Day 118 + 119 : Ashland

15th &16th August
No miles

Average mileage since day 101 : 20.6

The two days i spent in Ashland flew by. The good food and beer eaten and drunk the night before knocked me right out and i slept well. In he morning coffee was.first on he agenda, so Justin took the three of us out to one of the myriad coffee shops in downtown Ashland. After a quick coffee there T-Rex and Rocky met up with their ride up to Portland, Justin went off to work, and i headed into town to have breakfast with Jess. Jess, or more properly Nightcrawler due to her affinity for night hiking and love of Charlie Day, is a hiker i first met BigBear many miles ago I've been chasing in the log books for weeks now, and only after hiking big miles with T-Rex and Rocky have i finally been able to catch up. After an hour or so of more figurative catching up over a very good breakfast, Jess made her way back to the trail, and i to Justin's house for some internet chores, namely blogging. The blogging updates took me up to midday the next day to complete, at which time i started tackling my other chores. My resupply strategy for Oregon, in contrast to California, is to send food boxes to myself to points along the trail as there are very few towns close to the trail from which to resupply. The extensive blogging I'd done since arriving in Ashland meant i very nearly missed being able to send my boxes in the mail. I raced through the supermarket buying 3 weeks worth of hikers food and then had push the trolley back through town to the post-office as it was way too much for me to carry. An hour or so later all my boxes were.in the post and i started thinking about getting back to the trail. It took me two hitches to get back to the trail, the first from Matt, and the second from Donna. Matt was a young guy perhaps my age ho had just been sacked from his job as a trainee chef and was understandably a bit despondent. After one of the more awkward rides on the trail, where i resisted giving my 'the trail is so amazing!' schpeel Matt dropped me at a petrol station next to the motorway. I would have liked to have taken his picture for my blog, but felt it might have been a bit inappropriate so i thanked him for the ride and wished him well for the future. I was confident about my next hitch and took up a position at the on ramp. A while later though my confidence was fading along with the light. As difficult as it is for a bearded single man to get a hitch, doing so ij the dark would be nigh impossible. Just as i was about to give up and try to get back into town Donna pulled up in her car. Donna, it turned out, along with her husband ran a resort called Callahans right next to where the trail crosses the interstate. She had spotted i was a thru hiker and took pity on me. A few hours previous to my hitching escapades i had resolved to do 10 miles upon reaching the trail. Given, though, that by the time i had gotten moving on the trail the light had almost totally gone i decided to get a mile or so away from the road, get an early night and get up the next morning withthe light in order to get a full day's hiking done using every available hour of daylight . So that's what i did.