6/24/2023
Section: Milepost 558.5 to 558.5
Distance: 0.00 Miles
Moving Time: 0:00 hrs
Elevation Gain: 0 ft
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Going to keep this a little short and sweet because, due to some events that are in the story tomorrow, I have fallen a little behind on this blog and need to keep up. And, you know, it’s a zero day so just chores mostly.
Amanda and I woke up on a beautiful Saturday morning in Tehachapi. We had breakfast at the Best Western kitchen in the lobby with Sean before heading back up to our rooms to start the day. Sean stopped by shortly after to say goodbye as he was only Nero-ing. He had received a very large resupply box the day before from his wife and gave us half of it, including 4 freeze-dried meals and a bunch of snack bars. We tried to say no and that that was too much but he insisted he couldn’t carry that much and, since we hadn't resupplied, we agreed to take the excess off his hands. We also agreed to meet him in Kennedy Meadows where he was planning on leaving the trail to head up to Lassen and continue.
After that Amanda and I split. Amanda was headed back to the post office to try and get her cousin Rachel’s resupply box (round 2) and I headed over to a nearby coffee shop to sync my GoPro media on what I was hoping was going to be a more open connection than the hotel’s. As I entered the coffee shop, I noticed Push Pop (Markus) sitting at a table. He waved and motioned me over. We sat and chatted for a while before he eventually left and I got to work on updating my blog while the GoPro sync’d up. I write up my stories on the trail in Google Docs but often don’t have the service to upload them until I am in town so I had a bit of a backlog to work through. It was about 15 minutes of diligent work before I looked down at my coffee and realized it wasn’t decaf. I have been avoiding coffee all-together on the trail and, on town days, try to stick to decaf, but it seems they had gotten my order wrong. “We’ll,” i said to myself “this should help with the blogging.”
Two hours later Amanda dropped by. She had seen Jye and Vanessa and said goodbye to them. They were renting a car and heading up to the northern terminus. We decided to go to the German Style Bakery everyone in town was raving about and walked across the street. There I had a Cuban sandwich (super German) and Amanda had a turkey sandwich. We talked a bit about all the people heading off the trail and those staying on and about the rest of our day. After the meal, Amanda went back to the hotel and I went to get my beard trimmed up. The barber was on a quick lunch break so I waited for about 10 minutes before she showed up. She gave me a quick trim and told me all about her life before finishing up. I thanked her and paid before making my way back to the hotel.
Once back, Amand and I headed to Walmart just on the west side of Tehachapi. There we loaded up on the few things that Sean hadn’t already provided us with and then heading back. On our way back we ran into Kevin and Alex who we had been hopscotching with us over the last few weeks. They said a bunch of people were in town and some were just coming in that evening and that they were headed to one of the 4 breweries in town. We smiled and wished them luck before heading back to our room and organizing our things. After parsing out all of our meals I took a soak in the tub and then Amanda and I headed to the pizza place in town - TK Pizza.
On arriving at TK Pizza we found the Kiwi’s already finishing up but they stayed to talk with us once they saw us arrive. We shared lots of stories about travel as well as our own backpacking adventures in New Zealand and about the trail so far. At around 9 pm we all decided to head back as Amanda and I were trying to get a pretty early start the next morning. The kiwis were staying in Tehachapi for two days to rest up but we told them we hoped we would see them down trail.
Back at the hotel, Amanda and I took another soak in the hot tub, enjoying the warmth before packing back up to bed. This will probably be the last time in a while before we are in an accommodation like this again - likely Mammoth which is a good 3 weeks down the trail!
