Date: 2006-04-01
From: The Place

To: Dave's Place
Miles today: 0.0

After 32.7 miles, a new record I might add, sleep comes very easily. A hurricane that had rain drops the size of bricks could have come through and i would have never had noticed. I woke up at 9:30am and packed up in time so I could meet Braveheart at the Post office at 10am. So we met up and decided where we were going to stay for the night. Mt Roger's Outfitter has a hostel across the street from their store called Dave's Place that runs $10.00 a night and you get a personal room with key and two beds so we decided to split that.At the post office I met a lady named Suzy Seymore and she invited us to First Baptist church of Damascus for church tomorrow so we said we'd try to make it. I then asked her where we could get mass quantities of food and she told me to drop her name at "Damascus Eats" and they would hook us up. So we headed off for lunch.This whole day I was in celebration mode because we ahve just completed 25% of the trail. So we get to Damascus Eats, drop the name, order - nothing special happens. Don't get me wrong, the food was great bud dropping the name didn't do anything at this local mom & pop eatery.After getting half-full, we went back to the hostel and hung out for a bit. I then went to the library in hopes of messing around on the internet for a while but was only able to get 10 minutes in before the library closed. Oh well. I went back to the hostel and reminded Braveheart of a sign I saw advertising free ice cream for through hikers at the "Dancing Bear" if the ice cream cone flag was flying outside their Bed and Breakfast place.So we went and checked on that - sure enough it was flying so we headed on down. The older couple that ran the B&B were so nice and treated us to the most amazing banana split with homemade strawberry and pinapple topping. so we just chilled there for a bit, shooting the breeze, taliing with the couple. The guy had hiked the trail in '99 and knew Hercules and showed me in a book where someone had written about them. On our way out, they offered us use of two bikes that were given to them, so we gladly accepted. I was so tired of walking, so riding around like the wicked witch from the west all day seemed quite the treat.So in search of internet we headed over to Baja cafe and checked our email and trailjournals. Afterwards, we went back to the hostel, but I shortly returned to Baja so I could write Keri a poem I'd been thinking about. I hadn't written any poetry in sooooo long and my creative juices were very rusty, but regardless I wrote her a poem called "Across the Aisle". It's about how I've seen the other half of God, tenderness, mercy, gentleness, through her. Though I was rusty, I'm sure she'll love it. It'll be my first poem to her - minus the song I wrote her.For dinner, Braveheart and I went to "Sicily's", a pizza joint. A lady named Kim was our waitress. She wanted to know why Braveheart had two different colored crocs so i told her we'd tell her only if she gave us some free food. Some garlic bread later, we explained to her the story. Later on, she told us that her boss had been trying to pull an "April Fools" on her so she wanted to get him back and asked for our help. We gladly agreed. the idea was to call the boss out and complain about the food, but the place got too busy so we left, played some ping-pong at teh youth building where the middle school girls kept trying to flirt with Braveheart, then we returned to pull our prank.The boss came out, a mid 30's young Egyptian guy, and we tore him a new one. "What the heck is going on here?" is how I started out. I told him that his homemade pizza sauce sucked and he needed to get a new one and I expected more out of my pizza for the price I had to pay for it. Braveheart entered in and said that he had had diaria ever since he ate there and that he would have to go to the hospital tonight and that his whole hike was in jeopardy. The climax was when he said, "Is this food from Sicily, or from the crack of my butt?" I couldn't hold back the laughter and neither could he - so now the guy was thinking we were laughing at him when really we were just laughing at how ridiculous that line was. Finally, after a very awkward moment, the waitress said "April Fools" and we just busted out laughing, again. We shook his hand and hugged him. He was so relieved that we were just pranking him.So after that whole ordeal, we headed over to the Old Mill restaurant for some beer and Final Four action. We met the cook, Greg, and he hooked us up with some chips and some left over cuts of meat. At the end of the night we ended up not having to pay for our beer because the credit card machine wasn't working so the manager, Jill, who also invited us to First Baptist, said it was on her - awesome!After returning the bikes, calling mom and Keri, I hit the hayOh! saw suzy at Baja's and she invited us over for dinner on Monday.fries, double cheeseburger - Damascus Eats---newcastle---large pepperoni and sausage pizza - Sicily's---Beer: Samuel's Smith oatmeal stout x2, Samuel Smith's nut brown ale