Date: 2012-03-07
To: At Amicalola Falls State Park
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

We arrived at Amicalola Falls State Park and immediately made our way up to the lodge and checked in . After getting settled in, we headed back out to see the falls for which the park is named. The falls are the highest east of the Mississippi River and are certainly worth a visit. There's a reflecting pool with trout at the bottom of the falls, accessible by a car via a short road from the Visitors Center, or one could choose to wak the 604 steps down from the top. We chose to drive.At the Visitors Center, now closed, we walked around a bit and then went to check out teh AT shelter located a long stone's throw behind it. This was our first visit to the stone arch that marks the start of the Approach Trail.We walked up the Approach Trail (itself a blue blazed trail), saw the sign marking another path, short, to the shelter. Upon arriving at the shelter, we discovered two men, both in the thirties, setting up for the night. Farley, who was bigger and appeared slightly younger, was a former Marine who was between jobs, had a month to kill before his next employment began, was planning to hike the general area and perhaps of the trail. He talked a lot, going on about petty crimes, thievery, and murder along the trail, and discussed both the pros and cons of carrying a concealed handgun on the trail. Truth be told, I found him slightly obnoxious.The second occupant of the shelter introduced himself as Stephen and said his trail name was Smiley. HIs trail name was azpt, as he was very cheerful. He was from Quinlan, Texas -- a short drive from my very own Dallas -- and had owned a lawn care business that had dried up, along with everything else, in last year's drought. I announced that I, too, was originally from Texas and had lived in the Dallas area the last twenty something years, most recently in the Deep Ellum are just east of downtown."Aw, man! I know Deep Ellum!" he exclaimed.Smiley had sole his truck and some other items, cobbled together enough hiking gear from what he already owned plus some items he had bought, and come to thru-hike (what we call hiking all the way through to Maine from Georgia, or vice versa if you're going north to south). In a later conversation, he admitted that his mother and sister had told him to get his life together. He didn't say whether this hike was a part of that plan or a strategy to duck that responsibility.We chatted with Smiley and Farley a few moments more and excused ourselves, annoucing we wanted to cath dinner at the lodge before the restaurant closed. They both said they had heard good things about the lodge and that it looked fancy from teh outside (and it did). Alas, the lodge wasn't in the cards for either of them, as both were on tight budgets.We said goodnight to the two men and made our way back to the Visitors Center. We stopped by the information kiosk in front of the parking lot and took a peek at the trail register located in a wooden box with a hinged lid. There were three recent entries from today and yesterday, including Smiley, who had signed in yesterday and given his pack weight as fifty pounds. I noted that the two other entries listed their pack weights as 35 pounds and forty pounds. I felt a little smug, knowing that even with food, stove fuel, and water, my pack came in around 23 pounds. I felt the light weight gave me leg up on finishing the journey to Maine and reflected how well I had planned the trip.New hikers who plan on hiking any distance of consequence are preoccuppied with pack weight. They are either proud of how much they can carry or how much they were able able to whittle from their gear list and thus how little their pack weighed. I was to learn later that more experienced hikers don't often discuss pack weight, as they have what they have, so to speak, and they wish to neither add nor subtract anything from their kit. Most experienced hikers tended to discuss trail conditions, availability of water, and various amenities along the trail.Back at the lodge, we were seated in the restaurant and introduced to the buffet. As we ate, I took glances at other diners and tried to establish who were thru-hikers. There was a table of four young men, about college age, in the back who looked the part. I spied another man, abut mid-thirties, whom I had seen earlier in the lobby. He was wearing convertible pants (the pants leg zip off above the knee to convert the pants into shorts), so I figured him for a hiker as well.After dinner, we went back to our room. I made the mistake of checking my voice mail and calling a client to whom I had promised I would do a little more work tonight before heading out in the morning. What I got from him was a royal chewing out. The client, who chastised me for not solving a problem that had been plaguing his online store for several weeks, was royally ticked that the problem still wasn't solved. He had gone so far as to check the server logs and had seen that I hadn't logged in for a couple of days. Frankly, I had had no new ideas on how to solve his problem and thus had seen no reason to log in."I love you to death, man, but you're blowing smoke up my a__. You're not going to do any work work tonight 'cause all you're thinking about is hiking the mountains. Just, just have a nice hike and we'll deal with this on our own." And then he hung up.That stung a bit and I tried to lessen it by feeling self-righteous, but ti didn't work very well. Honestly, a number of clients didn't get on e hundred percent from me as I tried to cram two weeks of work into the final week before I left. With regard to this particular client, I tried to tell myself he had no right to talk like that to me: here I was, the night before I set out, and I was offering to stay up and work on his ecommerce site. And, after all, this wasn't a set number of tasks that I could simply check off as I got done. This was a very difficult problem involving his database, some automated scripts, an e-mail problem, etc. This was probem solving, not monkey work, and problems got solved on their own schedule, not mine and not the client's.I told myself all of that but in the end I had to admit the client was right to some degree, and that thought (guilt, explicitly), would plague me for some time. I know it put a damper on that night and next day.I went through my gear one more time and pulled two items out to be sent back home. One was a clever windscreen I had built for my little alcohol stove but, alas, it was too heavy and I was afraid the sharp edges, which I had filed down as best I could, could still damage the inside of my pack or other items within my pack. Plus, it was bulky and not flexible, a poor combination for anything going into my lttle Osprey Exos 46 back pack. I don't remember what the other item was.Before going to bed, I addressed and stamped two cars and ran them downstairs to be mailed. At the registration desk, I ran into the thru-hiker whom I had seen earlier with the convertible pants in the dining room. He introduced himself as Vince and said he was going by the trail name of Hawkeye, a nickname he had acquired during his stint the Marine Corp for his sense of humor. Naturally, we talked gear and pack weight, with his pack coming to 40 pounds of more (I don't recall the precise number). He had plans to ditch his winter clothes as soon as possible and was hoping that the outfitter at Neels Gap, about four days into the trail, could help him sort out what he needed to keep and what he could send home. All in all, I liked Vince/Hawkeye and hoped to see him on the trail.