Date: 2018-10-11
From: Wayah Bald shelter

To: Franklin, NC
Miles today: 11.0

It rained a shit ton last night. My rain fly was already completely saturated from the night before, and whenever that happens it becomes pretty useless. It starts to leak little ¢mist drops¢ all through the night, leaving me to wake up in a complete puddle. I was cold and I was wet. I got all my shit together before sunrise and beat Disco on the trail. I could smell town in the distance. I busted out a quick 11 miles, did a 10 mile road hitch into Franklin, and was eating a veggie burger at BK by noon. Eventually I moseyed over to the Gooder Grove Hostel. It¢s really the only hostel option in town right now because the other one is only seasonal. It¢s a pretty nice place though. The guy running it is Zen. He¢s cool, but extremely OCD and a complete clean freak. You have to put on loaner sandals before walking into the house. Then, he immediately directs you into the kitchen where he asks you to wash your hands before touching anything. Then you have to take a shower before you¢re allowed to hang out in the bunk room or common area. The list goes on. I kinda get it, but this is the most intense I¢ve ever seen a hostel get on trail. Lol I decided to take a zero day tomorrow, so today I¢m cutting loose and doing an early celebration - only 109 miles left! Truly insane. Disco and I started to do a pub crawl around 3:00. Franklin actually has two breweries and like four different bars, so lots of opportunity. I¢ve learned that I actually like hard ciders. Like I think it¢s my thing now. Beer and wine is still gross though. Lol Around 6pm, we ended up at Mulligan¢s, the town¢s sports bar and the only place that stays open past 9pm. We stayed here for the rest of the evening. I introduced Disco to Jameson, the smoothest of Irish whiskey. I was having a grand time, that was until Disco started to become more and more incoherent. We literally had the same amount of alcohol and he¢s blabbering like a baby and stumbling the whole way back to the hostel. I had zero patience or sympathy for him this time. He¢s an adult who can¢t hold his alcohol and it¢s honestly embarrassing. So I let him fall. Multiple times actually. Lol What made it extra funny was that he had to go to Urgent Care earlier today to get some pain meds for his hip/joint problems. They prescribed him with four days worth of steroid pills. So he brings his prescription with him to the bar and asks me to read the directions to him because he doesn¢t have his glasses on him. Then he gets stupid drunk, and I get to watch this 63 yr old man crawl home at 11pm while holding a prescription bag of medicine. Lol A truly sad sight. I think I¢ve had my fill of Disco for the rest this trek. He¢s a little too much to handle. On a completely different note, we heard some super crazy rumors about this Zen dude (real name Collin) that¢s running the hostel we¢re staying at. Apparently, he¢s known as the town¢s nut job. Lol Everyone at the bar seemed to know the guy. And they all used the word ¢crazy¢ at some point to describe him. From what I could grasp, it seems like he has a history of offering hikers WFS and then when the ¢work¢ is finished, he continues to find something else for them to do, arguing that they still owe him something. And becomes extremely hostile when hikers disagree and try to leave, so much that a girl at the bar was claiming to have ¢rescued¢ about a dozen hikers over the years by picking them up in her car and removing them from the property. Lol! Trail-talk is real and never disappoints. I didn¢t know what to make of these stories. All I could think was ¢Damn, I wish I hadn¢t just accepted the WFS offer Zen made to me before coming down here...¢ Haha! Yikes! Let¢s hope I don¢t get trapped!!