{"id":2253,"date":"2018-04-04T20:13:02","date_gmt":"2018-04-05T02:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/minorcoursecorrection.com\/?p=2253"},"modified":"2026-05-20T14:41:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T14:41:06","slug":"t-minus-2-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jphikes.com\/index.php\/2018\/04\/04\/t-minus-2-days\/","title":{"rendered":"T-Minus 2 Days"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I woke up to the announcement that the dining car was open for breakfast. I checked my email, and I finally had one. I had not received an email for three days. Everyone is honoring my sabbatical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The email was my expected notice from Scout and Frodo telling me when I will be picked up. There will be twenty hikers staying there with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I get there, I will need to find a car with a yellow pompom in the window. This is the picture they sent me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Admittedly, I must be clinically insane. Who gets into a complete stranger’s car just because it has a yellow pompom in the window?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m looking forward to meeting some of the people I have talked with the past couple of months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jason, from Utah is a retired police officer. He is my age, and I promised him the first round. As we are the same age and point in our lives, I suspect we will hike together a bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jamie is from Wisconsin. We talked briefly because she was looking for some help storing equipment near Seattle. I thought I had a solution but it did not work out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were other names I recognized, but I did not know them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal today is to continue to relax and detox from too much information. No news. No email. No social media. I was correct that the train ride was going to help increase my patience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For dinner, my guest was Gayle, an African American grandmother who is taking the train to Los Angeles to bury her sister and to help her niece grieve. She is a real life angel who has spent 40 years as a teacher for kids with autism. I could read that she was a bit nervous sitting with me at first, but it quickly became the best conversation I’ve had since I’ve been on this train.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dining car only has so much room, so you have to sit with people you don’t know. You have to make conversation, and I love to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has a special job to do, but she is already prepared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that, I will call it a night. Tomorrow I will wake up early, shower, switch into my hiking clothes and toss all the rest of the stuff I don’t need. The trail calls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I woke up to the announcement that the dining car was open for breakfast. I checked my email, and I finally had one. I had not received an email for three days. Everyone is honoring my sabbatical. The email was my expected notice from Scout and Frodo telling me when I will be picked up. … Continue reading T-Minus 2 Days<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pct2018"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jphikes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jphikes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jphikes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jphikes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jphikes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2253"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jphikes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2977,"href":"https:\/\/jphikes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2253\/revisions\/2977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jphikes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jphikes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jphikes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}