Date: 2011-05-02
From: Trimpi Shelter

To: Partnership Shelter
Miles today: 10.6
Weather: clear sky

(In which I celebrate my birthday with cake and a nero)Having dropped in elevation from Mt. Rogers, the weather is warm and at night I sleep with my summer sleeping bag unzipped to stay cool.I leave early and make good time to Partnership Shelter. The shelter is famous for its heated shower, bathroom with toilet paper and proximity to a ranger station with a phone to order pizza. I stop to take a shower -- having skipped bathing in Damascus and hiked a few long days since then, I've reached a new olfactory low. The shower is heated and has soap and shampoo. A sign says that disposable towels are available from the ranger station for 25 cents, but I just wipe myself off with my hands, put my shorts back on and dry outside in the sun.Newly clean, I stop by the ranger station to start my Kindle charging. Worse than my smelling bad, skipping Damascus meant that the battery on my Kindle, which I had deliberately run down beforehand, has finally died. No Kindle means no journal -- writing or posting -- so of all of Partnership's amenities, I am happiest for power. Leaving my Kindle in the care of the friendly 82 year old woman in the ranger station, I set out down the road to Marion, thumb stuck out.The road is well traveled, but I start to understand why most hikers skip Marion after I have been walking for more than an hour and been passed by more than a hundred cars. The guidebook says that Marion is 6 miles away, and I get to see most of them as I walk. The sides of the roads are littered with beer cans and chewing tobacco packages, and the rivers and streams are filled with old, rusting appliances. After a month of being on the lookout for the occasional, scandalous Snickers wrapper on the trail, it is depressing to see the state of the rest of the world, or at least Virginia.Finally a pickup truck with two guys in it pulls off the road into a Baptist church parking lot and waits for me to catch up. I tell them I'm looking for a grocery store and they tell me to hop in. It's the fist time I've been in the open bed of a pickup truck since hitching with Trilobite to Hiawassi, and when the truck starts moving the feeling of glorious exhilaration returns. My beard has grown in the past month and I feel the wind pulling it as I squint and watch the town whiz by. If there is a better mode of transportation than riding in the back of a pickup truck, I haven't found it yet.They drop me off at the Food City and my mission begins. I grab bags of Doritos and the largest cake I can find. I pick out a large styrofoam cooler and fill it with cold sodas and a giant one gallon bucket of ValuTime ice cream. A few napkins, plastic cups and spoons later and I am in the checkout line. To get the store discounts I ask the fist person I see if he has a store card and he hands me his bundle of keys and cards. "Walking the trail?" "Sure am." "Need I ride back to it?" I look at my pile of food then turn back to him and nod vigorously. "Then I'm your man."His name is Pete, and I ride in the passenger seat of his truck with monkey, his small dog. Pete's from Long Island, originally, and is not a hiker himself but had friends who tried to hike the trail. "It can do a number on your feet", he says sadly. He drops me off at the ranger station, pulling into the authorized-vehicle-only section to get me as close to the shelter as possible, and wishes me luck.Warbler and Coaster are hanging out at the shelter and they laugh when they see me walk up, arms filled with food. "You really did it", Warbler says in pleasant surprise. Last night she had been describing her own root beer float anticipation and disappointment in Damascus, and I described my intention to bring as much food as I could carry from Marion back to Partnership Shelter. (Apparently a power outage was the source of many hikers' Damascus disillusionment. This makes it easier for me to understand how so many other hikers could have enjoyed Damascus, but does little to motivate me to return.)Hikers come and go throughout the day, and each stops for cake, a root beer float or Doritos -- or usually all three. Most faces are new to me, but a see a few hikers that I've seen once before in the last couple of days. Kevlar and New Boots powered on while I was in town, but by the afternoon hikers from further away who plan to stay at the shelter start arriving. We sit eating and sipping soda, and between the shower and the food everyone is having a good time.Tippy-Toes arrives mid-afternoon, having made good time from the shelter before mine. "Happy birthday!" she calls out when she gets within shouting range. I had left a brief note in the previous shelter's log to alert hikers without getting their expectations too high, in case my mission wasn't successful. "You didn't tell me it was going to be your birthday!" I shrug, sheepish.The afternoon is as pleasantly relaxing as any nero in town, and as filling. When Tippy-Toes finds out that nobody's sung Happy Birthday yet, she leads the shelter in song. At the finish Blue Eyes jumps out with a can of Crazy String and gives me a good coating. After the cake and ice cream settle, we order pizza, cheesy bread, curly fries and cinnamon sticks from the ranger station phone and stuff ourselves again. It is, if I must admit it myself, quite a successful birthday party.