Date: 2004-05-16
From: Pearisburg, VA (Holy Family Hostel)

To: Rice Field Shelter
Miles today: 7.3
Weather: light rain

Woke up this morning to the smell of fresh brewed coffee. My oh my. Heaven comes to the hostel. Heat Miser and I stumble downstairs and we have brewed coffee with Whip cream. He says he feels like Folgers commercial, standing out on the patio and drinking coffee, over looking some mighty purty country. Next miracle, Bob shows up. Bob Carter lives down the street comes up and asks if anyone is in the mood for breakfast. We're all standing around in a daze when he says, tell you what, I'll get breakfast for everyone. He ends up buying breakfast of biscuits and gravy, egg and bacon sandwiches, cinnamon roll, hash browns and orange juice for everyone at the hostel. He writes it off for business. We all eat until we pop. During the night, we got a fifth thruhiker in, MadLibber. He hitched in from Damascus after midnight. He tells us it's chaos. Rain has made the campsite a pool of mud. Everyone is drunk and rowdy. This is why I didn't want to go to Trail Days. Not my scene. MadLibber, John and Indy go off to do a white water rafting thing. Heat Miser packs up and heads for the library. I wash up all my cookware, the water bag and Nalgene. Lubricate my water filter. I pack up and head for the Laundromat. The soap machine is out of order. A nice lady leaving gives me the remainder of her laundry soap. Thank you. I'm wearing my midweight long underwear. It's the only thing I have clean. People look at me strangely. I don't care. I'm going to have clean clothes. After laundry, walk to the Plaza Motel and get a room, where I dropped everything, set an alarm and take a nap on a real bed with clean sheets. Oh my, after that breakfast, that is all I could think of, going back to bed. I got up and looked over all my equipment, repack for tomorrow morning. I have five days of food. The pack is heavy. I look forward to Catawba, where the summer sleeping bag will be in the mail. I'll get to trade two and half pounds for one pound of cooler sleeping arrangements. I watch the Weather station, make phone calls, and talk to the guy in the next room, who is also from Texas. Rain falls from the sky. The weather station promises high percentage of rain for the next few days. But the temperatures will be between 50 and 75 degrees. I can live with that. I get a call from Paul. We talk and talk. The plan is for a Front Royal meeting. I miss my honey and the dogs. I'll be counting the days. In the last few days, at the shelters, the conversations have been about statistics. How many of us will be at Harpers Ferry. Toe Break says, how many make it past Harpers Ferry. His last attempt, he made it but a few days later ended up going home for knee surgery. I remember BearBehind saying he dropped off at Front Royal. I've put a calculator to the task. Barring accidents and homesickness, I can maintain my 12 to 15 miles a day and make it to Kahtadin by October. Strange to be thinking like that. I've had my days of thinking about home. I think about not having a vegetable garden this year. I think about having lunch with Helen on Thursdays. DimSum with Drusilla. Walking the dogs and catching the gossip in the neighborhood.   I've been out two months. Sometimes the people I shelter with seem closer then some people I call friends. I've had to practice being true to my own goals and desires on the trail.   I practice "live and let live" I'm debating getting a small AM/FM radio that is very popular out here. I miss continuity. Sometimes I feel like I'm indulging in my own insanity.Then comes a perfect day, company on the trail that I enjoy, and everything seems to be pointed to staying and getting to Maine. I write these journals to share a part of my life. I have debated how much I want to reveal of some of the inner stuff. I got e-mail about my black hole day. Maybe I need to share more of the inner stuff. I'll try it for awhile and see what kind of comments I get from the readers.Namaste'