Notes in a Bottle - Friday, April 4

Our first "bottle" set adrift in the Postal Service ocean

Here is a demographic study question.  Do you remember the carton series on TV called "Rocky and Bullwinkle" staring Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle the Moose?  If you are over 50 it is probably a yes. Under, probably a no.  Anyway, they had this lead into a commercial where Rocky and Bullwinkle are fishing in a boat and a bottle floats by.  Rocky says, "Look Bullwinkle, a message in a bottle".  Bullwinkle replies, "Fan mails from some flounder?" and Rocky responds, "No, this is what I really call a message!" and then they break for a commercial.

Isn't it amazing what trivial junk our minds sometime latch onto?  Why doesn't my mind remember important things like combination locks, people's names or important dates.  Nope.  Gilligan's Island theme song, Doublemint gum commercials, etc.  You know what I mean.

Tuesday Sally and I boxed up our first food resupply box. We stuffed it with 8 days of food, snacks, extra suncream, baby wipes, a laundry soap pod, dryer sheets and more, wrapped it up in bright yellow paper and addressed it to ourselves at Mt. Laguna, CA.  All the while that Rocky and Bullwinkle routine was on a repeating loop in my mind.  We are sending "Fan mail to some flounder".  Us. 

Those 8 days of food will feed us while we hike the 64 miles from Mt. Laguna to Warner Springs.  We metered it out so we will have food if we hike 8 miles each day.  We would ideally like to hike about 12 miles each day which would only require 5 days of food, but this early in the trip we are playing it safe.  It is not a good idea to run out of food before you get to your next food drop. If the 12 miles/day works out it will lighten my load appreciably, both in food and water.

When we leave the Mexican border Tuesday morning I will be carrying 2 & 1/2 gallons of water and Sally will be carrying 1/2 a gallon (actually 12 liters altogether).  The next water is 20 miles away at the reservoir, Lake Morena.  At 8 miles per day we need 2 1/2 days of water.  The 3 gallons gives us a gallon each day-pretty skimpy-but doable.

We will pack another bottle to send out into the ocean Sunday with Sally's sister, Wendy, our queen of resupply.  This one goes to the Post Office in Warner Springs, at about mile 110 up the trail.  How many days of food she packs into that one waits to be seen as we see how we do on the first 100 miles of our hike.

T-minus 2 days and counting.