Day 5

This morning started with the lingering consequences of last night’s endeavors between Abhay and Allison. Meghan, Stick, and I were ready to walk this bridge though. We were still focused on the mission. Allison chose to stay back and get some sleep. Abhay wanted to come but he was in a very unstable state after being awake all night. I had a talk with him and I saw that he was fit to walk the bridge with us safely. I was still concerned about him but coming with us was still the best option in my opinion.

The four of us drove over to the start of the bridge where we stopped our walk the day before. We were there just before 6 am. This is the small window between the drunk drivers and the morning rush hour. The bridge is literally 7 miles so it will take just over 2 hours to walk the entire thing. The shoulder is only about 5 feet at the most. Traffic goes at a minimum of 60 mph. It was going to be a long morning.

It was still morning when we started. The night was lit by a rare Super Blue Moon that was absolutely stunning over the ocean waters. We came up with a plan to all stay close to each other and use our safety vests and flashing lights to help the cars see us. We started and just kept going and going. For some reason it was super easy on us. Maybe it was all of the extra crap that we’ve been going through that helped us enjoy the moment.

About two-thirds of the way in, the sun started to rise. We were watching the sun rise on one side of the bridge and watching the super blue moon on the other side. An unforgettable experience. We made it in a great time and felt great. Meghan had met a local guy named Jeremy who offered to take me back to my car. We nailed the seven mile bridge with no problems!

Our next step was to get the trailer to where we are staying. We are at the 50 mile marker and our trailer is all the way back at the 17 mile marker. I offered a guy staying at our hotel who has a big truck $50 to do it. He did right away. The trip took about an hour round-trip but now we had our trailer near to us. My next step was to talk to Abhay about last night.

Too personal for the blog to give details but I think we had a great talk. I really want to see him succeed. He was feeling and acting a lot better after we talked and listened to each other. I checked up on the rest of the team throughout the day. We were all feeling in better spirits.

It was still early in the day so we tried to run a lot of errands. Meghan had a great plan and we went to go execute it. She had heard about an RV park that got destroyed by the storm and there was one guy still there with a bunch of empty lots around it. We went to go ask if we could set up camp on one or two of the unused lots. They said that it was no problem as long as we clean up after ourselves. We always do anyways. This was HUGE for us. We found a place to stay for free and that gives us good freedom of movement while we buy time until we figure out the car situation.

On the way back to the hotel, Meghan said that we should stop by a gym and ask if we can use their showers. She just walked right in and did her thing. Next thing you know, she came back saying that we can all 5 take a shower for $10 anytime. We were set. Go Meghan! We then went back to the trailer to get some things out and then back to the hotel to tell the rest of the crew the good news.

We all decided to go for a little walk. Why not right!? It was lovely. Right around sunset we all just took a little carefree stroll together with no bickering. We needed that more than you could know.

Now we get to end the night on a positive note and I think we will all sleep like babies tonight!