Upon awaking this morning and walking through the house to the kitchen I discovered I wasn't the only human in the household with a foot problem! Eric awoke in the middle of the night with an attack of gout. Ouch!
He knew what he needed to do so I drove him to the doctor for an early morning appointment. He spent the rest of the day working from home and stayed totally focused and got what I thought was an amazing amount of work done for someone in pain and on meds for the pain.
Happy called today to let me know that she and Phantom and Bad Moon and Whoop Ass were at Sierra City and heading to Belden by end of week. Feeling like I can return to the trail by end of week, I spent some time looking at logistics getting back to the trail. Unfortunately there aren't a lot of good options for public transportation to the trail in Northern California. I ran a couple of scenarios, and the bottom line is that if all goes well and I hike my butt off, I'm still looking at not finishing the trail until early November. And mother nature may not cooperate that long before significant snow events occur even down to Central California. So I looked at re-entry on the trail at Truckee which would put me behind Phantom's group and I also looked at Dunsmuir which would put me ahead of Phantom's group and in the middle of the pack. For now I'm leaning toward taking the 10 hour Amtrak from Portland to Dunsmuir to get back on trail.
Ladyface who got off trail a few weeks ago then traveled to the East coast got back to Portland a couple days ago. She and I were able to connect via e-mail so we decided to meet to spend some time together catching up on trail talk and post trail talk. So I drove to the park-n-ride in Beaverton and caught the light rail into the city in the late afternoon. We met at Powell's book store, a huge bookstore that is famous in the Portland area. From there we went to dinner at the Farm Cafe in E. Portland. The food and company were great and it was wonderful to be reconnecting with a fellow trail journeyer. From there we went to Tabor Park where Ladyface trained for her thru-hike. She and I hiked through the park, retracing her training circuit and got a gorgeous view of sunset over the mountains beyond Portland and a great view looking down to the city lights. We then went to her current home where she is staying with friends while looking to get her own place and met the family there. It was a fun evening and really nice to get trail connections back into my life as I get ready to go back to the trail.
Looks like I'll be heading back to the trail either Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday this week. Stay tuned!
