Destination: Tuolumne Meadows
Starting Location: Tuolumne Meadows
Today’s Miles: 0.00
Trip Miles: 944.00
Tuolumne Meadows – Zero
Today was an emotional mix that is difficult to understand. I am so happy & yet I feel like I just want to cry with joy & sadness together; both real emotions in the same time & place.
My family came up today & brought chicken & macaroni salad for the entire thru-hiker contingent at Tuolumne. We ate & ate & ate some more. Then they broke out the apple pies that Sugar Daddy had ordered for the party along with the brownies. It was so generous & Pang told me what a wonderful family I have. That really hit me as true and all I could say was thank you. And that was enough.
Talked to my mom and with her consent I share here that she has an invasive form of breast cancer. She meets with the surgeon in two weeks and will likely be facing an aggressive treatment regimen. She confirmed that her wish was for me to keep hiking. I am basically refusing to get down about my mom being ill. Yes, I understand the process of denial to anger to acceptance & I am sure I will deal with that, but my mom is tough and she needs positive energy and not a bunch of oh poor you crap. She helped teach me the life lesson of: okay now what are you going to do about it. The “it” this time just happens to be some compromised cells. Let’s kick their ass.
While my dad, whose (per an email from Weed) trail name is go-Bob, took a group of hikers to Yosemite Valley to retrieve their stranded resupply boxes and supplement their food at the grocery, Sugar Daddy & I got organized. Pang, Sheri, Cathy & my mom played cards & it was so neat to see our trail friendships transcend into new relationships.
Liz sent me a print out of the guest register from this journal. Thank you all for the support. She also said she liked the idea of taking Sugar Daddy up on his offer for an adventure tour of Peru. Sounds like the Inca Trail may be coming next. Actually there is a new set of ruins that apparently surpass Machu-Picchu that are just being uncovered. No tours, no guides, just go, explore, and wonder about cultures who have gone before us. Learning Spanish (okay, maybe only a bit as I do not know English yet) has been on my life to do list for a while and Peru has schools near Sugar Daddy that per American standards are very inexpensive. So maybe.
Regarding a life to do list. This is something Liz & I started doing a few years ago & I would highly recommend the process. Each year we sit down together, make individual lists, compare the lists & look for overlap, and then decide what we are going to do. Typically something big has to make the list for multiple years before it gets acted on. But the process of seeing something on paper helps us recognize that it is important to us & keeps us moving towards execution. Other things on my list include sailing across an ocean & our joint list includes making a significant contribution to securing the PCT corridor for the future.
Hiking frees your mind of day to day stuff & opens up new possibilities for the future as well as reflections of the past. One reflection I have been having is about a relationship I was in many years ago and how it helped shape my life. I was 25 years very young and immature, drank to excess, & was generally a jerk. Despite that I was engaged to a really wonderful woman who got smart & dumped me cold. Left town & everything – never to be heard from again. The resentment, the anger, the self loathing ultimately became too much & I had finally had enough. First I quit drinking & then I started to grow up. Still at the growing up part but I am getting it. Seventeen years later, hiking the PCT I get a message that that really wonderful woman called & needs to talk to me. She too apparently has cancer. I called her today & left a message. Gone was the resentment & anger – replaced with concern & compassion. And yes with some apprehensive curiosity – I wonder why she needs to talk to me.
Had a bit of a hiking compatibility problem with a fellow hiker. Nothing serious at all but the group dynamics were not working. Instead of being perfectly direct, which would have been preferred but I could unfortunately not do it, I talked to the person’s hiking partner who sensed the dynamics problem & understood. We are leaving in the morning on good terms but we will go our separate ways. I am really torn as I really like the other guy & would really like to get to know him better. Maybe down the trail.
I am just feeling like I can’t do this. Not that I want to quit, just that I can’t do it I think the emotions are catching up to me. My mom is sick, an ex-fiancé needs to talk to me, I have so far to go. I need to sleep – tomorrow is a big day with a reported tough crossing.
Destination: Tuolumne Meadows
Starting Location: Tuolumne Meadows
Today’s Miles: 0.00
Trip Miles: 944.00
Tuolumne Meadows – Zero
Today was an emotional mix that is difficult to understand. I am so happy & yet I feel like I just want to cry with joy & sadness together; both real emotions in the same time & place.
My family came up today & brought chicken & macaroni salad for the entire thru-hiker contingent at Tuolumne. We ate & ate & ate some more. Then they broke out the apple pies that Sugar Daddy had ordered for the party along with the brownies. It was so generous & Pang told me what a wonderful family I have. That really hit me as true and all I could say was thank you. And that was enough.
Talked to my mom and with her consent I share here that she has an invasive form of breast cancer. She meets with the surgeon in two weeks and will likely be facing an aggressive treatment regimen. She confirmed that her wish was for me to keep hiking. I am basically refusing to get down about my mom being ill. Yes, I understand the process of denial to anger to acceptance & I am sure I will deal with that, but my mom is tough and she needs positive energy and not a bunch of oh poor you crap. She helped teach me the life lesson of: okay now what are you going to do about it. The “it” this time just happens to be some compromised cells. Let’s kick their ass.
While my dad, whose (per an email from Weed) trail name is go-Bob, took a group of hikers to Yosemite Valley to retrieve their stranded resupply boxes and supplement their food at the grocery, Sugar Daddy & I got organized. Pang, Sheri, Cathy & my mom played cards & it was so neat to see our trail friendships transcend into new relationships.
Liz sent me a print out of the guest register from this journal. Thank you all for the support. She also said she liked the idea of taking Sugar Daddy up on his offer for an adventure tour of Peru. Sounds like the Inca Trail may be coming next. Actually there is a new set of ruins that apparently surpass Machu-Picchu that are just being uncovered. No tours, no guides, just go, explore, and wonder about cultures who have gone before us. Learning Spanish (okay, maybe only a bit as I do not know English yet) has been on my life to do list for a while and Peru has schools near Sugar Daddy that per American standards are very inexpensive. So maybe.
Regarding a life to do list. This is something Liz & I started doing a few years ago & I would highly recommend the process. Each year we sit down together, make individual lists, compare the lists & look for overlap, and then decide what we are going to do. Typically something big has to make the list for multiple years before it gets acted on. But the process of seeing something on paper helps us recognize that it is important to us & keeps us moving towards execution. Other things on my list include sailing across an ocean & our joint list includes making a significant contribution to securing the PCT corridor for the future.
Hiking frees your mind of day to day stuff & opens up new possibilities for the future as well as reflections of the past. One reflection I have been having is about a relationship I was in many years ago and how it helped shape my life. I was 25 years very young and immature, drank to excess, & was generally a jerk. Despite that I was engaged to a really wonderful woman who got smart & dumped me cold. Left town & everything – never to be heard from again. The resentment, the anger, the self loathing ultimately became too much & I had finally had enough. First I quit drinking & then I started to grow up. Still at the growing up part but I am getting it. Seventeen years later, hiking the PCT I get a message that that really wonderful woman called & needs to talk to me. She too apparently has cancer. I called her today & left a message. Gone was the resentment & anger – replaced with concern & compassion. And yes with some apprehensive curiosity – I wonder why she needs to talk to me.
Had a bit of a hiking compatibility problem with a fellow hiker. Nothing serious at all but the group dynamics were not working. Instead of being perfectly direct, which would have been preferred but I could unfortunately not do it, I talked to the person’s hiking partner who sensed the dynamics problem & understood. We are leaving in the morning on good terms but we will go our separate ways. I am really torn as I really like the other guy & would really like to get to know him better. Maybe down the trail.
I am just feeling like I can’t do this. Not that I want to quit, just that I can’t do it I think the emotions are catching up to me. My mom is sick, an ex-fiancé needs to talk to me, I have so far to go. I need to sleep – tomorrow is a big day with a reported tough crossing.
Robert Francisco 
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