Date: 2011-08-01
From: (116) Gorham, White Mountain Hostel

To: (117) Carlo Col Shelter
Miles today: 17.0

I slept in on purpose to get my money¢s worth out of the soft bed I was laying on (Complete with cotton sheets and even a pillow!). Upon waking, I went downstairs and ate the hostel¢s included breakfast: oatmeal, hash browns, egg burrito, and a muffin. After eating I joined Tridub, Vegan, Red Moose, Cayenne, Gingersnap, Hazard, and the South Bounders (whose names I didn¢t bother to remember), and watched TV from the comfort of the cushioned couch. When I finally did start to hike I went very slow, taking my time without a care in the world. I only need a measly 20 miles a day to be home by Aug 15th, which would be a good finish date as it would leave me some time to enjoy the summer with my family, as well as get a head start on job searching. I am not sure what I can obtain career wise, but I can at least find entry level work while I search for something that utilizes my many obvious talents (Walking really far, eating nothing but junk food for months without having a heart attack, cutting the tags off of my t-shirt to save weight, throwing rocks at squirrels, and willingness to poop in the woods). Anyway, I plan on throwing one or two more 50 milers in before Katahdin, so time is of little concern.I climbed Mt Success today after hours of hiking (Success!), and at the top had a grand view of Mt Washington and the Presidentials still towering above all other things as though I had not put any distance between them and myself. Shortly after I hit the border of New Hampshire and entered Maine, the last state of my hike. I did not get terribly excited, however. If anything I felt kind of burnt out and didn¢t really care at all. I am tired of this journey, but at the same time I do not wish for it to end. Honestly, it no longer seems like a journey at all, but rather everyday life. It is my niche, my normal routine, and my inevitable return to society seems like the adventure, not the trail. Kind of like the trail and society have switched places. And so, when I passed the border into Maine, I shrugged my shoulders. One more state, big deal. (I pretended to pee on the sign for Red Moose¢s amusement, my way of saying that Maine doesn¢t scare me). I arrived at the first shelter in Maine early and was later joined by Red Moose, Hazard, and Tridub. We had loads of fun talking with all of the section hikers at the shelter. One guy told us he that he was hiking with a guy named ¢Floater¢, and that Floater was a past thru hiker who was incredibly slow. The guy said that they had only done 5 miles that day, and that Floater was still hiking because he takes breaks every couple of minutes (They had been waiting several hours for Floater at the shelter, having gotten there themselves early that morning). Then a lady section hiker added to the Floater stories by telling us about a 4 foot tall girl named ¢Baggins¢ (Apparently Baggins wore a pack that was too big for her short stature, so that all you could see when she walked down the trail was a pack and two pairs of legs). Baggins used to hold claim to being the slowest hiker on the AT, until one day she passed the infamous Floater, and lost her title. Upon asking what Floater did when it started to get dark on him, we were told that just the other day Floater had not made it down the last mountain into camp, and instead went to sleep beside the trail, positioning himself between the rocks so that he would not roll away (and it is ROCKY in Maine). It was all too much for Red Moose, Tridub, Hazard and I, and we nearly died with laughter having all passed Flounder ourselves that day and having to step around him since he was lying on his back in the middle of the trail, gasping for air! (Floater, a heavy set man in his mid 40¢s, had asked me for water as I carefully climbed around the road block that was his body. Needless to say, I wasn¢t carrying any). Eventually Floater showed up at the shelter, but he was tired and not much for talking (It had taken him hours to cover what had taken me half an hour at most). Before the 4 of us went to bed in the shelter loft, Hazard gave us some tips for hitch hiking. The first was to get a small American Flag like he had to wave at passing cars. Hazard claimed that he always got picked up while waving the flag, and that once he pulled it out as a joke and got a ride from a car that happened to be going by. ¢Thanks for the ride!¢ Hazard had said.Driver: ¢Well, I wasn¢t going to pick you up, but then I saw the American Flag, and I knew I had too.¢As I listened, it all made perfect sense to me. A driver would see a smelly, dirty hiker holding an American Flag and think, ¢Ewe, I¢m not going to pick him up, he¢s a hitch hiker! ¢¦Oooohhh, but he¢s a patriot¢¦¢ And then the driver would feel compelled to pull over. I¢ll have to get a flag for myself.The second tip for hitch hiking Hazard showed us was ¢The Magic Trick.¢ In this method a hiker holds one hand out in front of himself with a bandanna covering it. Then, the town-bound hiker takes his other hand and waves it over the first while making ¢Fierce eye contact¢ with a driver. Upon catching the driver¢s full and confused attention, the hiker removes the bandanna as a magician would to reveal his thumb sticking up. The impressed driver pulls over, and the hiker has successfully ¢thumbed¢ a ride into the trail town of his choosing. Hazard is crazy.