After a relaxing night in Elk Prairie Campground, I woke up with exceptionally itchy ankles. I pulled back my sleeping bag to inspect them further. A bolt of concern shot through me as I examined what looked to be 20-30 bug bites on the inside of each of my ankles! Having had many experiences with mosquitoes, I couldn’t imagine what rage induced, Tasmanian Devil bug might be capable of this. If it were fleas, the bites wouldn’t be concentrated on just my ankles. Could it be chiggers or scabies? Being out in the middle of nowhere, there was very little I could do about it, so I packed up my tent and prepared for another day’s ride.

Over the next few days, I worked my way over mountains and through redwoods. Warnings were whispered through the campgrounds of a big storm looming just off the coast. “I heard we’re supposed to get two inches of rain on Tuesday.” one ranger would say. At the next campground an old man in his RV elaborated that, “The storm is supposed to move in on Saturday. Supposedly we’ll get a half inch of rain on Sunday and a half inch on Monday. Then we’re supposed to have torrential downpours and gale force winds on Tuesday.”

Sure enough, as night set in on Saturday, the front of the storm came in. I tried to enjoy my cozy tent beneath the giant redwoods, but I was feeling anxious. My tent and sleeping bag were still dry, but I knew that by Tuesday there was a good chance that everything I had with me would be cold and wet. Adding to my stress, my ankles had not improved, and if anything, seemed to be getting more swollen with the addition of new bumps. While my feet hadn’t turned numb or black, I figured I better stop at the emergency room to make sure I didn’t have something that would necessitate incinerating my sleeping bag in order to recover.

The next morning, the front of the storm had officially arrived. While I was still dry inside the tent, I knew that this would most likely be my last dry, comfortable moment for the next few days. Unfortunately there was no time to savor it. I still needed to ride 30 miles to the nearest hospital, then another 30 to the campground. Depending on the time it took to be seen, diagnosed, and treated, the day’s ride through the cold rain was looking to be challenging and long. I packed up my tent with haste and couldn’t help but notice the extra weight of the water-saturated canvas. The rain was colder than any of the other rains on my trip so far so I was eager to get riding in hopes I’d warm up. From what I could gather from my maps, I would be gaining elevation all day which I figured was a good thing.

After a few hours of riding, I exited the freeway and entered the town of Garberville. The town seemed to bustle with chaos. Rain splashed sideways off of awnings, rattled the roof of cars, and bounced out of puddles. Cars jockeyed for parking spots in the busy streets while cargo trucks parked in the middle of the road, blocking parts of both lanes. I gingerly eased my way through the traffic, afraid someone’s diminished patience and vision could leave me crippled on the side of the road. After a few u-turns, I found my way to the hospital and was eager to get out of the rain.

The ER was no different than town. The waiting room smelled like marijuana. A girl was panting frantically in the corner from the pain in her face and hand. She moaned concerns that her hands were going numb and starting to curl. Her boyfriend read his magazine indifferently. A man who seemed opiated recited symptoms of pain in his knees and back. A male nurse with a braided three foot ponytail and patterned pink scrubs came out to check me in. I was drenched head to toe and felt disheveled from all the commotion. Trying to regroup, I stood outside the door to the hospital, wringing out my socks under the two foot overhang. Cold, wet, and tired, once again I found myself laughing at the mess I had gotten myself in. All I could do was hope for good news.

After an hour, I was called in for the doctor and nurse to deliberate what was going on with my ankles.

“Whoa?! Ugh?! That looks nasty?!” proclaimed the nurse.

I wasn’t sure how to respond.

“So what do you think that is?” he asked me.

That’s why I came here to see you? I thought. “Uh, I don’t know? They look like some crazy bug bites but they aren’t getting better and I seem to be getting new ones.”

“Yeah, this one time I went up to these hot springs and got chiggers. There weren’t any chiggers in the hottest hot spring, but there were chiggers in the hot spring that was about 102 degrees. Man, that was awful. I had bites everywhere and it itched like crazy! You could see them too. They looked like tiny cayenne pepper granules that burrow into your skin and die.”

“Oh… That does sound pretty terrible… Uh… I hope I don’t have chiggers…” I responded.

I was starting to feel like I was in a Wayne’s World skit. Everyone seemed professional, but very… relaxed. It was hard not to think about the strong odor of marijuana and the extinguished joint I had found in the waiting room. Were all these people high? Would my diagnosis be neglected due the staff’s burning desire for Cocoa Pebbles? I suppose that even if they were high, everyone seemed to take their job seriously. I felt mildly confident the diagnosis on my ankle would be accurate…

After some storytelling about my trip, the doctor and nurse deliberated that I was just having an allergic reaction to some bug bites. “Hallelujah!” I thought. As long as I don’t have scabies or chiggers, I felt like I could deal with itchy ankles while pushing on. I still had 30 miles to ride in the cold rain so I thanked the staff for their attention, put back on my soaking wet jacket and rain pants and climbed back on my bike. While not entirely confident my diagnosis was accurate, I was now focused on the impending storm of the next few days. Things were bound to get pretty miserable but it wasn’t anything a double bacon cheeseburger and hot mocha couldn’t cure…