Legs and Borders

It took an entire day and night to get from Florence to San Francisco. I got quite quickly to Eugene from Florence by bus but then had to wait until 5:30pm for a connecting overnight train to San Francisco. I've spend few hours walking by the river, parks along the way and a brilliant, massive bookshop called Smith Family Bookstore which contained way more paper than Powell's Books in Portland and had some very obscure themed sections like: 'Health: Allergies, Astma, COPD', 'Labor Studies', 'Addiction and Recovery', 'Childrens Sleep' or 'Marriage'. Amtrak arrived on time and I took my seat upstairs next to an Australian girl called Nichole who was visiting her friend in Eugene and an American guy Frank who was going to see his family in Sacramento. We ended up chatting and looking for interesting details outside the window as the train was going inland. It even crossed the PCT at one point at Shelter Cove Resort where I was resupplying a ...

"I always wait for all my kids to come before I cross the road" Miss Frizzle. After a fairly good night sleep with three other hikers on a comfy carpet in tiny room at Maria's house, we woke up at 7:30am, and came down for breakfast. We ate sausages, refried beans, tacos and avocado. After  breakfast we left our bags in Maria's car and went down to town to resupply. As per usual I got too much food, Tank Top got new pair of shoes through the mail as his old ones started to fall apart after 700 miles of walking (that's his 3rd pair since he started hiking on AT). After about an hour we called Maria and she dropped us back at the trail. We started walking at 11am,  before setting off we met a trail famous Field Trip family, mother called Miss Frizzle and her four sons aged 16, 15, 14 and 12, they already through hiked Appalachian Trail last year and this year like us, they are trying to through hike PCT. It was amazing to see how organized and 'dialled in' t...

"Showers are for dirty people" Voodoo "Deflation of the mattress is the saddest sound in the universe" Tank Top After last night's party we have lost Mason to the hangover, he was unwilling to take any action in the morning so we left him by the inn and started walking about 6:45. Perhaps the problem was that he was only 19 years old so technically not allowed to drink, but who knows. Later on Tank Top got a text message from him saying that he is taking a ZERO day to recover. After around 14 miles, we had a long break at the Silverwood Lake State Recreation Area where we ordered a pizza and a drink, it took an hour and a half to deliver as the driver couldn't find the way in, the ranger who happened to be in the area helped him find direction over Tanks phone. I had a little dip in the lake here, but didn't go for a swim as the water was quite cold. An issue we've been facing today and will be tomorrow was the lack of water sources, after Silverwood...

Ask: Bist du Deutsch? Me: No I'm Polish, are you German? Ask: No, I'm from Seattle. "Rejoice that your phone is still here. Why not just turn it off?  Why not just keep it off? Instagram and Facebook will not care. The world of human busy-ness and strife has not noticed that you are AWOL The ribbon of trail takes away choice and replaces it with freedom to be still here". Excerpt from Still Here, poem by Mary "Trail Angel" We racked a lot of miles today, again. Tom set himself a carrot on a stick aka Paradise Valley Caffe which was fifteen miles from where we camped, so he pushed a killer tempo of three miles an hour to get there in time before they close - I wasn't feeling the best since morning, I think it was a mixture of calories deficiency, kind of crappy night and our walking tempo. We slowed down a little but still managed to get there by 1pm. As we walked, we stumbled upon a really interesting place called Little Free Library run by Mary "Tr...

Today is the day when my passport came back through the post with the american B2 visa stamped and approved to use. It is a crucial part of the plan I made to hike Pacific Crest Trail in May. Here is what happened so far. First part of the plan was to get a PCT permit, which turned out to be organised in a matter of waiting room system on the PCTA website. I had to queue up at certain time with thousands of others, and being assigned random number, wait my turn to be able to register and grab a remaining starting date slot for PCT. Unfortunately I missed the first application date in late October when first 50 applications per day were issued, and applied on 14th of January, when additional 15 slots per day were being issued. I didn't get particularly lucky at rng game and got pretty far away in the queue (number 6783, picture below), after waiting for about an hour I eventually managed to log in and book a date for a mid/late May, all things considered the outcome wasn't ...