Friday, May 25, 2018

Finally about to start the PCT!

Getting here has been turbulent. My flight was delayed five hours coming into San Francisco, where I was staying in an iffy neighbourhood. I forgot one of my two pairs of socks in the hostel. A man started catcalling me near the bus station in Sacramento, and I heard his footsteps behind me as I walked away. I crossed the street and readied my pepper spray, but he didn’t follow, so when the sidewalk ended on my side of the street I crossed back and kept my distance. At a red light, he stopped walking and started to expose himself, then pulled his pants back up when a car honked at him. Did I mention that this was broad daylight along a major road? He then entered a McDonalds parking lot to join some friends, one of whom catcalled me when I left the motel to buy food at the gas station. Idiots stick together. Needless to say, I just sat in my motel for the rest of the day. No train museum (sob) and my bus to Redding was two hours late.

Anyway, despite most of my time in San Francisco being spent on resupply boxes, I did have time to visit Alcatraz. Overgrown with flowers, the ruins looked like an image from a storybook.

Hundreds of birds were nesting on the island.

I met a friendly woman on the bus to Redding (she assured me that the train museum isn’t that great, though that seems impossible) and everyone in Burney has been friendly as well, though they ask where I walked from and then seem disappointed when I say I took the bus in. I’m staying in a motel and a guy said ‘I didn’t think hikers like you would stay in motels’. I’m sorry… for not being hardcore enough… I apologize.