Another zero, another nuerotic packing episode

June 23

I awoke in great company and great sprits the next day. Here I was on the shores of a large lake in the middle of the Sierra, being coached and supplied by Lily and her mom. Sun: Shining. Coffee: Delicious. Surroundings: Beautiful.
Mental state: Nervous confusion. I found myself staring at dozens and dozens of packaged food items strewn across two picnic tables, paralyzed by indecision and doubt. After nine days of living on a very enforced diet, with a specific number of calories allotted to me each day, I found myself unable to gauge how much food I would actually find useful over the next, much shorter, stretch.
The basic issue is this: It's hard to pack the correct amount of food when you are hungry, because you tend to pack too much. On the other hand, the pain and suffering of carrying a lot of food was still imprinted on my muscles and tendons like a brand, so I also wanted to walk out of VVR with John Muir's legendary resupply: A crust of bread hanging from his belt. The two competing desires do not so much balance each other as create a cacophonous din in which reason and free will are pretty well drowned out. And so it always a guess, a gamble; bet too short and you'll enter town a couple pounds leaner and crazed with hunger. Bet too long, and you'll come into town weighed down with pounds of ramen and peanut butter.
Meh, what the heck. I had another cup of coffee in the hot morning sun, gave up on reason, and just started to jam stuff into the bear canister. It was packing by rote memory: Three packets of grits and three packets of tea make a breakfast. Two packets of ramen make a dinner. Somewhere around a pound of Twizzlers make a lunch, although preferably not ingested all at once. So we'll add these Ritz crackers, the ProBars, these Corn Nuts, a soupcon of Snickers, maybe some Spam to keep my strength up, and just keep going until the backpack's weight approaches our current pain tolerance.
Finally, my task was complete: I had once again turned my sleek, ultralight kit into a portly, ungainly slob of a pack, and had zero idea of whether I had done a good job. We walked down to the restaurant and store, where the other hikers were collected. Zeke and He-Man were in a poor state: Last night they had taken to drinking bottles of wine as if they were longnecks of beer, they informed me. Their hangover was commesurate with the size of this mistake. Worse yet, their maildrop hadn't come through -- a pretty dramatic development, given the traditional California Gold Rush-style price gouging at the general store. I still had a bunch of food left over from my neurotic episode, so I let them graze on it, much to their delight.
After that, our little party of three decided to decamp to nearby Mono Hot Springs. There's a private resort and a public campground, a piped hot tub and several free, hippy-laden hot springs. We had lunch and I watched a couple PCT hikers trying to hitch out to skip ahead. They were having a tough time of it, which I relished. People wanted to know how, exactly, driving them all the way out to the western side of the Sierras was going to help them hike the PCT. It was all I could do to refrain from interjecting a "hear hear!" or "quite right!" Not sure why I judged them using the verbal forms of a Dickensian senior citizen. I know, I know, hike your own hike... but do make sure to hike on occasion. Or just go follow Widespread Panic in your dad's Ford Explorer or something.
Lily and Marcia went to explore the world of naked wilderness bathing, and I settled into a chair by the general store to blog within the tiny radius of their wifi. Soon I was joined by a teenager, using the same wifi to snapchat his friends. Then another couple arrived, then another six, until I looked like a middle-aged scarecrow with a flock of teenage blackbirds roosting on me. It was disquieting how little mind they paid me; they calmly discussed who was dating whom and who was making out on top of large rock next to us as if I wasn't there. I mean, I know I'm going to be obsolete one day, but I thought I make make it out of the decade. I was saved from irrelevancy by the ladies, who escaped the afternoon without joining any cult, being vexed by chemtrails, or whatever else it is that hippies do these days.
We finished the day eating grilled lamb and veggies in the campground while observing the college students camped next to us. They, in a classic collegiate summer vacation move, appeared to have taken lots of LSD. Or at least there was a lively discussion by clean-cut youngsters of the maggots in their towels. Goes without saying, I suppose, but regardless: To our aged and infirm but at least relatively sober eyes, there were no maggots. This lack notwithstanding, it made for engaging dinner theater.