Day 96: On the Road

July 9; Mile 1229-1234

When I woke up I felt like my feet were covered in ants. I pulled off my socks and saw several red, angry welts around my ankles, the sides of my feet, even on the soles. They were itching like crazy. Suddenly I remembered the cloud of flies at lunch the day before. I’d taken off my shoes and socks to let my feet cool off, and apparently they had been biting flies.

Walking was agony. I only had five miles to reach the road, but every step rubbed against the bites.

I had arranged a ride with Dov’s aunt Brenda to bypass a section of trail that had burned to ash in the 2021 Dixie fire. And then she messaged me the night before to let me know that she had come down with the flu. Thankfully she had found a friend able to give me a ride – on the back of his motorcycle.

I’d never ridden on one before, but my options were pretty limited: it was either that, try to hitch on a road with no traffic, expose myself to the flu right when I was trying to hike fast to make my friend’s wedding, or starve.

The first half-hour was terrifying: winding mountain roads through a burn area, the asphalt whizzing past beneath my feet, and the occasional side wind buffeting the bike. But after a while I started to have fun.

We stopped in Quincy so I could buy my food resupply, and then we headed north through the heart of the burn scar. We passed towns where the buildings had been reduced to charred skeletons, and everything was coated in gray dust. Howard pulled over in one of the towns and pointed out what had once been. It was a stark landscape, and the air was hot as an oven. We sped away toward Chester and Lake Almanor, drawing ever closer to Lassen Peak and the halfway point of the PCT.