Day 106: Fignon vs Lemond
July 25, 2017
Mile 1498.70 Mt. Shasta, CA to Mile 1501.94 Campsite
Towns have a way of being a total time suck. We took a while to drag ourselves out of bed this morning since the bed was so ridiculously comfortable. It wasn’t until 11:00 or so that we finally made it to town. We first spent half an hour at the post office receiving and shipping packages and post cards. After that we got lunch at a vegan place and had actually really delicious burgers. I am a meat lover and as such I was very impressed.
This town is again, quite weird as a lot of these places are. It’s a total hippy town. Every stereotype you have about hippies is mostly correct. Although it’s worth noting that when you get to know someone, the stereotypes fall away and people all become so similar to ourselves. But, yes, this place is full of eastern religion yoga-loving, pacifist, ultra-liberal, vegan, activist, never moved on from the 60’s hippies. It was weird, yet wonderful. I’ve always said that I feel weirdly comfortable when I go to hardcore/metal/punk shows with people with gauged ears, tattoos, black shirts, and skinny jeans even though I look nothing like them or even live like them. In some ways, they are a reflection of what’s behind my appearance and they same can be said for these high as a kite hippies, although probably to a much lesser extent.
After lunch we went to the store and resupplied. As I was packing my food into my bag, this guy cane up and started talking to me and as I pulled out my gummies he said (use a surfer bum voice), “Hey man can you spare a gummy? I fucking love these things, dude.” Finally, someone who understands me.
The real time suck came when we went to the coffee shop to use their wifi. Having to post blogs and catch up on, well, everything takes an appalling amount of time. So once again I came away from town stressed. We really were wanting to get at least 10 miles in, but since by the time we got a hitch to the trail it was 5:30, we only were able to hike like three miles before calling it quits. We did determine, though, that it really doesn’t matter what time we left today. We both have our new credit/debit cards in Etna since ours had both been compromised and had to be cancelled recently (I may have failed to mention that detail in previous posts). And since we are likely going to get into Etna at the earliest late Saturday and definitely on Sunday, neither of which has USPS hours, we have to wait to leave until Monday. So we’re in no rush. Well, we are in a rush. We’re basically Greg Lemond racing Laurent Fignon against the clock in the final stage of the Tour (if you don’t get the reference, then just Google “Lemond Fignon Tour de France TT”). But basically we’re trying to beat the clock to Canada and then on to Whitney and stopovers like this aren’t helping. Oh well, it’s the hand we’re dealt. We’ve been pretty good at dealing with adversity so far (me almost dying comes to mind) so we’ll figure it out.
