May 24-25, 2016

May 24

We had a lazy morning after a late arrival the night before and the house was empty except for the three of us and Emily, Ricket's girlfriend. She was waiting on a package to arrive so Rickets gave Loopy and I a driving tour of the town, picking up crepes on the way for breakfast.

The package still had not arrived at that point so Emily was stuck waiting for the afternoon as well. Loopy and I took the rental up to Oakland to have lunch with my aunt and uncle there. The visit was a brief one as my aunt had an evening shift at the Oakland ER to get to and Loopy and I were due back for dinner.

After shuffling some gear around I closed the trunk and turned to say goodbye to my uncle. As I released the trunk I realized the keys were sitting in the now-locked trunk. AAA showed up surprisingly quickly and we were on the road not too much later than planned and got back just in time for a home made fajita dinner. Delicious.

As dusk settled we took a walk around the ponds behind the neighborhood. We caught the sunset over the mountain range to the east and had a short stone skipping competition, the results of which were inconclusive. Then back for some Golden State Warriors action before calling it a night.

May 25

Captain Philip and Kat ("Montreal," collectively) had gotten in touch letting us know that they would be getting off trail for good after a harrowing encounter with a snow storm. They were staying in Sacremento with a friend of a friend of a friend, or something like that, and we set course to meet up with them for a last good bye.

But first, the beach! The four of us loaded and headed to the next town over to pick up Loopy's friend from school, Arian, who would be starting the PCT southbound mid-July. The five of us then headed over to Santa Clara. We couldn't stay too long but it was quite a nice refresher just sitting in the sand and sun. After a taco bar lunch we headed back to drop Emily and Rickets off as Emily had family events to attend to.

As luck would have it, we got a flat tire as we got on the highway to drop Arian off. As we strugled to deal with AAA again over the phone, a California Highway Patrol Services truck pulled up and explained that their job was to help out with situations like this for free. What a great state.

Back on the road with a donut on we dropped Arian off, said a quick hello to his family, and then headed back to pick Rickets up. Then to the airport to swap out cars - something you can apparently just do if something like that happens. And finally on to Sacremento, where we arrived a little after 10:30pm to find Montreal living it up in a nice house in the suburbs with a wonderful host. We hung out for an hour or so catching up on everything before succumbing to sleep.