Days 47 - 49: Zero days in Tehachapi

I had hoped that my stay in Tehachapi would be short. Optimistically, a day to get better, then a day to recover and start eating normally, then back onto trail.

The first day went as I expected, feeling tired and queasy at times, but not feeling nauseated. Appetite wasn't back yet, and watching ads with food would sometimes stir the stomach, but other than that I thought I was doing pretty good. In the morning I slept, in the afternoon I spent some time figuring out photo editing and Instagram on my phone, and in the evening I ate some tomato basil soup. And I went to sleep thinking, yeah, good, I'm on the recovery road.

And then in the middle of the night I woke up, got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and threw up for a while. Let me tell you, even on a queasy stomach with a lack of appetite, soup is still much more enjoyable going down than coming up. (And I'd forgotten how much stomach acid burns when it comes out through your nose.) Not fun, even though I did feel a bit better afterward when I finally slipped back into bed.

The second day was functionally similar to the first: in the morning I slept, in the afternoon I spent some time doing photo editing, and in the evening I ate some chicken noodle soup. But I was more hesitant about recovery now, much less reassured about my plans to get back on trail quickly. Since arriving, I'd left the hotel room only once, and that was just to go down to reception to extend my stay. I was getting very comfortable in here, and  getting worried about that, because the trail was feeling very distant. I tried watching some hiking videos on YouTube, but found I didn't recognize those same sentiments in myself. The mind was turning, and I didn't like it, but there wasn't much I could do about it.

The third day I woke after a night without incident, and actually felt hungry. So I ate some croissants and crackers and grape nuts and the stomach, while feeling odd because I was filling a pretty empty tank, didn't complain. So I was cautiously optimistic. And while I spent the morning again resting, in the afternoon I elected to do some chores. First, wanted to pick up some water treatment tablets, wanted to get new water bottles, and wanted to get dinner. Well the first two I got done at the Walmart, the last I got done a TKs Pizza and Pasta (the only non-chain place still open by the time I got out the door). I had to walk to get to both, and I must say that when walking I felt better: the stomach seemed calmer, and the legs seemed happier. There's an adage I have in the mornings on trail if I'm feeling low energy: get walking. Because once I get walking, everything seems easier to sort out, arguments seem easier to resolve, and the day instead of closing down in tasks and dependencies and details, instead opens up to all these possibilities. So when in doubt: get walking!

The second thing I wanted to do was to wipe down all my gear with this anti-bacterial, anti-viral wipes that Ian had bought. This took a while--maybe 3 or 4 Law and Orders?--but I feel it was time well spent.

And as the third day finishes up, and I eat my pastrami sandwich from TKs (good idea), and my garlic bread (good idea), and my tater tots (bad idea--the grease isn't doing my stomach any favors), I look ahead and I'm thinking, hmm, I should be able to get back on trail tomorrow. Stomach is not vomitting, had a passably normal bowel movement, gear is wiped down with all adjustments made. Everything is good to go, right? I should go, right? Or maybe I should stay another day, recover further? But this room is starting to become it's own place, starting to pull my mind away from hiking, and justifying it by saying, hey, you have valuable things to do here. Like photo processing--lots of that to do!--or blog writing: you can be plenty productive here without hiking, and you can use the productive time to simultaneously recover. It's a win-win! That's the little voice in the back of my head, and it sounds reasonable and sensible and considered. And that's why I don't trust it.

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Some notes:

-- Instagram seems to be the method de jour for electronically linking with people you meet on trail: do you have an Instagram? is the standard question after spending about half a day with someone and not hating them afterward. Of course, if you hike with folks for a while and form a group, then you trade phone numbers to contact each other more immediately (for planning purposes, for example), but otherwise, it's Instagram. So I started one. I had originally wanted justgoingforawalk (for obvious reasons), but that Instagram handle was already taken, so I went with putting periods between everything--just.going.for.a.walk--although in retrospect that seems a bit troublesome. Ah well.

-- Instagram does have an issue that it likes squarish images or, barring that, images of the same dimensions. But I take a lot of panoramas of different sizes. So I end up with a lot of little posts instead of the more popular habit of one big post with lots of images. And I clearly don't understand the social conventions of the "Like" either. Hmm, I don't know how to use social media?--imagine that! </sarcasm> Ah well: so it goes.

-- Photo editing still takes a lot of time for me, so I don't know if I'll be able to keep up with it on trail--I did it here during my convalescence in Tehachapi, but I'm hoping this stay will be more the exception than the rule. But if nothing else, it's good to put at least something up: now I don't feel as embarrassed about giving out the account. Hey, there's at least, umm, *a* picture on there!

-- Incidentally, for those curious about tool flow, on my phone I'm using Bimostitch for stitching panoramas, Vibrance HDR for assembling HDR images, and Lightroom for general editing.

-- Oh, here's the list of gear I discarded after the shakedown with Ian. This was nice to do since, it turns out, you can't ship things out of Kennedy Meadows, so I'd have to carry this extra stuff all the way to Bishop. So lucky to get it off the back now. 

* Shorts: I had carried a pair of soft shorts for sleeping at night because I was getting too hot in the long johns. But I found a better way to control the heat was to instead use the sleeping bag in a quilt style: just zip up the foot box, leave the rest open, and keep the opening directly below so I'm laying on the sleeping pad with the bag spread as a blanket above. There'll be cold spots when turn from side-to-back or back-to-side, but I've found that's just something I have to live with. Hence: discarded. 

* Moisturizer: Another problem with the long johns was that my legs had been itching in the evening, which I thought was about dry skin. So I had carried some moisturizer. But I think it was more that my legs were just sensitive because of the extra blood pumping through them from the extra exercise, and eventually they got used to the extra load and stopped itching. So I hadn't used the moisturizer in quite some time. Hence: discarded.

* Squirrel nut butter: Again, this was for itching in the legs. And maybe the SNB would have helped, but I never got to try it since, in the mornings, it was always too cold and the SNB would be an unyielding solid chunk rather than a cream. Hence: discarded.

* SD card reader cable: I carried an SD card reader cable that I could plug into my phone. But as Ian pointed out, the camera has a WiFi connection you can use to transfer photos. But that takes too much battery, I said. Will you ever review photos in a place where you can't plug in, he countered. Point taken. Hence: discarded.

* Extra gaiters: Before going from LA to Three Points, I couldn't find my gaiters so I grabbed an extra pair from my resupply boxes at Ian's place. A few miles onto the trail I remembered where the originals were: I had put them in my jacket pocket and, checking, yep, there they were. So now I had four gaiters but only two feet. Hence: discarded.

-- I also added some gear. In particular, I amended my water treatment setup. Right now I use a Sawyer squeeze, and the Sawyer works great for bacteria. But it doesn't filter viruses. So how to get those? Well, after (a lot of) web research, it seems the solution I trust most is to Sawyer then Aquamira: the Sawyer handles the particulate and the bacterial, and the Aquamira handles the bacterial and the virulogial. Together, they should handle everything. Only problem is I can't get Aquamira delivered in time: oh, I can it pick at any REI right now off the shelf, but if I want it shipped it'll take a week. So instead I'm going with Potable Aqua tablets, which do handle viruses, and are available at Walmart. They'll do for this next stretch, until I get the Aquamira shipped to me in Kennedy Meadows. I also refreshed my Smartwater bottles. I remember Gavin told me he bought new bottles every time he got into town, and I had started that way, but in the beginning you hit a town every 2-3 days and that just seemed wasteful so I got out of practice. I should have picked it back up around Big Bear, where towns start getting separated by 6-7 days, but I wasn't consistent. So in addition to the Potable Aqua, I also refreshed all my Smartwater bottles. Oh, and Ian had bought some extra pepto bismol chewables, so I added those to my medical kit as well.

-- Incidentally, as I finish up my second stint in Tehachapi, I still don't know what caused the illness. Was it my water?: but I got water from the water cache at Interstate-58 same as everybody else, and filtered it same as everybody else. Was is my food? (When I was coming down the mountain, one of the folks I talked to asked what I ate and I said mashed potatoes with tuna, and he said, ugh, I think that alone would make me sick.) But I've had that dinner before, and all my food is individually packaged. Was it (as Ian suggested) cross-contamination: something I picked up in Tehachapi that got onto my food before I ate. Possibly. There was an outbreak of norovirus in Tehachapi a couple weeks ago, and also an outbreak on the trail (associated with Robin Bird Spring). So it's around, and it's characterized by vomitting and diarrhea; I didn't get the latter that much, but did get the former. But I can't be sure. So it's with some trepidation that I head back out: I know I got sick, but I don't know which sickness exactly, and I don't know how I got it. Ah well, what can you do but go back out there, wash your hands more often, and hope it doesn't happen again!