Day 33 - tehachapi hills to tehachapi
April 29 | Miles 552 - 566
It was a good thing we set up our tents late last night, because we were visited by a giant thunderstorm in the wee hours of the morning. I woke to a few vivid lightning strikes, but couldn’t even bring myself to roll over before I would inevitably pass out again within a minute each time.
When dawn arrived and the rain subsided, it was go time. Town was in sight.
The trail snuck through a vast wind farm that must have been harnessing an insane amount of energy, because I was having trouble staying upright against the relentless gusts. It took all my energy, and an entire box of Samoas for breakfast, to get through the morning.
5 miles out, I hit my dad up again to see if he could get us a good deal on a hotel in town. It turns out he had a ridiculous number of unused points at the Holiday Inn, meaning we could get free rooms for the next two nights. Uber Eats once again came through in the clutch.
By noon the wind had blown me up, down, and around with great force and I was delivered to Highway 58. By a stroke of luck, some friends of ours that we hadn’t seen in a few weeks were picking a group of hikers up. We gladly piled into the van, 12 strong and smelling even stronger.
We loitered around town between the local bakery and McDonald’s before getting a sweet hitch (complete with a stop at Sonic) from Lisa, who made sure to put a towel down in her backseat before we jumped in. No offense taken.
At the hotel we did some clever furniture rearranging that may or may not have almost gotten us kicked out…
But it meant I got to have my own private shower and King bed so what the heck did I care.
That evening we hit up the local BBQ joint (I wasn’t about to complain about fried okra and buffalo cauliflower) and shot some hoops at the sports bar with our long-lost buddies before ending the night with a little Spongebob marathon and a heated debate over why women love the beach and guys hate it. Needless to say I didn’t see eye to eye with the dudes on that one.
