Date: May 17, 2017
Miles: 0
Health: Good and rested. Knees a bit sore.

We watched the O.J. Simpson series on Netflix late last night and slept late this morning. We're totally getting off of our thru-hiking rhythm.

We spend the day resting and preparing for the next section to Wrightwood. We need to resupply food for five days. After breakfast we got a ride to the mall where they have the Dollar Store and Vons. We decided to go to the Dollar Store first to see what they had for us. Wow! We ended up doing almost all of our resupply from the Dollar Store.

While there we stumbled to Otter who we haven't seen in many days. She was heading out as she needs to be in a wedding the next weekend and she wants to get ahead of everyone so that she won't stay too much behind. She told me she was going out with Blü. I hadn't seen him for awhile either.

As we got out of the store we saw Blü who was waiting for Otter outside. He's heading out to the Hot Springs, but says he's going to be hiking slow as his legs are hurting, so I'll probably catch him by Wrightwood.

After the resupply we headed out to $1 fish tacos and ate our hearts out. After that Blis had some personal phone calls to make and I met up with Justine, Fyre, and Queso Grande. We went walking through the Big Bear Lake main street. Girls did some rock shopping, I got some milkshakes and then I had to head back to the Hostel as I had a delivery coming from ZPacks.

Later we went out to eat and for few beers at the brewery. It was a great lazy day.

Trail names

It's hard to remember everyone by their real name as you meet so many Mike's and Jim's. So instead hikers use trail names to call people with.

People get their trail name given to them by others. It can be anything from how you look, a quirk you have, or a funny thing that happens to you on the trail. The hiker given the name can always veto the name, but it doesn't always work.

Here are some of the trail names of hikers around me, and the story of how I've heard them getting that name (so take this with a grain of salt):

Blis - got his name because he had really bad blisters in the beginning.

Pony Express - she has everything you need in her back and she finds other people's dropped gear and then delivers that to them later on the trail.

Otter - she carries a small stuffed otter toy with her.

Blü - got his name on AT. He's always wearing blue shirt and a hat.

Fyre - Blis wanted to name her Fire Inside but it didn't stick. One day on trail she and others were singing a song from the movie Mulan, and it had a line with "Fire Inside" and it developed from there.

Dragon - she drags her poles during the day so you can always tell if she's in front of you by the marks on the trail.

KB Sunshine, KB and the Sunshine Band - she's always happy. The meaning of KB is only shared with the closest trail family ;)

Crimson - he marked all his gear with red dots. And he has red hair.

Snake eyes - he kept walking past snakes.

Radio - his voice sounds like one of those great, deep, radio voices.

Queso Grande - he's the head of cheese department in Whole Foods.

Airplane Mode - on the first day on trail her phone kept ringing so hikers around her started recommending her to switch to airplane mode.

My trail name

I've been given few trail names but so far I've vetoed them all but two of them kept sticking. One of them had a funny backstory but sounded quite doughy if you didn't know the backstory, so I didn't want to go with that. The other, Reindeer Time, was kind of better of two. It doesn't have a great backstory, but it was the one most people started to know me with, so I went with it.

You kind of want to lock down your trail name early as they are only going to get worse as more and more funny stuff happens and people get more and more creative.

So, if you happen to see a trail name Reindeer Time in a trail register, that's me.