Date: 2007-05-18
From: tenting at The Place, Damascus, Va

To: tenting at The Place, Damascus, Va
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: broken clouds

Last night we enjoyed a scruptious dinner under the big tents in the Baptist church parking lot. Susie Montgomery and her husband came over and sat with us for a while. Nice people. Aterward, we dashed over to the library for the storytelling, but were too late. Refreshments were being served, so the show was over. We wished we'd seen the performance. Around 9 the church folks brought over the leftover desserts to The Place. How thoughtful! We'll all be waddling with swollen bellies on the trail come Sunday afternoon! The chilly rain quit around 10 p.m.. This morning we walked to Moyoe's for coffee and tee, then over to Cowboy's for our usual breakfast. It's overcast, and quite windy and chilly today. Many of us are wearing our ski hats and long underwear or rain suits to break the wind and keep warm. Following breakfast we went to ...you guessed it...the Baptist church...but this time not for food They had a couple of orthop docs who'd offered their services to hikers, free! There were lots of hikers there with a host of medical complaints/probs. Fred waited his turn to get the swollen area(size of a quarter) behind the ball of his right foot checked out. Dr. John determined it's being caused by his lower toe bone area taking the brunt of walking/pushing off pressure. Since Fred's toes are kinda curled and drawn up, the rest of his toes bones aren't distributing walking pressure properly. Dr. John gave Fred a set of 3/4 insert pads and suggested he have metatarsal bars glued into all shoes to alleviate and distribute pressure better. After the dr consult we hiked out to Tent City. We picked up our brand X poles from the Leki pole booth: the poles are like new, but better! They installed new tips and new baskets on our poles, plus reglued my grip handle back on and gave each of us a Leki bandana out of light-weight material. Their attention and service was outstanding, especially since we didn't have Leki poles. We'd heard that Leki is a company that wants a hiker to have the best and prides itself on quality and service; now we know it's so. We also traded in our poor headlamps for better refurbished headlamps(for free) at Princeton Tec and got 2 new replacement bulbs for future, got a free Hiker Pro Katadyn water filter wrap/cloth screen for a necessary upcoming filter cleaning Fred'll do, drank sodas and ate burgers at Ox's hiker trail magic tent in the lawn chairs he set up in his multi-tent area, hitched a ride to the gazebo festival area and browsed the equipment vendor tables there. From there we ambled to the library for me to update and caption/date the pics I posted yesterday. So check out the photos(listed on the left-hand margin of my page-just click on the word "photos"). Whew! The rest of the day will be filled with treating ourselves to a shower in the shower trailers at...you guessed it...the Baptist church parking lot, provided by the church. We hear the water is always hot and the trailers are clean and fresh. Oh, boy! Can't wait! We think we'll be walking over to the Old Mill Restaurant for dinner, maybe for a steak for Fred, something less heavy for me. Gee, the days in town just fly by. The paper says the weather will be warming up after the frost that's anticipated for tonight. Fred's actually looking forward to getting back on the trail Sunday; isn't that neat?! Who'd a thunk we'd start to pine for the simple hiking life? Til then, I'm gonna revel in feeling clean and well-fed Be sure to check out our photos!