Date: 2010-05-12
From: Damascus, Va

To: Damascus, Va
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Day 67Nice quiet slow morning. I came up to the bathhouse to charge my Droid and just hung around and chatted with the other campers for a very long time, enough to charge 1 1/2 batteries. Eventually JB arrived with all his awesome gear. Cookers, grills, coolers, etc. I helped him unload and then we started to cut up some wood for the drum circle. I thought JB was cutting logs to big for the fire but he said they were the ones he was told to cut. Later Divinity and Trixie arrived. Divinity is a member of the TrailTalk forum I frequent and Trixie is a friend of her who joined her for the festival. This is the first time I have met either of them but like with everyother TrailTalker I have met, they were just like family very shortly. They were heading for town and the grocery store so I skipped out on wood gathering and went with them. I did the tour guide thing since I practically live in this town these days. Then they took me back to camp. They are camping up in the hills because the camping area is supposed to be closed until Thursday, but they will return in the morning with their gear.JB has roped us out an awesome area and there will be room for a lot of tents. I helped him situate his gear and now we have a tarp and a canopy up. Which was good because it started to rain. JB cooked up some BBQ chicken legs and I scarfed down 7 or 8 of them. I didn't want to eat to much because a local church was holding a "feed the hungry hiker" event 2 hours later. JB and I then went over to the manufacturers reps area and hung out with a friend of his. I showed one of the guts who repairs gear my Ribz Front Pack because I thought it was coming apart due to all the threads that I was always pulling out of it. The guy said he would sew it up for me, but it turned out that the Ribz Front Pack was constructed really well but the material was just finished badly. The treads were just loose strands from the left over material beyond the seam. Good to know that its not falling apart because I really like it.We went back to camp to grab some stuff before heading to the hiker feed and ran into Chinmusic. He said wilkbill and the others who had hiked in had went back out of town to camp becaulse they were told the camp area wasn't open yet. We told Chin the Trailtalk area was so we unloaded all his stuff and set up his stuff. Finally we were off to the hiker feed where I stuffed my face with a couple cheeseburgers and sides. In the meantime I got a message from Kashmir up in pearisburg that he was having a hard time finding a ride. I asked Chinmusic, who loves all things concerning thruhiking, if he was up for a 4 hour round trip to pick up a thruhiker friend of mine. He was all for it and off we went. The time passed amazingly fast and I managed to finagle a stop at a dairy queen for a blizzard. While we were gone to other trailtalkers showed up at camp and didn't find anyone there. They messaged me on Facebook with their phone number but all I got was there voice mail. People, get Verizon. It rules in the mountains. I don't know where they are now but I imagine many people will be piling in tomorrow. We only had a few people around the campfire tonight so I cut out early to charge the phone while I showered and then write this journal sitting next to the sink connected to the power outlet like I am a robot or something. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.On the homefront, Jason has been sick and had a bloody discharge from his ears. It turns out that he has a bad ear infection, but Trish caught it early so he has medicine and isn't in much pain. He did have to stay home from school today and Trish has missed so much work lately between him and her being sick that she couldn't afford to miss another day. So my youngest daughter had to stay home from school to take care of him. Its funny because she doesn't like to miss school and my eldest does. But the eldest grades aren't so well so she can't afford to miss any days. Life is weird.Goodnight and Sweet dreams to all of you out there not living the Hiker Feed and Car Camping Dream.