How many burgers does it take to hurt your heel? (the week betweenWarner Springs and now)

We've been off the trail for at least a week now. Rebecca's heel, we think it was the Achilles tendon, turned out to be a little more serious than two days rest.

So we found ourselves stuck in Warner Springs, a town that seemed to have nothing but a school! Community centre and a Post Office. Oh there was a mighty fine casino ten miles out of town. But no buses have run through it for years, not since the golf course closed down back in 04 (ok so that golf course comment was just so you could read it in a southern American accent, it's probably not true). Jack ( retired volunteer) offered to take us ahead to rest in Idyllwild, but we hear it's well overpriced. Big Bear City is recommended as a more affordable recoup-spot, but there are no buses in or out of Idyllwild either! So we're sitting there worrying about getting to Big Bear, trying to figure buses back to LA to go on from there to Big Bear, even considering camping in Warner Springs and surviving off burgers and pancakes until the heel gets better. Then as if called Warner Springs Monty pops by and mentions offhandedly that he's going to Big Bear to barbecue for hikers! And before we can eat our fourth burger (we'd already eaten three each) he's driving us along with another hiker, Jodie, back to his with another hiker for dripping barbecue chicken burgers and a real bed! 

So we offer what help we can to Monty, helping clean his place and prepare/pack his car for the feeding of the hikers. The night we stayed he showed us the National Geographic documentary on the PCT, in which Monty himself started (he's walked it twice), and we topped it off with a bit of Groundhog Day. It took us maybe 3.5 hours to get to Big Bear, we'd planned about 8-9 days of hiking on the trail for the same distance. An amazing sunset accross the mountains, never have I seen land turn such a deep violet. Then we meet Sarge at Big Bear Hostel and bed down, reassured that everything would be sorted in the morning... Not before Rebecca insists we hobble out together in search of milkshakes, crutches and an injured foot would not discourage her. We joke about her injuring herself because she pushed herself so hard for the last 8 miles before Warner Springs, burgers caused the injury. Tasty, tasty burgers. We never did find milkshakes.