Date: 2016-04-13
From: Erwin, TN

To: Base of Unaka Mountain
Miles today: 12.3
Weather: clear sky

"As human beings, we are the only organisms that create for the sheer stupid pleasure of doing so. Whether it's laying out a garden, composing a new tune on the piano, writing a bit of poetry, manipulating a digital photo, redecorating a room, or inventing a new chili recipe -- we are happiest when we are creating." - Gary HamelDay 33I packed up, caught a shuttle to the trailhead, and began the long climb out of Erwin. The first few miles featured several streams, springs, and footbridges surrounded by mountain laurels...really a pretty section. As I continued the climb, a 2700 foot elevation gain, I really felt the heat and the weight of my fully loaded, post-trail town backpack. Sweat poured off me and I was drinking a liter of water with electrolytes every 2 hours. Once again, I was glad that I had lived, trained, and ran in Florida for several years before my thru-hike attempt. That doesn't make it easy, but you learn how to deal with and adapt to the heat by being out in it a lot.At Beauty Spot Gap, mile 353.9, Tetris, Mumbles and I stopped for some...Trail Magic! Brother Tom, a Trail Angel, hooked us up with some coffee, lemonade, and snacks. Thanks, Brother Tom!After a 12.3 mile, mostly uphill day, I tented at the base of Unaka Mountain, along with two twenty-somethings...Tetris (former auditor for the Department of Education in New York) and Mumbles from Lexington, Kentucky. Given the exhausting day and and my belief that my pack was too heavy, I decided to eat the heaviest food item I had. After reviewing all of them, the winning contestant was the previously mentioned (Day 31) Bear Creek Country Kitchens Darn Good Chili Mix, taken from the hiker box at Erwin's Super 8. Weighing a whopping 9.8 ounces, and featuring three kinds of beans and a blend of spices, it seemed like a perfect choice.Folks, the devil is always in the details. Fine print matters. As a sat there on a log, at the base of Unaka Mountain, starving and licking my salty face, I read the instructions. I noticed that it called for 7 cups of water, a 6 ounce can of tomato paste, and a simmer time of 20-25 minutes. Realistically, none of that was going to happen. That is why it was in the hiker box. That is why, if I could live Day 33 over, I would have violated Leave No Trace principles and chucked the Darn Good Chili Mix into the forest for the ants and squirrels to deal with. But no, not Fob! I was going to be creative, to adapt, to take matters into my own hands. I intended to eat those 8 servings of chili on my own terms, following my own instructions. Translation: all 9.8 ounces of the Darn Good mix, only 2.5 cups of water, no tomato paste, and just 8 minutes of simmer time. For you cooks out there, including my brother-in-law Scott, warning sirens are now going off. I had no clue. I was a stupid, exhausted, hungry hiker. And I was about to create what Hispanics call Chile Bola De Fuego Nuclear...the highly toxic Nuclear Fireball Chili! My creation smelled terrific, but was thicker than a DQ Blizzard made with 10W-40 motor oil and the brown sugar cinnamon pop tart sawdust at the bottom of my food bag. You could set fence posts with this stuff. To make it just juicy enough to swallow, I added my final three packets of Tabasco sauce. If this were a movie, the scary music would be starting now.As I slowly ate, a process that took 40 minutes (about 5 minutes per serving), I ignored the warning signs, including a mountain-shaking belch after every third or fourth bite. I was a hungry long-distance hiker, this was my own recipe, and I was going to eat it. All of it. In retrospect, I was being Fobstinate. As Tetris looked on, that's exactly what I did. He remained silent, but had a concerned, "Is he really going to eat all that?" look on his face. A closer friend would have intervened.(TMI Alert: Sensitive readers should bail out now.)I finished off the last of the eight Darn Good servings, said good night, and crawled into my tent just after 9 p.m., hiker midnight. At 9:05, my stomach made the sound of a mother grizzly bear mourning the loss of her cubs. I rolled over onto my stomach on the appropriately named air mattress. My opening salvo was a burst of about nine trouser clouds, as if to announce the arrival of royalty. I heard giggles outside and laughed myself. Then came a 7-second long, high pitched squealer that sounded like someone letting air out of a ballon. I had become a human fart app! I could fart at will, but much more so when not willed.Moments later, the partially cooked, partially digested, Tabasco-coated beans in my large intestine began colliding at high speeds, like atomic nuclei. My bowel matter was fusing quicker than I could say Darn Good Chili, and the highly charged particles were converted to photon energy. In other words, I had inadvertently created a nuclear fusion-powered wind tunnel in my digestive track. If I hadn't donned my emergency travel Depends, escaping Darn Good beans would have been ricocheting all over the inside of my tent. By 10:30 p.m. when I stopped counting, I had farted more than 220 times. Not just any farts...Darn Good ones.As embarrassing as the noises were, that wasn't the real issue. Pungent doesn't begin to describe the smell in my tent. I was nesting in a Chernobyl I had created. Each time I raised my behind, I buried my nose further into my clothes bag. It didn't work. Do I suffocate in my clothes bag, or die from toxic fumes? What would they write in my obituary? I considered opening the tent's zipper to create a backdraft, but that could invite mosquitos, mice, and other creepy crawlies. (Although technically only the American cockroach could survive in such a toxic environment.) As the minutes passed and the salvos increased in frequency, intensity, and pungency, I became desperate. I didn't want my thru-hike attempt to end this way. And desperate times call for desperate measures. In times like these, I ask myself, "What would Larry Alexander (my AT mentor) do?" And that's when it came to me! I reached up with two hands, pulled both earplugs out of my ears, reversed them, and jammed them up my nostrils! Problem solved! Bear Grylls ain't got nothin' on Fob!Fob