Day 130: Zero day in Bend

So I took a zero day in Bend, and it was busy, as usual, but this stay was different: at the end, I didn't feel excited to get back on trail. I think it's a combination of having to go back to the green tunnel, and just the accumulation of fatigue--my feet certainly hurt a lot more than they have in the past and are recovering much more slowly. Walking around town in the morning, I felt as if there were rocks where the pads of my feet were--not rocks under my feet, but rocks instead of the muscles--and it felt awkward and strange. Usually that smooths out after a few minutes, but today it didn't, enough so that I went back to the hotel and downed two ibuprofen to make it go away. And that helped some, but not entirely: my feet would feel weird walking around town pretty much all day today.

I think this is not a good sign.

As for the day itself: it started with breakfast at the Black Bear Diner just down the street, where I got the Grizz--1500 calories. Then back to the hotel to freshen up, grab some ibuprofen, and then a walk to the post office to pick up my resupply package. Where I happened to meet Almost Famous and Moonbeam! They had just come back from Trail Days and were hitting up Bend for chores before heading back on trail tomorrow at Elk Lake. And I would talk with them and eventually catch an Uber with them off to Mountain Supply--a gear shop on the "other side" of town. From there, we would walk together first to REI, then to a brewery about a mile away, where we would eat and they would enjoy the free beer the brewery gives to all PCT hikers. From there they would head downtown whereas I would head back, catching an Uber back to the motel, where I would walk out to grab some final resupply at the Albertsons, a dinner at the Bend Burger down the street, then finally back to the motel to sort the resupply, fix a bunch of gear, call Ian to coordinate the resupply for the rest of Washington, and eventually fall asleep pretty late and pretty tired.

What I didn't get done was any writing, which was bad: I'm perpetually behind, and missing a chance to write just furthers that delinquence.

(Oh, and for those wondering where's the laundry and shower and gear cleaning--that all happened yesterday. Well, except the gear cleaning which I was supposed to do but instead fell asleep--I got that done in the morning before heading out to the Black Bear Diner. Felt terrible that I didn't get it done last night but, eh, what can you do?--yesterday's already over and done.)

Ok, that's the boring laundry list of what happened. Here are the more interesting stories:

-- Almost Famous and Moonbeam both had a pretty good time at Trail Days. In particular, one of the talks they attended was a Leave No Trace talk, pretty boring and evidently poorly attended (I mean, the NOBOs have already hiked 1500+ miles, the SOBOs 500+ miles, if they don't know Leave No Trace by now...) but there was some call-and-response, and if you answered correctly, they'd give you a raffle ticket. Sure. But then, at the end, they said if you have a raffle ticket, you can come up to this table full of gear and pick out anything you want. And Moonbeam went up and saw an envelope that said, backpack from Six Moon Designs, and asked, wait, can I take this? Sure, they said. So she got a new backpack from Six Moon Designs! And they had a booth at Trail Days, so she went and got a custom fitting too! I mean, that's a huge score, especially because she was increasingly unhappy with her current backpack!

-- Almost Famous also picked up a new backpack from Six Moon Designs, same as Moonbeam. So now, how to get rid of his current backpack, an Osprey Exos? Well, he came up with a bit of a convoluted method. See, his Osprey bag is a bit torn up, but Osprey has a lifetime warranty, so he invoked it, and they shipped a replacement bag to him, specifically to Mountain Supply. He picked that up, gave Mountain Supply the old bag to ship back to Osprey. Now it turns out he bought the Exos at REI, and it hasn't been a year yet, so he took it back to them and returned it--REI has a great return policy where you can try out gear in the field and still return it, so long as it's within a year and (in theory) lightly used. Only he was "returning" a brand new Exos bag--tags on it and everything--so of course it was good. No abuse of the return policy here! But like I said, a bit convoluted!

-- I got to talking with Moonbeam at the brewery. Turns out she went to college as an engineer, but after college made a career change and became a nurse. Worked as an ICU nurse for a few years, but after this, she's thinking of making a change to either travel nursing (ideally), or maybe hospice nursing. ICU nursing was pretty stressful, not necessarily on the medical side, but seemingly moreso on the people side. In particular, you'd have these families with a loved one in the ICU, and the family couldn't decide on what to do: half would say do this, the other half would say do that, and they wouldn't agree. And that's stressful, when you're the nurse and in the middle, and the family is pulling in opposite directions. She figures it'll be more calm in hospice nursing--the goal is to make the patient as comfortable as possible--although I pointed out that as a hospice nurse, you do have to deal with how different cultures treat end-of-life, and different cultures treat it *very* differently (end-of-life is a big deal in most cultures, so there's a lot of convention and strong sensitivity baked in), so there's that to learn and adapt to. But she seemed to feel that was doable. Her ultimate goal? To retire early, within the next decade or so, so she can be free to do whatever. Doing the PCT has put her a bit behind schedule this year, but it should be recoverable.

-- Oh, also: after she tags the border, Moonbeam is planning to head back down to Big Bear and finish the trail from Big Bear down to Campo. And I, for my part, said that if she was down there, and I was done with the trail myself, well then I live down there, and she could ping me and I'd help her out. Granted that's a commitment on my part, given out on a bit of a whim, but my gut says that it's ultimately a Good Thing to do.

And one story that deserves it's own section:

-- In the evening, I spoke with Ian on the phone about resupply and the Washington strategy. That's discussed below. But I also talked with him for the first time about his dad. I remember I mentioned in the blog that his dad had a medical emergency--a tear in his aorta--and had to go to immediate surgery. And hence Terry stepped into the Resupply Wrangler saddle for a spell. What I may not have mentioned here is that, although it seems they repaired the heart, there was other damage as well, and Ian's dad never woke up after the surgery, and passed away. They had the funeral a while back, and had even streamed it, but I was on the trail and so didn't attend. And that's one of the drawbacks of the trail: you miss these sorts of events that you should be there for. But I did get to talk with him about it tonight on the phone. And there wasn't much I could say, other than commiserating a bit. I've attended the funerals of my nai nai (paternal grandmother) when I was a child, and since I've become an adult, of Uncle Dave, of yie yie (paternal grandfather), of gong gong (maternal grandfather), of wei po (maternal grandmother), and a small family Zoom call for xiao ai yi (Auntie Ting). And funerals are not fun and they're hard, and eulogies--I hate writing eulogies (being the eldest of my generation, I get the privilege of writing eulogies that represent not only my voice, but the voice of my generation in the family tree--this does not make them easier). And funerals are not even really for the family either: especially when the deceased is younger and there are lots of guests, the funeral is more for them--the friends--rather than the family. The family will grieve in its own time, at its own pace--the family's grief often cannot be scheduled to a time and place and occasion, but crops up as it will in the days and months ahead. And I quoted for him a line by Neil Gaiman in The Sandman, when Dream (an Endless) trying to console his son Orpheus (a mortal) about the death of his wife Eurydice (yes, it's a retelling of that Greek myth), saying: "You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on." And that last bit, about their absence hitting you like a blow to the chest, but less as time goes on, that I've found to be true. And at times it feels disrespectful, like you're forgetting them, but you're not, it's just what happens in life. As Dream continues: "She is dead. You are alive. So live." But yeah, hopefully talking with Ian about this stuff wasn't too hard for him, hopefully it was more about knowing that someone else cared, rather than just dredging up tough memories.

And some commentary about what's ahead:

-- It looks like Washington will be a lot of mailed "full resupplies", meaning a full complement of food. Usually I like to shop around in town for food, but lots of the stops in Washington are just convenience stores and gas stations, and with a big hiker bubble going through before me, I expect the shelves to be picked over as if by locusts. So mailing full resupplies is the safer route, and looks to be pretty much happening through all of Washington!

-- The zero strategy for Washington currently looks to be similar to that of Oregon. In Oregon I took 2 zeros--Ashland and Bend--and the rest were neros. In Washington, there doesn't look to be great places to zero. Leavenworth is one possibility, but that looks to be the only obvious one. So many one zero, or maybe no zeros, in Washington? To be fair, that strategy--while physically taxing and perhaps impossible--is great for the schedule: I didn't make big miles in Oregon, and feel like I'm pretty behind. The only way to catch up that I know of is to hike, and zeros are *not* hiking!

And some gear notes (hmm, this is becoming a laundry list itself!):

-- Bend may be the last big town for a long time--possibly even the end of the trail--so I refreshed all my Ziplocs (bought a ton of those--I'll offer them to Double Snacks and Brett if nothing else), refreshed my Smart Water bottles.

-- I tossed my tube of sunscreen. I bought it back at Julian, used a bit here and there in the desert, but then just stopped. So it's the same tube and it's only about half used. Well, if I haven't used it up by now I'm not going to, so I'm ditching the weight!

-- So I had wanted to fix my tent zippers--a couple are getting the problem where they're unzipping behind the pull. There's a gear fix shop here in Bend that's pretty famous and has great reviews on Guthooks. Only thing is: they're closed on Mondays. Which is today. sigh. So instead I went to buy a multitool with some pliers to try to the plier-trick (this is where you try to "reshape" the zipper pull by gently applying pressure with the pliers). And Mountain Supply had multitools but only these huge Leatherman monstrosities, so I went to REI and they had one left of the smaller, more thru-hiker-ish variety (it even has holes cut out of the otherwise solid portions!). Applied the plier-trick to some tent zippers. We'll see how well it holds up in the field!

-- Also fixed a guide-line that had finally snapped--now there's a little bit of yellow string somewhere between in the 30 miles or so leading up to Pamelia Lake. Replaced it with a bit of high-visibility red chord, tied off with a double-fisherman's knot: hopefully that'll last a long while!

-- While I was fixing things, also fixed holes in my pants pockets. It's the usual: the main pockets are mesh pockets--I presume to keep them cooler--but they rip pretty easily. Just did the double Tenacious Tape--one piece on the outside, another corresponding piece on the inside. It held up pretty well in my previous pair of pants, and there the holes had progressed much further. Hopefully nipping it more in the bud here will help.

-- Oh, and I added a pair of marigolds. If it rains, I'll give them a shot for keeping my hands dry--while still maintaining some dexterity--in the rain. Need to cinch off the cuffs, though: I figure my backup hair ties should work for that.

And finally, for fun, for those who might be interested, I figured I'd list what I'm carrying out of Bend, food-wise. This is a nominal 6-day food carry for a hungry thru-hiker:

-- BREAKFAST: 6 breakfasts, consisting of grape nuts + soy milk powder + sugar + chia seed + 1 Superfood effervescent tablet.

-- BREAKFAST: 3 packets of Pop-Tarts strawberry flavor, 3 packets of Pop-Tarts blueberry flavor (want to try eating Pop-Tarts as a starter breakfast when I first get moving in the morning, then save the actual grape-nuts breakfast for second breakfasts).

-- LUNCH: 10 tortillas, flour, soft. It should be 12, but they only come in sets of 10 or 20, so 10 it is!

-- LUNCH: 1 16.3 oz plastic jar of Skippy peanut butter, extra crunchy.

-- LUNCH: 1 13 oz plastic jar of Nutella.

-- DINNER: 4 packets of Sapporo ramen, all chicken flavor (that's the only one they had in the store).

-- DINNER: 2 Idahoan mashed potato packets.

-- DINNER: 1 AlpineAire meal (as backup).

-- DINNER, MISSING: seaweed for ramen dinners. My mistake--miscommunication!

-- DINNER, MISSING: pork sung for ramen and for mashed potato dinners. My mistake--miscommunication!

And the snacks:

-- BARS: 6 Clif Builder protein bars (cool mint).

-- BARS: 6 Larabars (cashew cookie).

-- BARS: 6 Luna bars (peppermint--the best flavor).

-- BARS: 6 Nature's Bakery bars (fig--the classic)

-- BARS: 6 Clif bars (blueberry crisp--have developed a taste for these).

-- FRUIT: 3 bags of dried strawberries (by Stoneridge, first picked these up in Crater Lake and they were good).

-- FRUIT: 2 bags of dried peaches.

-- FRUIT: 1 bag of dried blueberries.

-- SALTY: 2 medium bags of Corn Nuts (ranch flavor), split into 4 Ziploc baggies.

-- SALTY: 1 bag of salted cashews, split into 2 Ziploc baggies.

-- GUMMY: 1 large bag of Albanese gummy bears, split into 7 portions and placed into 6 Ziploc baggies (I ate the 7th portion while sorting all this food).

-- M&M: 1 bag of "sharing size" peanut M&Ms.

And I wonder why my food bags are heavy!

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