Cheating

May 29th 2016
Day 5:
          Today we woke up at about 8 and packed all our stuff up.  We went to the local coffee shop to charge our phones and figure out where to go from there.  Camping over the mountain was now out of reach due to the temperatures at night. I would have never guessed it would get this cold at night.  Finally, we remembered Moses told us how there was a way to get to the top of Mt. San Jacinto without having to hike it directly hike it.  There was a place in palm springs called the tram that took you up to the top.

We decided this would be the best option for us, so we could still see the top.  Now the issue was transportation out of this town. Uber wasn't available, which is crazy because I thought Uber reached everywhere!? So, I got onto the internet and began looking up other transportation systems. There were no bus stations, no train access and now no Uber. Finally, another app popped up called Lyft. A nice driver arrived to pick us up and took us into the town of palm springs about another 30 miles away.  We rode a bus up to where you can get tickets for the tram and took it to the top. The elevation increase was insane! At the foot of the mountain it was 85 and at the top it was 65! Once we go to the top, we did a few hiking trails totaling about 10 miles. There were so many tourists, which was kind of annoying because I wanted to see some folks that you could tell were hikers, so I could ask them some questions for my study.  I did end up running into two hikers, a mountain runner and a cyclist.  I asked them whether uphill or downhill seemed to be more difficult and which caused more soreness.  They both agreed that downhill was intensely more difficult. The mountain runner also told me that when running on flat ground, his legs got fatigued much quicker due to the longer strides.  He was trained to take short choppy strides up the mountains. They later informed me that they were hiking 36 miles in one day! They were superhumans! Still without a place to sleep, Lex and I were debating on what we were going to do and then the unimaginable happened.  We were talking to this friendly girl named Layla about where we could reach the nearest train station.  She informed us that she were traveling to this place called Oceanside this evening and we could ride with her! She just first had to talk with her dad before officially agreeing to take us. She introduced her father to us and he asked to see our ID's, as any other concerned father would do.  Once he saw that we were just two friendly hikers he agreed to give us a lift.  Their family even took us back to their house and let us drink a coke.  After Layla got her stuff together, we rode with her down into Oceanside and I contacted another airbnb homestay to stay in for the night, which is currently where we are. I can't believe how things have worked out, but I'm pretty impressed with my navigation skills under pressure. These past 5 days have been a perfectly chaotic whirlwind.  Tomorrow we will try to figure out the Amtrak and make it back to Anaheim to stay with my friend Natalie for a few days before I start my shadowing with Dr. Julie Guthrie and move in with the homestay family. Although we didn't get to stay on the trail for as long as I would have liked, I have learned so much just from what we did do, especially how to tackle difficult obstacles under pressure.
-Realizing how much harder it is to get around when not on the trail.
Grimmzlybear