Oil Wrestling and Bear Cannisters

Friday, May 29, 2009

Dear friends and family,
We are now in Tehachapi which is about 20 miles west of Mojave, as in the Mojave Desert. Yesterday we arrived at the road in the middle of the day, HOT, and Alfredo stood on one side of the road and I on the other and we decided we could go either way depending on which car picked us up first. Tehachapi bound won. And good thing to. Actually we were hoping for Mojave because it is easier to walk to everything we really didnt want to stand in that heat any longer than necessary.Anyway we had an interesting time since my last email. We ended up staying 3 days in Green Valley. We met Gerardo and his wonderful family and they had us over for lunch. Gerardo is and experienced mountaineer, runs on the trail every day with his wife, and resupplies the water cache twice a day for the hikers. He is also letting us borrow one of his bear canisters, great, we will be legal now and wont have to worry about losing our food in the middle of the night. Later that evening which was Memorial Day weekend sunday more hikers showed up at the Andersons. We had planned to hit the trail again but somehow we got sucked into staying. It was to be the first Oil Wrestling of the year at the Andersons. Terrie is the infamous oil wrestling mamma. Now she needed participants and somehow Alfredo and myself volenteered. It was a once in a life time experience, GREAT FUN!!!!!! Back on the trail was alot of uphill, dry, hot and waterless. I was pretty tired and Afredo started to get some serious blisters. After 40 miles covered in two days we passed the Tejon Ranch and dropped down to the Hwy 138 where Mr. Richard Scaggs opened his house to all the hikers. He opened up his kitchen to me and Alfredo and we made pasta for about 20 hikers. The next morning Richard made pancakes for any late risers. Now we are really in the miserable hot desert and most people left at 4am. We slept in and enjoyed Richards hospitality but payed for it later in the unrelenting heat along the worst stretch of dirt road with NO WATER AND NO SHADE!!!!! Took a break at the only tiny bridge, shade, at 330pm and began walking at 6pm. We walked til dark and cowboy camped on the trail. It was about 18 more miles to the road up the steep Tehchapi mts. with again little shade and water. We arrived under the enormous windgenerator windmills at 1230 to find that someone had set up a shower right on the trail. So we stripped down and washed the worst desert sand we encountered off. How refreshing!!!So as we were sitting at the Albertsons grocery eating large quantities of food and ice cream and couple comes up to us and asks if we would like to stay at their home for the night and take a hot shower. SURE, you bet! So that was Patti and Mike our new trail angels. And again they took such good care of us my mom couldnt have done better. No offence mom.That is all for now.
Much love Alicia and Alfredo