I (Sam) woke up with a pretty awful headache, prompting me to lay down in the tent a little longer until the medicine I had taken kicked in. This persisted until around 10:30am when I finally felt well enough to get up. It was incredibly windy, and my tent was rattling around quite a bit as I was tearing it down. This made the process a little more difficult, but it was honestly nice waking up to a strong breeze. Given that today was Sunday, much of my attention would be geared towards football. I listened to the Bears vs. Texans game for a few hours and was pleasantly surprised with the win! Once the late afternoon hit, I realized my grand mistake: I neglected to pack any food other than peanuts for the day today. While peanuts have been a staple of the trip, I am admittedly sick of them. At times, I only sucked the salt they had on them before spitting them out purely for the electrolytes. Around 6pm I began daydreaming of the different food options I would have in the destination town of Pampa, TX. I picked out a nice Mexican restaurant that was supposedly open until 9pm, giving me time to arrive and eat without being too much of a nuisance. I finally arrived at the restaurant and found nothing more than a dark window! In other words, it was closed. Since it was 8:10pm on a Sunday night, I had to act fast. I found a nice family Chinese restaurant called “Lampliter” and ordered a shamefully glutinous meal of pork fried rice, a squid entree, and 24 pork dumplings. The restaurant was empty except for me and the staff, so we indulged in some nice conversation. Afterwards, I walked to a gas station nearby to fill up on water and charge my phone. I sat there for about 45 minutes until finding a church to sleep by.
Todays greatest challenge was by far having nothing to eat other than peanuts for most of the day. I was genuinely hungry with little food for the first time this trip, and will use it as a lesson to never neglect this again. Part of me wanted to see if I would be able to sustain for an entire day with just peanuts/not much food in general, but that was clearly not the case.
9/25/22
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