Date: 2005-05-25
From: Bryant Ridge Shelter

To: James River 
Miles today: 24.9

We are now staying at the wildwood campground.Today was another one of those days where you can just seem to fit a week into.I was awake very early, my usual time, but I heard the rain and I just refused to get out of my sleeping bag. I was having flashbacks of what happened the last time I got out of my sleeping bag here.I could hear people moving upstairs, I could hear them packing. I was pretty sure it was OC1 and Easy Goer.I still wasn't moving out of my bag. They came down at about 6:30, both packed and ready to go, and there I was, still laying in my bag. I told OC1 to go ahead and I would catch up. He took off just before 7 Easy Goer sat there for a few minutes. We had an uphill to take and he wanted to eat something. He left about 15 minutes after OC1.I finally got out of my bag and started packing and didn't get out of there until well after 7:30. I basically waited for it to stop raining, which it did. I took it very slow uphill.I had an emotional and physical lull this morning. It's like when you have something bad happen on a particular date, and every time that date rolls around every year you get into a funk. This shelter was in that same vein and it put me down for a bit emotionally and physically. My knee was killing me all night long. I had a hard time with it this morning too. I got to the first shelter 5 miles out and of course neither OC1 or Easy Goer had signed in because the shelter was 2/10's of mile off the Trail. I really didn't care at that point. I just wanted to sit down for a bit. I went up there and took my time and had some seafood chowder and coffee and hung out there for a bit. After having eaten, everything had completely dryed out, I was feeling alot better.I put my MP3 player on full blast, and started walking, I picked up at a really fast pace. By noon time I was crossing the Blue Ridge when I saw someone waving at me. It was TapeWorm. I was a little annoyed that he was waving me over to him. I was on the Trail and he was 1/4 mile off the road. I met him about half way. He was looking for a pen because he was still trying to get his license. He thanked me for calling his parents about it. I spent about 10 minutes with him. Then I went back the 3/10s of a mile to the Thunder Hill Shelter. Easy Goer was sitting there for about an hour. OC1 had not signed in at that shelter either. It was surprising because that shelter is right on the Trail. He is generally very good about signing in and is vey friendly, asking people he comes across their names and talking with whoever he comes across. He had apparently done none of that, no one had seen him this morning. Albert and I sat there talking about it for a while, and we got to thinking that maybe something happened to him. We got up out of there and started running, we ripped up the trail at about 4 miles per hour. We covered about 5 miles in an hour and 20 minutes. We got down to Marble Spring, which was 17 miles from where we started. That was the place where we were all supposed to meet and camp out tonight. We were only going to do 17 miles today. No OC1 there. No one had seen him there either. Now we were really getting concerned and we decided that we would walk over to the next shelter, another 6 /12 miles at a vicious pace, less than 2 hours. We hit Matts Creek Shelter at about 4:45.There were several section hikers there that had been sitting at the shelter since 2:30 and had not seen him. We described him carefully and no one fitting that description had come by there. So, we knew for sure that somehow he was either behind us or he must have left the trail. Maybe he went up on the Blue Ridge Parkway and made a call, maybe something was wrong at home and he hitched a ride into town. We knew he was definitely not in front of us. We sat there trying to figure out what to do. We left a note on the Trail register that said, "OC1 where are you??" and I left my cell phone number there. We had just put our packs on and were fixing to walk down to the James River and OC1 came walking in. What happened was when he walked out of the shelter this morning he walked in the wrong direction. He walked Southbound. He did not realize this until he ran into Horizon, who was walking Northbound. Apparently, they argued about direction for quite a bit of time. So, now he had done about 5 miles extra for no reason. He turned around and started going in the right direction. In the meantime, we were running ahead to try to catch up with him, and he was actually running behind us, trying to catch up with us. When we finally got all this straightened out, he was beat as hell. He had already done 28 miles. We told him of our plan to walk another 2.2 miles to Wildwood Campground. He decided he could do that if he sat and ate for a few minutes. We sat there until 5:20. We then walked leisurely down to VA 501 and got an immediate ride from a guy in a truck. Unfortunately, he made an immediate stop into a parking lot, and the lady behind him swerved to avoid him and came within inches of running me over!We walked into Wildwood Campground and got a small cabin. It's a little cabin, it's clean with nothing in it except for a few bunks. I'm sleeping on the porch outside even though there's room for me inside. It's a nice night, good temperatures, it's not raining - I like sleeping outside. I'll give these guys a break and spare them the snoring for tonight. When we got here we started ordering food like crazy. We each got 2 cheeseburgers and fries, milkshakes and Cokes. All 3 of us had maildrops here. We were busy for the rest of the night. We spent the night organizing mail drops, taking showers and doing laundry.It's getting harder and harder keeping up with this stuff. I don't know why. I've been up since 5 and it's 11 pm now, and this is the first opportunity to do this recording. Life gets busy even on the Trail.