Date: 2007-03-24
From: zero day travel to beach

To: Zero Day at beach
Miles today: 0.0

I'm up too early and get out of the rented condo without making too much commotion. I get in my wife's car and head to Starbucks but they aren't open yet. Neither is McDonalds. I keep driving until I get to a Super Walmart that is always open. Across the street a Dunkin Donuts appears the way a lake might appear to a person traveling across the desert on his hands and knees. I get a large black coffee and a butternut donut, so good, it is gone before I can admire its perfect round shape or the way the nut crumbs miraculously stick to it as I pick it up and press it into my mouth in four quick bites. The coffee is almost as good as Starbucks, the wait staff older, pudgier, and less preoccupied with hair conditioner. The customers talk to each other about the basketball game the night before. Carolina somehow managed to overcome a sixteen point deficit and offer a great topic of conversation for the entire day. Maybe I should have stayed awake to watch the end of the game, but no, I am thinking about the trail and that means resting up and healing up. I could care less about basketball or the fuel injectors one fellow several seats down is talking about. I hate Krispy Kreams and would not go into one if it was the only donut shop existing after a typhoon. This is the second thing that is making any native of the Tarheel state shudder. A man who could care less about Carolina basketball and Krispy Kream Donuts must be a yankee. I am from Ohio and proud to be rooting for the Ohio State Buckeyes, thank you very much. Dunkin Donuts has decent coffee and really good donuts. I could eat several but I'm going to stop after the one Butternut and hold out for some eggs back at the condo. I fell in the bathtub yesterday after being too long under the hot jets of the Jacuzzi. My left wrist hurts like hell everytime I try to put weight on it. That is every time I try to stand up since my legs are so sore and weak that I can't get up without a good push from my arms. My plan for the day is to catch up on my trail journal and to sit in the hot sun and hope my aches and pains go away. There is a hot tub and a swimming pool in the complex of condos where we are staying. I will definitely spend some time there.I visit Walmart and head right to the camping section. I think about buying a compass but end up leaving the camping section without a purchase. I do buy an assortment of ziplock bags and granola bars in the grocery section and manage to spend sixteen dollars total. On the way back to the condo I stop at the Starbucks, that is now open, and marvel since the wait staff there looks exactly like the wait staff at the Dunkin Donuts except they are males instead of females. I can't explain it. I decide to sit and drink my coffee there and plump down in one of their oversized chairs. I'm close to the college campus and the typical assortment of college types show up to amuse me while I write. Why none of them is in enough need of money to work at the Starbucks worries me. I think about the money I send my son every month. I wonder if he might be able to work a few more hours a week than the few hours he works on campus.Looking at people's bodies is a disgustingly bad habit especially since mine has never matched my own perception. I try to reach some conclusion about each person who comes in the door but realize I'm as bad at reading bodies as I am at reading minds. The women seem to be too thin or too fat, the ones who are of stocky build seem to be the ones who are the most confident. That seems to describe all the men. I think about hiking. I wonder if I hike more if I will lose another twenty pounds. I know, no matter how much weight I lose, that I will gain it back unless I can continue too engage in activities that burn 6000 calories a day or I eat less. I have a lot of calories working me over. I wonder if I will ever work out a solution. Maybe I'm just another overfed American who spends too much time thinking about food. (and coffee!)A young guy, about 25, pulls up in a white sports car. The car has a sun roof that is flipped up like an air foil and custom seats that are even blacker than the darkly tinted windows. He is tall and thin with a new hair cut that has his gelled dark bristles standing as stiff as a Marine sargeant's hair on his wedding day. He has a well trimmed goatee. He is wearing tight white jeans set-0ff by a black belt with a silver buckle. He wears black loafers and a black T-shirt like Don Johnson always wore on the Miami Vice TV show. Maybe he has his sport jacket in the car. There is a bluetooth phone planted in his ear and he is wearing a pair of black and chrome wrap-around sunglasses. I wish I had the nerve to take out my camera and take his photo as he buys coffee. He walks out ten minutes later with a large bag of pastry and a gallon tank of coffee. He leaves the parking lot like a fighter pilot leaving the deck of an aircraft carrier at the controls of an F-16. Where could he be going dressed so nicely at eight o'clock on a Saturday morning? He makes me think of the movie "The Devil Wears Prada" except his muse is some rich Yacht broker. I go back to admiring my cup of coffee, it seems a lot more reasonable to think about something I can grasp. I wish I was on the trail.