Pissing into the Wind with Varying Degrees of Success

The Mojave Desert is dry, God forsaken place. However, it's actually quite beautiful once you get past the 17-35 mile water resupply. Our hike is not going as planned but I actually think this is a good thing. Our initial plan was to travel slowly in order to conservatively approach this first section. We quickly discovered this strategy was bullshit and abandoned 20 pounds of food in the desert and walk at about double the speed we were previously. Right now I am in Tehachapi, CA and we've walked 55 miles in 3.5 days. Abby walks faster than me most of the time.

The desert is a very windy place. These windmills you see in these photos and stuff are actually the same one's they used for Hangover 3! The police officer who we hitched a ride with on the way to Tehachapi informed me of that, confirming my suspicions. The wind was blowing at about 70 mph at times. Especially at night. And when don't set up your tent right you may end up half naked outside in 50 mph winds at 2 am, trying to reassemble your shelter as your nose drips copious amounts of blood.

Oh yeah. My trail name is Rudolph for now. My friend Thor calls me that because I have nose bleeds like clockwork 3-4 times a day.

This is a photo of me after I peed into a gulch created by a down cutting stream. I wanted Abby to take a (tasteful) picture of me urinating, post it to Instagram, and #downcuttingstream. It's a bad geology joke.





In the desert we do a lot of night hiking. The first night there was a beautiful red moon on the horizon. Abby and I tried to take a low shutter speed photo to capture the majesty of the moment. It ended up coming out like a giant, flaming space dick. Enjoy.

Catch y'all in Lake Isabella. It's 90 miles away and we're trying to make it there in 4 days.
Until then,
Daniel Babin