets. So it was back on my first night going up San Jacinto: I had found a wonderful campsite, with a separate "kitchen" area just a bit down below with a great view of Lake Hemet at sunset, and a Backpacker's Pantry Pad Thai (I needed to update my cooking bag) for dinner. And I made the Pad Thai, and I added the lemon crystals and the spice packet and even their peanut butter packet and then thought, hey, why not add a Justin's packet too? So I grabbed one, kneaded down the peanut butter, and opened it up. And it exploded, spilling peanut butter all over my lap. Ok, that's inconvenient, but what's really inconvenient is all the bugs and animals that now will be wanting to eat my pants. And the peanut butter wasn't even that good!: Justin's is a "healthy" peanut butter so they minimize the sugar--contrast the peanut butter that came with the pad thai that clearly *added* sugar. I mean, who's eating Justin's if not thru-hikers and backpackers, and what thru-hiker (at least) is going to say, no, I want *less* sugar. No, man, we want *more* sugar, we want *calories*, we drink straight from little nalgene bottles of olive oil just to get more calories! So here's this peanut butter that evidently can explode when you open it, and is hard to work with even after you open it (they also reduce the oil which makes it less spreadable), and it doesn't even have sugar! So I was done and left my remaining packets in the hiker box at the Big Bear Hostel. And that's why I don't carry Justin's anymore, with all apologies to Eugene! (Now to be fair, likely it exploded just because I was at elevation--if I'd opened it maybe a few thousand feet lower it would've been fine and not precipitated this rant--but them's the breaks!)
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