jumping up to oregon

We're in Reno right now ar Fish's house. He's a very decent "trail angel" who helps out PCT hikers a whole lot. He picked us up from the trail, an hour away, and let 7 of us stay at his house (me, Amtrak, Basil, Berta, Breeze, Potential 178 and Java), use the showers, do laundry, borrow his car and even showed us the best places to hang out in Reno. It will sure be hard to leave here!

Last night I had considerable luxury as I stayed at Dave and Kathy's in their RV parked at the side of their house. It has a new bed, excellent sheets, toilet, hot water, DVD player and TV. I could've stayed a very long time!!! Great to see Dave and Kathy and Bob and Chris too. Chris gave me a ride to Minden from Reno and Dave dropped me back today.

Chris is doing ever more excellent graphic design work and is now combining photography with it too. At the age of 19 he seems like a genius. I reckon he has more talent in his little finger than I have in my whole being. He is quite exceptional, I wonder where he will end up. He showed me a cover design he had done which looked like an album cover you would buy from a store, and an excellent one at that. Quite something.

Steve, from Cooper, was in Minden last night so we ate out with him too. A super nice guy and very good to catch up with him. Great fun, and food at Chilli's was excellent too.

Today, Amtrak and I are skipping ahead to Ashland in Oregon to skip this next part of northern california. It's pretty hot and treeless over the next section of California and I'm happy to leave it for another day, though skipping sections of trail doesn't completely suit me. Sadly I couldn't extend my Visa so I will now fly home around August 26th and hopefully return a few days later to get back and have a crack at hiking through Washington.

The trail gets even more remote from here north with fewer towns and stores so I am not sure when I will get email or phone service again.