Date: 2010-09-25
From: Stratton/Eustis

To: Stratton/Eustis
Miles today: 0.0

Eustis, 0.0   Today was a planned zero day of geocaching with friends and attending a pot luck geocaching event tonight.   We woke up this morning early to make sure we got a ride with him because he said he was leaving at 6:30. We were up at 6:00 and he had already left. We waited until 6:30 for him to come back but he never did. We ended up getting a ride with Tom(TAT).   We made it to the breakfast at the community center and ate and socialized. Then a group of us all hoped in cars and went to Sugarloaf, where we took the chair lift up Sugarloaf. Once at the top of the chair lift we had a 0.5 mile walk to find a cache.   Hopper and I stopped to pick up some lunch supplies and came back to the community center for lunch. We were waiting for others who are also suppose to meet here at noon to see what everyone else was going to do this afternoon.   I ended up sitting around all afternoon at the community center, napping and just waiting for all the people to return for the start of the pot luck supper.   Tonight towards the end of the pot luck supper Brad came up to me and handed me an envelope. He said a bunch of my close geocaching friends had collected some money to help me finish my hike. When he handed me that envelope and said that I almost lost it. I found it very hard to keep my composure. It was not the money that got to me but knowing that these people cared that much about me. It really meant an awful lot to me. I will not say how much it was but like I said it was not about the money for me.   While sitting and listening to Hopper talk to other geocachers the other day they were asking her questions about her hike and the dog, I realized that they did not know her whole story. I thought I would take the time now share her story and tell how we ended up as hiking partners. She did not want people to know her reasons for hiking in my journals until we got close to finishing.   Hopper and I started transpiring before the hike when she ordered a copy of Appalachian Pages from me. I made the mistake and sent it media mail which takes longer. When she did not get it in four days she emailed me and asked where her books were. I apologized and told her I would send he two more copies. She said she would wait. She waited a couple more days and contacted me again. I apologized again and she said she would wait a little longer. I asked if she was hiking the trail in 2010 and she said yes. After I found that we started talking about thru hiking and we stayed in close email contact and started online chatting.   Hopper explained that her husband had thru hiked in 2005 and had passed away last year from cancer. She said his wish was to have his ashes scattered along the entire Appalachian Trail. That was her reason for hiking the AT. She was also concerned about all the other male hikers trying to make moves on her as well. I told her if we hooked up as hiking partners I could help detour that because a male hiking partner would detour other males from trying to pick her up. She liked the idea. The things we needed to find out though were whether we would be compatible as hiking partners, if our paces, daily mileages, and personalities would work for six or more months together. She was not able to start on the same date as me because of family obligations. She said she could come down on my start date and hike three days with me. We figured this would give us some indication if we were compatible as hiking partners. We seemed to have gotten alone for those three days and worked around some minor scheduling issues. We are still together at this point and it has been almost six and one half months. After this hike is over we will go our seperate ways again and hopefully stay in contact as friends.