Date: 2009-05-07
From: No Business Knob Shelter

To: Erwin
Miles today: 6.3
Weather: scattered clouds

What a crazy town stop this has been. Sorry that it has been so long since my last update, but things have been falling apart and I have been focusing all my energy on putting them back together. Where we left off, I woke up early Tuesday morning and began the 3 hour descent into Erwin. By noon, Bird, Solar, Scarecrow, myself and about 10 others had checked in at Uncle Johnny's Nolichucky Hostel. At 12:30 he took all of us to the all you can eat pizza buffet where we gorged ourselves in celebration of finally being out of the rain. After lunch we came back to our cabin and began sorting through the details of the next leg of our trip. The weather has, as you know, been horrible for the last week and the forecast called for more of the same. When we left for dinner, we had decided on trying to sneak out the next day in between rain bands to run for the next shelter, 4 miles up the trail.      Dinner was at the local Mexican restaurant and once again we ate more food than was humanly imaginable. This is where major problems for me started. Upon leaving the restaurant, I was amazed at how full my stomach felt. I don't remember ever being that full. A few hours later ,while we were watching a movie in our cabin, I realized that something was not right inside me. To make a long, sick story short, I was up all night sick, more than I would like to elaborate to you. It was close to being an emergency, as every time I stood up I felt like I would faint. Thank God , Bird and Scarecrow were there to make sure that I was ok. I am also thankful that I was in the hostel and not out on the trail when I got sick. There were challenges enough in the hostel's public bathroom!      So, in accident analysis, what happened? It's really hard to say. Nobody else got sick from the food at either restaurant. The last day out in the woods, I did break a couple of my usual safety rules. First, I didn't treat the last water I collected because I was being lazy. Also, since there was no water source at the last shelter, I shared someone else's water that I didn't know. Did either of these things cause me to be sick? I don't know. But together with the fact I hadn't eaten real food for a week, I think I'm going to have a hard time eating town food at the next stop.      Today I am feeling almost 100%, but am still a little weak. I would have probably hiked today but since I was sick, I got no chores done yesterday and I need to get organized. Because of the weather, just about everyone decided to zero yesterday. The forecast is still terrible and I can't believe how much rain we are getting. Solar and Bird left this morning and were going for the 4 mile plan. If I were them I may have tried to do more because it is the only day they are not forecasting a down pour. They were trying to stay close to us, though. Me and Scarecrow decided to stay another day, him to nurse his feet and me to nurse my health.   This setback pretty much keeps us from making it to Damascus in time for Trail Days, so it looks like we will be hitching into town. This isn't so bad because, first of all, hitching is easy to and from Trail Days as there is an influx of 30,000 or so hikers into town. Second, it may be nice to not have to hike directly out of Damascus because of the traffic jams that are expected. If we hitch south to pick up again, we should miss all the traffic.      Regardless, barring any more disasters, I should be back out in the wild starting tomorrow for a 6 day leg to Dennis Cove,TN. Until then...