Date: 2018-10-07
From: Los Angeles International Airport

To: Kathmandu
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: scattered clouds

¢Stalkers!¢ ---The Princesses, Reuben Scout, Connie, Ranger Duck, Rolling Thunder and the Mysterious Five, go to the Himalayas.The email accusation was raw. ¢Stalkers!¢ The nasty barb was directed at us. At us? What had we done? Why had our trek unleashed an internet troll?People. In 2007, on the eve of our first thru-hike, Frodo knew what to expect. The trek highlight would be the spectacular scenery of the Pacific Crest Trail. The views and natural glory. Five months later, when we finished, she¢d be the first to admit she¢d been wrong. The trek highlight was the people. Period. By far. No comparison.    Our PCT hike is already eleven years ago. I am 66 years old. My brain acts like my aging Apple laptop. The hard drive is so full the gigabtyes slop over the side and the memory acts glitchy. Our PCT trek was five months long. But I can tell you a story for each and every single day. Multiple stories for every day. So often, the reason is the people. People. We haven¢t even started our Himalaya trek and someone has made me cry. Not the ¢Stalker,¢ but a woman named Connie. I don¢t know her last name. I don¢t have an email address. I had posted my first trail journal entry just hours before. You know me, how much I put into this journal, what it means to me. I¢ve written on prior treks that, ¢It¢s as important to me as my feet.¢ When I put up the first Himalaya entry, I hadn¢t told anyone and it felt like I was writing into a vacuum. Then an email came:¢Trail Journal Guest Book Entry.¢ Someone had read my first entry. Someone cared enough to write in the Guest book. I held Frodo¢s hand and we read the first entry together: ¢YAYYYYYY! Another Scout journal!!!¢  Thanks so much, Connie. The Princesses, Rueben Scout and Ranger Duck: Picture a father and mother reading bedtime stories to three delightful little girls. Then switch from The Little Engine that Could to our Trail Journal. On my CDT hike, the princesses were in kindergarten, 2nd and 4th grades. I¢d do ¢Princess alerts¢ in my journal to their parents¢don¢t read this. Such as when I talked about farting, or a girl who got a mosquito bite on her vulva. Oops, Princess alert! But today the oldest is 8th grade and the littlest, Jessica, has a big dictionary vocabulary and she dishes out four-syllable words like popcorn. Ranger Duck: The Princesses can¢t come along, so they sent Ranger Duck. He¢s a yellow bathtub duck in an official Park Service hat. He¢s afraid of heights. Reuben Scout: SunWalker was a 20-something 2007 PCT hiker who we got to know well. Well enough that when he announced he was getting married in New Zealand, Frodo immediately announced, ¢We¢re going.¢ We did and watched him get married in his tux wearing his hiking shoes. Now he has a seven-year-old, Reuben. Like the princesses, every night SunWalker read my AT journal to him every night. He started calling himself, "Reuben Scout." They just sent me the latest photos of Reuben. I am printing it out and Reuben will come with us too. Rolling Thunder: ¢Stalkers!¢ The accent is Kiwi. I can hear the voice from the email. We know this troll. Why is Rolling Thunder calling us out? Because in all the randomness of the universe, our good friend flies into Kathmandu two days after us. Wait a minute, doesn¢t that make him the stalker? We have exchanged itineraries and on the opposite side of the world, at a place that is 12 hours and 45 minutes ahead of Pacific time, Scout, Frodo and Rolling Thunder will try to meet up. Who will our ¢people¢ be this time? Our trekking group total is seven. Who are the mysterious other five? Soon we will know.¢¦All my bags are packed and I¢m ready to go. Frodo and I fly in a few hours. Scout