Day Thirty Seven

Miles today: 7
Total miles: 558

My alarm went off at 5:00 am, but I shut it off and tried to go back to sleep. At 5:30 I woke up again because Sansei began throwing rocks at our tent door. When one of them flew in the top of our open door and hit me in the head, I yelled, "Ow! What was that?"
In a high squeaky Monty Python voice, Sansei said, "very small rocks!"

Pretty soon he graduated from throwing rocks to throwing Skittles, and our tent was soon full of colorful candy pieces. I began trying to throw them back, but my aim wasn't as good and I beaned Katie on the head a couple times when they ricocheted off the tent door. After that everyone was awake and excited about getting into town. It was a rule that we were allowed to talk about town food on the day we were going into town, but not before that. So all the way down the mountain we yelled breakfast foods we were excited about, and Sansei and Katie liked my yell the best, since I kept screaming "PANCAKESANDEGGS!" at the top of my lungs but no one could quite figure out what I was saying. Pretty soon we were all yelling BACONANDEGGS! or PANCAKESANDEGGS! or a combination of all three.

The seven mile hike was entirely down a mountain, so we flew down it, despite the wind still trying to knock us sideways. We were moving through the Tehachapi wind farm, apparently the largest one in the entire world, and the sheer number of wind mills was an impressive sight to see. When we got to the road, we caught up with Lunchbox and Focus and split into smaller groups to catch a hitch into town. To our surprise, we were picked up by Ruby, the very same woman who gave us a hitch into Wrightwood several weeks ago! Apparently she has been following the hikers north and giving us rides as we reach town. She very graciously took us to the post office to pick up our mail drops and then back into Tehachapi to find a hotel.

Papa Bear had beat us into Tehachapi and already had a room, so Katie and I joined him and Focus and Sansei rented another. Then we went in search of the perfect breakfast spot and ordered large platters of pancakes, bacon and eggs. I ordered my customary glass of chocolate milk, which I have found is a big craving of mine every time I come into town.

When we got back to the hotel, we were met with an extraordinary surprise: Rotisserie was in town! After taking a zero at Hikertown and feeling better the next day, she hiked an incredibly impressive 27 miles yesterday through one of the hottest, roughest stretches of trail and finished out another 13 miles today to make it to Tehachapi to meet up with us. It was the most badass thing I had ever seen.

Rotisserie crashed with Sansei and Focus and all of us plus Papa Bear spent the rest of the evening doing our resupply, ordering giant pizzas for dinner, watching movies in the hotel room, and sitting in the hot tub drinking rum and sprite.