Hello from Sierra "City"

Someone asked me if I had a relaxing time in South Lake Tahoe. My answer was an unequivocal "no". Town stops are hectic as anything. Find lodging. Find food. Find a computer. Find a supermarket. Find a post office. Eat. Shop. Resupply. E-mail. Call. Blog. Sleep. Before you know it, the day is gone and half the things you wanted to do weren't done. Don't get me wrong. Town stops are great. My favorite part of town is getting to talk to Caroline. But it's not relaxing. The trail, on the other hand, is relaxing. You've got all the time in the world to relax. I was wearing a short sleeve shirt as I was relaxing on my hike out of South Lake Tahoe. (Now, that's a segue, Margaret!) I forgot that my long sleeves keep them from getting sunburned. Although the new sunburn was quite painful, luckily I was distracted from it by the swarms of mosquitoes that were attacking my arms. So I decided to make a game out of it. A successful mosquito bite and they scored a point. A dead mosquito and I scored a point. End of the day score: Mosquitoes -- a lot. Roger -- a lot more. Somehow I think I still came out the loser. I wore the short sleeve shirt because my long sleeve shirt didn't have "Roger Dodger" written on the back. That being said, I think I'm going to have to relegate the shirt to town stops for now. But it will make it's hiking reappearance to celebrate when I cross the Canadian border. The day coming into Sierra City was a peculiar one. I passed a couple of sixty-something day hikers on the way up a hill. Most of the time when I pass some hikers we engage in an awkward twelve second conversation. "Hi." "Hello, how are you?" "Fine, and yourself?" "Excellent. Have a nice hike." "You, too." And this conversation was no different. About a mile later I climbed up the hill off the trail a little ways to get out of the sun. The two guys I passed were a bit smarter than me. They climbed a little higher to the ridge top. They were rewarded with broader views, and although I didn't ask, surely less of the vicious black flies that were circling me (if you think mosquito bites are bad, you should try sitting in a swarm of these killers). Anyway, I got fed up being fly bait, and resumed my hike just after the guys above me. When I passed them a second time, I prepped for my next twelve second conversation. One of them was looking through binoculars, so I found my opening. "See any good birds, today?" Somehow twelve seconds turned into forty minutes which entailed exchanging contact information, and ended with a promise to keep in touch and visit next time Caroline and I were in the area, which will be when she joins me for the finale of my hike in Washington. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Somewhere in those forty minutes we discovered that the two guys were Caroline's uncles, who she hadn't seen in almost 25 years. And if that weren't coincidence enough, I also met Margaret and Jon's uncles on the same ridge. This got me to thinking, how many other long lost relatives have I passed on the trail without giving them a second thought. From now on, I think my new twelve second conversations will go something like this: "Hi." "Hello, how are you." "Excellent. By the way, is there any chance that we are related?" My next mail stop, if you are interested will be about July 23rd Roger Wolff c/o General Delivery Ashland, OR 97520 -Roger Dodger