Wilderness Backpacking Trails

This is one of my Trail Tales.  Here is entry 1.

When the two Daves picked me up early the next morning, I immediately noted what Zwiebel defined as light packing.  Besides a sleeping bag and backpack, two necessities brought by each of us, Zwiebel additionally had loaded into the Beetle an extra suitcase, two full grocery bags of food, a two-burner Coleman stove, and Coleman fuel.  Amazingly, we were able to squeeze a good amount of the stuff into the trunk of the Beetle (recall that these cars have their trunks in the front and engines in the rear).  The food bags were kept on the back seat and the sleeping bags were unraveled to fill in the available space from about the chest down.

The roomiest seat was the driver’s and I angled to drive as much as possible.  Along the way I managed several firsts.  I got my first speeding ticket in Pennsylvania; I drafted my first trucks through Virginia; and I managed my first dent.  Actually, none of us were aware when the dent happened, though we suspected it was at a gas station in Tennessee during my turn at driving.

Technically, I drove the car illegally.  Since only the two Daves had picked up the vehicle only their names were on the official contract.  This presented an annoying problem when we reached the border of New Mexico.  We checked into a border station (state border, not country) whose attendants insisted upon examining our transport vehicle and papers.  These folks could count up to three and, having done that, informed us that one person, namely me, could no longer ride in the car.

The wise thing to do at that point would have been for me to simply walk out of sight across the border and then be picked up, but such wisdom would have been out of character with the overall folly of our mission.  Instead, I hitchhiked while the two Daves kept an eye on me from the car.

My first and only ride was with a laborer who migrated between jobs at oil fields in Texas and California.  His beat-up Mustang, with faded red paint blending in with extensive rust, rattled under the hood.  Only a few miles down the road he stopped to check out the noises.  The two Daves pulled over about fifty feet behind us.  Through the windshield I could see the laborer make a questioning glance at my comrades behind me.

We proceeded down the road a few more miles before the rattle became much worse.  We pulled over and this time both of us got out to look under the hood.  Once again the Beetle pulled over fifty feet behind us.  Both Daves waved at me and I instinctively waved back.  A concerned look came over the laborer as he looked back and forth between the two men in the Beetle and myself.

“Who are those guys?” he nervously asked.

“They’re my friends,” I honestly replied.

The laborer suddenly became much less interested in his car than in the open desert landscape surrounding us, undoubtedly noting the difficulty of any escape route through the tumbleweeds.  I did some fast talking to explain why a total stranger hitching a ride with him should have friends tailing behind.  If my explanation did not satisfy him, he at least figured he had no other choice and went along with my request to be dropped off at the next road junction.

As soon as we entered Phoenix we hunted down a small repair shop to hammer out the small dent.  We were charged something like fifteen bucks.  We then delivered the car to a nursing student who had flown out for school.  Zwiebel was the kind of guy who could start up a conversation and make friends with anyone, which is precisely what he did with nursing student.  Before long she divulged her life’s story and problems to him.  She then brought us all to a very nice park south of the Phoenix area, I suspect with the intention of enticing Zwiebel to stay behind.

While Zwiebel was making nice with our host Savitt and I tried to locate a transport car going from Phoenix to Seattle.  No luck.   The great northwest appeared to be the only region in the country back then to which everyone preferred driving their own cars there themselves.  Our host dropped us off on an entrance ramp to Interstate 10; we now would be making our way to Seattle via Los Angeles and our outstretched thumbs.

Technorati Tags: Pacific Crest Trail, Trail Tales

Tags: Pacific Crest Trail, Trail Tales