Compass story #8b: Day of the Stalkers part 2

When we finally stopped for lunch, I found myself in the remarkable position of not actually physically needing to stop. This was new and exhilarating, and I almost hoped we would keep walking, because I was in the zone. So we stopped by a stream at a rocky area and settled down. A couple minutes later the adult leaders arrived, and The Bush silently held up all the messages he had collected.

He had not found the haiku.

The hilarity that reigned in the group was incredible, because we all realized that some random hikers who wouldn't know who left it would find the message. "All will be destroyed." It was so funny! We were alone for most of lunch, but the adult leaders came back for The Friz's and Skyscraper's life stories. Thus, lunch took a good hour or so, because we enjoyed the break and took as long as we wanted with the life stories and stuff. Then the adult leaders ditched us again and we set out.

There were fascinating discussions on the trail, about things like churches and homosexuality, and there were two songs that I had stuck in my head and kept singing constantly ("Jesus Take the Wheel" and "Over the Mountains and the Sea," both somewhat appropriate to the La Vida situation). It was a long hike, but not that hard. We continued on a gentle downward slope, enough to make the hike easy but not enough to make it hard. As we approached our campsite, Enrique called, "Lisa, how are you doing?" "Great!" I responded happily, and he asked, "Really?" in total surprise.

We arrived at another amazing campsite and set up. The group tarp gave some trouble, but they got it up at last. Glove Love had a row with our Coleman camping stoves, but we got water boiling eventually. Samwise and Skyscraper did their classic "Jump on it" dance ("Dah, duh duh duh, duh, Massachusetts, jump on it, jump on it!") and I pumped more water. There was then a little free time, I played Mau with The Friz and we tried to teach Sparky, but he quit quickly. When dinner was ready, The Bush, BK and Lynn arrived. Their first act was to make us change the group tarp, and then we had dinner and Table Talk.

This Table Talk, we heard Enrique's and Glove Love's life stories, and had some wonderful discussion and bonding time. Then the sherpas gave us the information on Solo Day, which was the next day.