Mammoth Lakes

Just passed the 900 mile mark. For some reason, people seem to like numbers with lots of zeros at the end, and often arrange rocks, sticks, or pinecones to commemorate those milestones. To that effect, I got my geek on a ways back at mile 512 and made a 1,000,000,000 marker. And if I can remember, I will make the 10,000,000,000 marker at mile 1024. A couple of days ago I was composing this e-mail update in my head, and was going to tell you how absolutely lucky I have been on this trip so far. Pleasant weather in the desert, lots of trail angels, no feet problems, in fact no problems of any kind worth even mentioning. I'm not sure if I should have been thinking so loudly, because the very next day.....I lost my hat. Subsequently, I got sunburnt. I broke my hiking pole. When playing around with it, a scraped my leg up. Nothing major, but the first time I've drawn blood on the trip. When I got to camp, the mosquitoes were horrendous. After giving them way more blood that I lost to the hiking pole, I jumped into the tent and forewent dinner. I took out my journal, thought about the day, and all I could think was that I was walking through one of the most beautiful places on earth, how great of a time I had, and how lucky I was. Suck it, Karma. Perhaps I shouldn't have written so loudly. Two days later, I got caught in a storm for four hours. It rained. It snowed. And it hailed. The hail was big enough to hurt. The sky was all gray, I could hardly see a thing. Throughout those miles, all I could think was that Caroline was coming to Mammoth, and I was going to see her for the first time in six weeks. How lucky was I? Suck it again, Karma. It turns out that Caroline's plane malfunctioned, and had to make an emergency landing, accompanied by ambulances and fire trucks, just in case of an explosion. She missed her connecting flights, and had to stay in Pittsburgh for another day. But she is coming today. I hope. Be nice, Karma, I didn't mean any of that. I said I lost my hat. In fact, it was stolen. I went to sleep one night with it resting on a log, with my sunglasses on top of it. In the morning the glasses were a couple of feet away, but the hat was nowhere to be found. At first, I thought it might be a Sasquatch. That didn't make any sense, the hat would never fit him. Then, I figured it might be a bear. No, they don't actually exist. My leading contender is now a deer. They like the salt from my sweat, and I've seen lots of them in the woods recently. I liked that hat. My siblings-in-law gave it to me. It served me well for 850 miles. For the rest of the trip, I will just have to live with a hat that does not say "What should I have for dinner in town?" If it's any consolation, Margaret and Eric, the hat will be on the PCT for way longer than it would have otherwise. For those of you who haven't funded the most amazing cryptic crosswords project yet, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1747436254/cryptic-all-stars there is no better day to do it than today. Or tomorrow. Or any of the next 47 days. In fact, they are all pretty much equally good. For those of you that have helped to fund this, thank you so very much. Over a quarter of the way there. -Roger Dodger