Date: 2004-02-07
From: Hiawassee, GA

To: Hiawasse, GA (Holiday Inn Express)
Miles today: 0.0

Log entry: 7Breakfast: continental breakfastLunch: meat pizza from the Front Porch DeliDinner: snacked on barbeque chips and red raspberry creme sodaMoney spent: $16 (12 for pizza, 4 for snacks and oven bags to use to store stuff)Biggest complaints: no complaints!!!Thoughts:PocketMail crashed, lost several entries, please wait for updatesNarrative added 2/27/04The clerk at the desk though that the library opened at 0900 so I was up by 0800 to take full advantage of the continental breakfast. Which I did make a mockery of. I ate glazed doughnuts like they were Skittles or better yet, Mentos. By 0900 I was at the library which opens at 1000 on Saturdays. So I headed across the parking lot to the laundry mat where I journaled in my pocketmail. Before I knew it I had burned an hour and there were lights on in at the book thingy. The librarian was real helpful getting me setup with the Internet. So I journaled a little that way and sent some emails out. 3 hours later I packed up and headed over to the Food City to pick up some snacks. I had a hankering for barbeque chips and I found the biggest bag of cheapest knock-off brand I could find. I did the same with a 2 liter of IGA raspberry cr me soda. For less than 2 bucks I had over 5 thousand calories. Bingo. I then placed an order for a medium meat pizza at the Front Porch Deli and then quickly headed into the Holiday Inn to drop my stuff off. As I munched on pizza I watched The Usual Suspects. My favorite line, ¢A man can convince anyone that he¢s changed; but never himself¢. That¢s pretty deep stuff. After that was Lethal Weapon 4, so I was like, ¢hey I have a 2 liter of cheap soda and a garbage bag full of chips, why not¢. So I laughed my way through that. Following Lethal Weapon 4 was Gone in 60 seconds again. Since it was easier to sit still for another 2 and half hours than to do anything productive, I watched that too. But after that came some NASCAR event and that was enough to get me out of bed so I headed down and out to the Food City again to pick-up some plastic bags to keep my sleeping bag dry. As I walked outside I noticed the gently falling snow. It was pretty neat.As I was checking out the cashier, a high school boy, asked if I was ¢hiking thru¢. I told him I planned on it. I asked him what he thought of the snow and he said, I won¢t forget it either, ¢I love the snow. I¢ve been praying all night that it keeps up so we don¢t have school on Monday.¢ ¢Yeah, that¢d be cool¢ I said. And then he goes, ¢But wait, you¢ll be up in the mountains by then, and you won¢t have no heater neither so I guess I¢ll quit praying for snow.¢ I did not think much of it but thanked him for his kind thoughts but it hit me walking up to the hotel. Back when I was in school, there wasn¢t a person in the world that I cared about if there was a chance that school was going to be called off. I would pray so long and hard. How selfish of me. Here this boy, barely 16 I guessed, gave up a day to sleep in for a strangers comfort. That is a noble and selfless act. I think we could all learn something from that cashier. Then as I walked into the Holiday Inn, there is a guy standing at the counter wearing a ¢work sucks: I¢m going to the mountains¢ t-shirt and he says, ¢Officer Taco?¢ I could think of nothing else to say except, ¢I¢ve been called worse.¢ He introduced himself as Dave Greenleif I think. He¢s on trailjournals as Dave Green and his trail name is Heyacritters. Anyways we talked for quite some time there at the desk. He had just read my journals which I had only posted like 10 hours ago. That¢s why I was so weird to hear me called by my trailname already. After about 20 minutes of chatter he announced that his wife and kids were in the truck waiting so I gave him my room number and told him to stop by.About an hour later there was a soft knock at the door. I was going over my food for the week and Dave and I ran the gamut of typical hiker talk. See has a good head and his shoulders and was hoping to catch up with me, I pulled a Hoot from Blackhawk down and said, ¢Don¢t even think about it, I¢m better off on my own anyways¢. He said he was still going to try and I wished him well. After about an hour of discussion he retired to his quarters and I started packing things up. By this time the race was over and Zorro was coming on. So I watched that. This hiking stuff is fun.