San Diego

We took a Greyhound from LA which took about 2.5 hours and set up at a much nicer hostel (Hostel on 3rd), had an amazing super-size burrito, nachos and beer which made us feel better. We found San Diego to be a much cleaner and nicer looking city. Finally sorted our gear at an REI store, met a couple of nice folks who were very interested in the PCT, one even gave us a ride back into town and took us to a home-cooked-style Mexican place for carnitas (amazingly cooked pork), which he paid for! Then he showed us some nice spots in his car, Juan was his name. Good Guy. 

Also a trail angel agreed to pick us up and take us to the trail after staying at his place! I think it was a regular thing for him, he said he 'invented' PCT trail drop offs in the 90s. So he picked us up from our hostel around 4 and also picked up another hiker, Bow, from the airport along the way. Now this guy was in the military, so he's got a view on the world. I think this came out when we mentioned deserts, and out of the blue he mentions how he wondered how people in Afghanistan even live with it being so dry, it was to his understanding a "blasted wasteland". I replied "maybe irrigation?" to which he mutters under his breath "I don't give them the credit to irrigate"... it went quiet for a bit and I changed the subject (a little aside; I think it actually was the Soviets who developed irrigation in Afghanistan for cotton production, I think it's the reason there's that massive lake in central Asia that's shrinking).

So we get to this guys place, and he has some mad dogs which he spanks. It was weird. As weird as it sounds. But yea his dogs were friendly. He put on the class of 2012 PCT DVD, raving the whole time about the production value (it was damn well done) and brought us some Reece's Pieces (m&ms that have sweet peanut butter stuff instead of chocolate, very nice) and pink lemonade. Watching the DVD from last year was good to mentally prepare, but it also felt overwhelming to see the whole thing condensed into a couple of hours. I even lost a little of my appetite. This guy Bow was from Olympia, Washington (the last State the PCT goes through), and his pack was light. Like really light. It was then that we both realised we needed to ditch a lot of stuff. My pack was about 20kg and Rebecca's was about 16.5kg, incl. food and water (we stocked about 5L of water each, which ended up being too much for the beginning). We ended up leaving a couple of kg of stuff with Bob. It was a nervous night, that feeling when there's nothing left to do except what you've been planning to do.