Last night was rough. The wind really started to pick up around 2:00am and kept pushing in the sides of my tent, which kept me awake. I decided to take off the rain fly to reduce this effect. When I stepped out of my tents, i kicked a rock and pulled the entire nail on my baby toe away from the skin. Then I still had to pull of my rain fly before the wind blew my tent away. Woke up to calmer winds and hurried to eat and pack up. I remember having the feeling that I wasn't quite done with dealing with the wind. Sure enough, as soon as I started down the hill, the wind started howling. My guess was 25 mph winds gusting to 40ish mph. This made the first 8 miles feel like 10. The wind didn't put any of the people I saw into a good mood. After lunch (at mile 8 for the day), I decided I was done with the wind and picked up my pace considerably. The trail weaved through a massive wind farm and I now understand why they chose that location. As the trail approaches highway 58, it connects with a paved road for about a mile. ST and I arrive there around the same time and he informs me that the bus (which could take us to town) is going to arrive in 10ish minutes. The next pus would come 4 hours later. We decided to run the road and as we are maybe 200 yards out, the bus arrived. Early Bird and Riley slowly pack their things and board the bus, trying to stall for us. The bus driver didn't want to wait for us, but somehow EB and Riley convince him to wait. ST and I were very thankful. Tehachapi, the last major town before the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The bus dropped us off next to a Burger King and the Hotels. We have a reservation for 2 rooms at the Best Western Mountain Inn, which will be shared between 8-9 of us. I dropped my stuff off at the room and went to BK. I was starving. As I was eating, ST informed me that we had completed 16.7 miles in roughly 5 hours. That's a little over 3.3 mph. It's great to have an empty pack for the fact that traveling faster is much easier. The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing at the hotel. Once everyone arrived in town, we went to Pacino's, a pizza and pasta restaurant. They had all things Al Pacino inside. The corizone was massive and I could only eat half of it. The second half will be tomorrow's lunch.
