Day 127

(Night and) Day 127 (pct 17): 32 miles

I left hikertown around 7:45pm to walk this extremely exposed section at night. While doing it, I was glad I did. There would’ve been no shelter available at all from the sun. I pounded most of the 4 loko in the beginning and had a nice buzz going on. I was hiking really fast (nearly 5 mph the first hour or so) and just straight up vibing. Maybe I should just drunk hike all the time.

Around 11 I ran into the Roxanne gang who were bringing a whole new energy I wasn’t used to, and part of that energy was listening to the same song 80 times in a row, literally. They also had a fellow buckeye in the group and we relived some great OSU football from the Braxton Miller Hail Mary to the Kenny Guiton show to the Curtis Samuel double OT touchdown to coming back down 17 on penn state. I ended up hiking with them for a while then got ahead and around 1am I laid down for a nap. I didn’t want to get all my stuff out so I just laid on the ground and used a new roll of toilet paper as my pillow #hikertrash This lasted about an hour then it got really windy and woke me up and there were a lot of bugs crawling on me. I hiked a few more miles to the water source after 17 miles and met up with the Roxanne gang again. We then dragged each other to a campsite with some water 6-7 miles away and got there around 6:30am. This morning I found out they were all on a nice trip so that’s why they were a little extra.

It was then time to devour some food cause I was so hungry it was hurting. And to catch up on some sleep. I just laid on the ground near the others and passed out for like 2 hours. Then the sun got on us and it got hot so it was a search to find some shade to hide in during the day. It’s never good to wake up sweating. I found a spot that was nicely shaded but really slanted and surrounded by ants. So I didn’t sleep much more and mostly spent the day brushing ants off me while trying to not slide down the hill.

It felt good to have 23 miles done by 7am (if I can just consistently have 23 miles done by 7am the CYTC will be a piece of cake) but it felt really bad being up for 26 hours straight. (Continued in comments) After getting about 3 hours of sleep total and being bit by ants all day I got moving again around 4pm and covered a few more miles for the day. I could’ve went farther to be right by the road for a hitch in the morning but I want to try to get back on my sleep schedule of getting up around 4, especially for the Sierra.

May is mental health awareness month. Please consider donating to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention at the link in my bio!

Song of the day: so close-NOTD