Date: 2008-04-24
From: Paul C. Wolfe Shelter VA

To: Quality Inn Waynesboro VA
Miles today: 5.0

Day 67 ¢ Thursday April 24 ¢ Quality Inn Waynesboro VA ¢ Miles Today: 5.0 Total Miles: 850.5Two hikers arrived to the shelter last night after dark. We didn't think they were thru-hikers as they arrived so late and were up even later enjoying a bonfire. Not your typical thru-hiker who goes to bed at sunset. We met them this morning at the continental breakfast at the Quality Inn and they are thru-hikers! Both are young guys, in their 20s. Trill was the name of one hiker; our memories have forgotten the name of the other hiker. One of them apparently had a bad case of body odor, as when a motel worker walked by him, she muttered, ¢Woooo, something stinks!¢ It is still our belief that body cleanliness on the trail could be more controlled if desired. We all had access to water last night and we only hiked 5 miles this morning in reasonable temps. Everyone could have arrived to town in somewhat of a socially acceptable state, if an effort was made. Just our opinion, though, and not to pick on these hikers - just a in-general comment.Although there was no rain drumming on our tent walls last night to keep us awake, it does not mean that all parties slept well. Brakeman apparently had very little sleep because he spent the night counting waffles as they were jumping over the fence! We¢ve got to get his hiker hunger under control! We were up at 5:00 and believe it or not, we were ready in less than 30 minutes. There is great motivation when one is heading to town for FOOD. We ate the last of our crumbs on the way into town and literally arrived in town with not a single bit of food in our pack. We had even eaten our emergency dinner. This segment of the trip has been all about food, or lack there of.We got to the Visitor's Center at 8:00 and by the time we got the dirt cleaned off our shoes, Bill, our trail angel had arrived. We were thrilled that he arrived early, about 8:15, as that just made our getting to food that much quicker! Bill gave us a great tour of town - all the restaurants, churches, YMCA, library, and pharmacy. You name it and we saw it on our tour. Brakeman, meanwhile, is sitting as patiently as possible in the front seat saying to himself, ¢Would you stop giving us the tour of the damn town, we want to hit the continental breakfast and it's closing down soon! I have had mental images of waffles in my mind for over 12 hours, I want the real stuff now!¢ But Bill was very sweet. He took us to the post office and actually came in with us because we mentioned that we had numerous boxes to pick up and he thought we might need help carrying them. Very nice. Would you believe there were 7 boxes for us!! Two boxes of shoes, 1 box with Brakeman¢s backpack, our food drop box and 3 care packages from Sandy, Laura and Jim! But one box was missing. We were supposed to have 2 backpacks from Gregory. One loaner pack and one new Triconi pack that we could use for the remainder of our trip to try it out to see if we like it. The other bad news is that one Gregory box that did arrive was sent Fed Ex to the Post Office rather than General Delivery. We had to pay $40 to accept the package! We had no choice because we needed a replacement pack. But it's the cost of ¢doing the trail¢ so we paid the $40, got our pack and were out of there. We checked into the motel at 9:00, dumped our gear in the room and immediately sat down to eat an enormous delightful continental breakfast. We finished up some of the food items, such as the waffles and eggs, before Trill and the other thru-hiker arrived. Oops, sorry guys, we didn¢t know you were coming.After breakfast, we spent the next 12 hours doing chores - hand washing our clothes, cleaning gear, sewing Brakeman's new shoe, phone calls, going back to the post office to mail our old shoes to REI to see if we could get a refund as they didn't hold up very well, going to the library and catching up on emails, eating, grocery shopping and researching why we only got one pack form Gregory. You name it, we were doing it. We would later learn that Gregory decided to send us just one pack, per the loaner program. The new Triconi pack that Karen had lined up for us was axed by the management team. Bummer, Brakeman could really have used the smaller size and it would have been a great way to check out a pack before buying it. It was a very busy day. It¢s now after 9:00 p.m. and we have just finished doing all our chores. We're exhausted and hitting the sack. Goodnight from Waynesboro. We finally made it here.