We had a plan worked out where the second and third people up would owe the first person up a beverage. Brad woke up first and was actually out of his bag, but we'd camped in the trees and it was early and cold so it didn't take much persuading to get him back to sleep. When we did get up around 09:00 we all lamented that if Joe Lane (our PCT hiker roommate who rode with me to Mammoth, CA from Reno) was here we'd have gotten up. He'd have made good coffee and be telling you how good those pancakes and hash browns were going to taste at breakfast. And if that failed he'd just take down the tent while you're still in it. He's been here in spirit, I keep saying Joe things like "nice".
We pulled into Adin and had nice breakfast that made me remember what touring is all about, food. We got groceries at the general store and met some of the locals, they were stoked on the bikes. They told us about an alternate route that was a lot less traveled and had better grading, two big cycling pluses.
The entire time we were on the side road we kept getting passed by semi-trucks full of pine chips (assumable from some logging operation). Every time they'd go by it would smell like either Pine Sol or gin depending on whom you asked. We decided to invent a gin drink and call it "getting passed pine tree truck at 60 mph while ridding a bicycle".
We camped off under a clump of the few remaining post-forest fire trees. The clouds that had been had been happy shade clouds at about 16:00 now were sad rain clouds but we didn't put up the tent. We got to do it at 21:00 when it started raining.
andrew
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