good riddance stoopid desert!

Mwahahaha. goodbye suckers. goodbye stinging sand. goodbye stoopid mojave. I never much liked you even though I kinda tried. ok you're beautiful in a barren wasteland with shredded tires and rattlesnakes and dirtbikes kind of way, but you're not really fit for human habitation. you're too frikking hot and windy and stoopid. my body is made of water and near water I'm meant to be. why did all the movie stars used to vacation in palm springs? it's one of the most fearsome gaddawful places I've ever experienced in my life. might as well buy a condo inside of a giant oven, or maybe in hell.

we made it through the section of trail that we have most dreaded since the very beginning, the walk along the LA aqueduct through the mojave. thankfully, we had relatively cool temperatures and wind, although the wind kept us from sweet sleep for most of a very rough night, and felt like walking against a wall for most of the next day. what a relief to be through with that. I was awed by how stoically Gerry pushed through this harsh section despite his aching lungs and cough. he just set his mind and barrelled on ahead. I could barely keep up.

bring on the Sierras! this farewell to the desert is premature, I know, as our next two water sources are still close to 20 miles apart, and we won't feel like we're really in the Sierras until close to Kennedy Meadows, still some 7 days and 130 miles away. but geographically, the Tehachapis are the lower hook of the Sierra Nevada. Everyone says: "but it doesn't feel like the Sierras!" but I'll take it. cool mountain air and lakes made of snowmelt sound like heaven.

We've started to run into the same people again and again. It's neat to have this relationship with other hikers. you get to know their shoeprints, their etchings in the sand, their trail register humor. Many have curious trail names: Yeti, the 101, Jester, Coyote, Bobcat, Monty, Spiff, Fembot, Weak Sauce, Slowride, High Octane, Shake n Bake, and Gallahad, to name a few. The great thing about these names is that they are often way more memorable than real life names, which seem to slip out of my brain as soon as I hear them. Gerry's been given many options for names but none has yet caught on. He could be Batman, batbum, batboy, or the bat. I think trail names come more easily to lone hikers than to couples, unless they resolve to name each other. We tried Batman and Michelle for a few days, but that doesn't sound quite right ...

love,
michelle