Mile 1391 to 1407.
“Hello, I'm looking for Bob the plumber from Beiber.” - Animal Style
The morning came much too soon, and Jet and I were dragged out of our deep slumber by our phone alarms. It was the kind of tiredness that took the alarm 4 or 5 chimes before it penetrated my consciousness. Luckily, Jet called out “Boom?” just a couple a minutes after shutting it off and snapping me back to the world. She called out to the others and we all grumbled through our thin tent walls. Aside from a small packet of Nutella that was stocked at the water cache, there was little excitement for the first few hours of hiking in the already hot sun. We came upon highway 299 and grabbed a couple hitches into Burney and got dropped off at the Alpine drive thru. I had already scoped this roadside joint on our trip to Burney a couple days prior with Fey's family. 4 dollars bought you the largest amount of soft serve ice cream a cone can hold. It was delicious.
Now here is the good stuff. As we are putting our packs on to leave Alpine, Animal stands there, stunned, and says, “I don’t have my shoes!” He had left them in the truck bed of his hitch. This piece of equipment, is quite literally, the only thing that can’t be replaced, done without for a couple days or easily borrowed.
The easiest solution would be to hitch about an hour into Redding, CA the following day and try to find his pair of 14 size shoes. But Animal had no fear, for he knew the occupation, name, and home town of the kind soul that gave him a ride. In order, he was a plumber, named Bob, who lived in Beiber.
Over the next couple of hours as we checked in to a motel, grabbed some supplies from Safeway and caught up on email, Animal began the search. He called the local grocery store in Burney, and in his usual, direct way said, “Hello, I have lost my shoes and am trying to find Bob the plumber from Beiber”. The woman on the other end of the line asked if this was a prank, which sent the entire motel room into hysterical laughter which we had been stifling. After Animal Style's emphatic pleas that this was not a prank, the woman in fact did know Bob the plumber! The chase was on.
Animal was able to contact Bob, who found the shoes in the back of his truck and offered to drive the 100 mile round trip back to Burney that evening to deliver the shoes. Animal was awestruck and incredibly thankful. After incredible perseverance and equally amazing trail magic, Animal was reunited with his shoes and Slow Magic has another one liner, “Bob the plumber from Beiber”.
