Date: 2008-05-13
From: Gooch Gap

To: Neels Gap
Miles today: 17.0
Weather: clear sky

Blood Mountain ShelterWe hiked our asses off today. I mean literally, I was looking for my ass and it's gone; hiked off, all the way! We got in to Neels Gap Hiker Hostel just after dark. There were some orange sodium lights creating this strange glow over the stone-walled compound as some kind of bell or chime thing was ¢donging¢ in the gentle breeze. I felt like we were walking in to a monastery. We needed food pretty bad. Dances gave us some food last night but we knew we were going to have to go into a town so we tried to hitch into Suches. It didn't work. Doc came with us and we walked an extra two miles into town which brought our GPS total for the day up to 17-point-something miles. Thankfully we got (by ¢got¢ I mean paid for) a ride back to Woody Gap from this guy Wes. Just as I was turning to walk up the trail, someone from the general store came barreling down the highway with my water purifier charger thing. Thank God for that guy! We would have had to bite the bullet and drink straight from the dirty trail water. We quickly started up the path on our way to Neels Gap so we could stay in the famous "Hiker Hostel." We heard it would be pretty damn nice by our current standards of living. I let Cyclone and Rolex get up ahead ¢cause they were pissing me off already.We would catch each other periodically and the hike was tough. Eventually we climbed Blood Mountain and met two guys who were section hiking. I was talking about our gear and I pulled out my guitar. One of the guys started playing it and then said, "who woulda thought I'd be pickin' a guitar up on Blood Mountain." it sounded so good I had to have him say it again from the film. The climb down Blood Mountain was worse than the climb up. (Note: We didn¢t realize it at the time but five months earlier, a tough, young girl named Meredith Emerson had walked this same path and had been tragically abducted, brutally murdered, decapitated and abandoned nearby by some sick bastard who has since been implicated in several killings in the Southeast.) Doug¢s knees were hurting him really badly and Michael stayed with him as they came down Blood Mountain at a snail¢s pace. I kept waiting on them but they were taking forever. Doc kept counseling Cyclone on knee injuries and assuring him that if he just took a steady dose of Ibuprofen, he would be alright. It sounded like back when I was in the Marines. No matter what you had wrong with you, you walked out of sick call with a scrip for 800 milligrams of Motrin.I filmed some of the night hiking as we came in to Neels Gap.There were a couple of people already there and Cyclone and Rolex caem downt he trail a short time after. There were hundreds of pictures of thru-hikers on the wall from this year alone. it seems we're probably the last of the thru-hikers trying to actually make it to Maine. Everyone keeps telling us we aren't going to make it to Maine by August 24. I have two words for them and I'll bet you can figure out what they are... Besides the dramatic d©cor, there were showers and a laundry room so we did our business and Mike cooked some Spags but we got the wrong kind so it took forever to cookMike got pissed at me; you see, he¢s not much used to cooking for himself and he was asking me a question about the spaghetti sauce; only, I wasn't paying attention to where he was in the process, I was clipping my toenails or something like that. I thought the spaghetti was already finished and strained and so when he asked me what to do with the sauce, I absently told him to just pour it in; so he did. He poured it in to the boiling water with the spaghetti and everything. He got all pissed at me because I was the one who told him to do it. After we all tried to figure out how to handle that fiasco (imagine three brothers watching a pot of uncooked spaghetti, boiling over in a mixture of water and sauce that was foaming and getting all over our whisperlite stove). We finally came up with a solution and ate, grumpily conversed and slept on bunks while the two house cats (and I use the term ¢House Cats¢ loosley) lurked and protected our packs from the ravenous mice. Tomorrow we resupply at the outfitter they have here. Neels Gap Hostel is a very neat place where the Appalachian Trail actually rolls right through the middle of the compound while some archaic sounding wind chime tolls away. It doesn't chime, it TOLLS! When we came in tonight it was still dark and that thing was tolling and creating the weirdest atmosphere.David AKA "Two-Tone"Website:http://www.brotherproof.comBlog:http://brotherproof.blogspot.comPictures:http://www.photobucket.com/brotherproofFilm:http://www.youtube.com/wbaf1Myspace:http://www.myspace.com/brotherproofDavid's Website:http://www.davidpatrone.com