Waking up on zero days is the best – you’re kind of leery about sleeping in, but then you realize where you are and that you’ve got time and it’s like 8am before you shoo yourself onto the internet to start working. And even later when you actually get up, since everyone’s decided to take a zero and we’re staying in the hotel again, if they’ll have us. Yoda goes down to negotiate for another night, comes back successful. This is the life.

But it’s not all sunshine and laying about – I have a lot to do today, and I get it done: blog posts, Backpacker posts, postcards for donors to my Big City Mountaineers fundraiser. I’m in and out of outfitters in between being in and out of cafes, getting trail caffeine in the form of shot bloks on lock in between getting town caffeine in the form of more than three cups of coffee, only one of them decaf. Trying to sleep tonight should be fun.

I walk myself to the Save and Final, where I run into a bunch of other hikers; I buy tortillas and cheese and salami and way too much bulk candy in an effort to make sure I’m getting enough calories this leg. Afterwards, I head over to the Safeway to supplement. I think about hitching back to the hotel, but I’m halfway back before I realize that would’ve been smart. At least I’m getting my exercise today.

I do some math and attempt some packing before I realize two things: A, I have enough calories per day without 75% of my snack foods, and B, said snack foods won’t fit in my damn bear can. Yoda lets me use her priority mail box, and I put all my extra snacks in there, head down to the swanky Creekside Inn to see if, since they let Yoda use their computer for a bit, they won’t print a shipping label for me. It’s less painful on both sides than I think we each thought, and I walk out with a shipping label for Mammoth Lakes. The front desk at our very own Townhouse Motel agrees to send it with the mailman tomorrow – I hope it arrives in Mammoth alright.

Yoda and I spend a fair amount of the rest of the evening on the shared porch, trying to write more and get videos properly embedded and and and. We watch it try to rain, try to cool us off, but the rain never reaches us, staying in the hills to our east. Outro comes in later, and floats us this amazing breakup letter she wrote the desert section. It’s excellent, and I tell her so, wanting, not for the first time, to get to know her better.

The dark and my dying phone and the alluring bed lead me inside, where I start the season finale of Game of Thrones. I’m barely halfway through before I can’t keep my eyes open anymore, despite all the coffee earlier, and I succumb to the inexorable force of sleep.

Start: 788.9 • End: 788.9 • Day: 0
Notable Accomplishments: Got everything I needed to get done for work done • Did Resupply • Got some stuff for me done too