Date: 2016-05-07
From: VA 624, Newport Rd

To: VA 624, Newport Rd
Miles today: 0.0

I had another good morning. I ran into Stitch at breakfast and she invited me to join her group. I met Secret Agent who is from Massachusetts and got his name because he was not signing the logs at the shelters. When they asked him why he said he was on a mission and did not want anybody to know who or where he was. Thus...Secret Agent. I also met Garfield. He got his name because he eats a lot. I saw Maggie who I had met before but her name is now Rubix because she carries a Rubix cube with her and tries to solve it faster and faster. She was sitting with Fisherman. He is from Switzerland and was happy to learn I was hiking with Crisscross and Sunray a few days earlier and let him know they should be in town today. That group, including Bevo, have been 1/2 to 1 day ahead of me for a week. I went back to the room and got my gear that I was going to mail home. I am now about 3 lbs lighter. I walked over to Verizon first and told them that I did what they asked me to do and my phone is still the same. There was a different guy there and he took over my problem and suggested I back everything up to the Cloud then he would try something to see if it would work. It took a while to finally get it going to back up and then the back up would take a couple of hours. I went for lunch at Bojangles. Then went to the outfitter to make a couple of small purchases. While I was there Secret Agent introduced me to Bevo and sure enough he did attend the University of Texas and lives in Austin. Bevo is the mascot name for UT. A good story about that...years ago Texas A&M beat Texas in football 13-0 and some Aggies stole the mascot longhorn from Austin and branded 13-0 on it. When Texas got it back they rebranded to fix that and it spelled Bevo, thus the name. We Aggies are soooooo clever! We had a nice visit and will surely meet up again. I then went to the UPS store and mailed off my stuff and checked in on my phone...it was still uploading. I wanted to accomplish something with the time I had so I walked back to the hotel to get on the computer. I met two ladies from Germany who were just getting in from the trail, Claudia and Gabby. They are sisters and hiking for 10 days. There are a lot of Germans on the trail. I made plans with a shuttle to take me to where I got off the trail and I will slack pack 25 miles back to town for tomorrow. Back to my problem...I headed back to the Verizon store...it did not work, they gave me a couple of options and they were both expensive. Talked to my stepson Vincent about the problem and what they were suggesting, then I talked to my wife (she usually makes the technology decisions). I think I will need to buy a new phone, not an Iphone but a refurbished Samsung I think, not as pricey. I will decide tomorrow. I bought coffee for the verizon staff since they really tried to help. Sat in the Coffee house next door with a few hikers for a while. Came back to hotel and took a shower and got my pack ready for tomorrows hiking. I will still carry my pack but without a lot of stuff. When I went to the lobby I ran into 2 of the three ladies I had met a couple weeks ago, Fay and Mary, talked to them for a while and they let me know that Siva had gotten off the trail already and headed home. It was good to catch up with them.My next stop was to go to eat and I chose the Three Lil Pigs again. Claudia and Gabby were there so I sat with them. I learned that they are both married to Frenchmen, they also take a sisters only vacation every two years and this is it. Claudia explained why they got so popular right away. The day they were getting on the trail they bought fruit and guacamole and alot of extra stuff that once hiking they realized it was not a good idea...their packs were too heavy. At the shelter they stayed at they shared all their food snacks with everybody just to get rid of it. They were good company during dinner. When finished they went shopping at Kroger and said they were getting wine and would knock on my door when they got back if I wanted to have a drink with them. When I got back to the room I was able to talk to Yvonne for a while discussing my phone issues and how her day went. Claudia and Gabby got back and I joined them outside on the balcony along with Highlander and Nomad, two southern Florida hikers. Ralphie showed up and came over to talk to us for a while. Had a nice time hanging out with them. The ladies got my blog info and my email to keep in touch.