Day 1-PCT Kickoff

We spent the day at the PCT kickoff event with all the other PCT hikers, trail angels, and some of the PCT celebrities getting the inside tips on how to make it to Canada. After checking out everyone's beard size (the standard measurement for how good you are at living in the mountains), we realized all of us were scrubs compared to these Gurus. We met people like "Yogi", "Jester", "Major Upchuck", and "Posse." Hikers go by their trail names, new names given to you by the trail for your journey/pilgrimage (sound like anything familiar?). All the names have a story behind them, and it is fascinating hearing all these tales as we prepare for our pilgrimage. I can't express the amount of love, sacrifice, selflessness, and service that was felt in this large of a community. We didn't pay for food for three days. Trail Angels had been preparing meals for all the through hikers for this event, everyone was open, kind, and loving-offering food and copius amounts of weed and alcohol for free, although we don't drink or smoke, the love in the gesture was felt.

We got antsy at the Kickoff and decided to start our hike, so we got "Bayou Bandit" and Richie (two trail angels) to give us a ride to the border so we could start our hike. The wall at the border to mexico felt dark. We passed tons of border patrol cars and a helicopter on our way to the Wall. We even got stopped and questioned by border patrol for a few minutes after a few miles into our hike. We didn't start till late, so we only hiked 9 miles, then set up camp. On the hike we saw a peregrine falcon being eaten by a larger bird (we have no idea how it caught it), and took it as an omen. It turns out the PCT has a %70 attrition rate, and young single males is the highest dropout demographic. They push themselves too far, and too fast, out the gate, and usually have to go home due to injury. So we decided lest we end up like the peregrine falcon, we'll take the first couple weeks slow. Other than that, the first night felt like a night camping with the boys, the magnitude of the journey still hasn't sunk in.

(I don't know how the pictures work from my phone, but those are the stoves we made out of coke cans,and that is a tree that has red bark, which is symbolic. We felt Dave's presence while checking it out)