Date: 2004-06-19
From: Georgia

To: Maine
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: light rain

L Dee's Pancake House, Front Royal, VANext morningNow it's pancakes and scrapple and coffee, coffee coffee. Lovely nightof motel comfort last night courteously of PG who said, "Jester, it's mytreat. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have had this excellentaqua blaze adventure!" Works for me. Forking out the dough for motelsgives me a real pain in the groin, as it were. It inflames years ofingrained poverty consciousness. With so many free hostels andcampgrounds and the entire free forest, well, I'd rather spend whatlittle dough I have on good food and beer. So off PG & Spiceman went to shop and resupply and PG took with her ashort list of stuffs I needed and took my laundry (all one pair ofshorts, a shirt and socks) and did that with theirs and brought me backMcD's burgers to boot and all the while I wrote and wrote and wrotetrying to wrap up this story and when it came down to turning the TVon, good girl PG was even kind enough to abstain so's to allow me toconcentrate and into bed they crawled and I doused the lights and metyping then in the dark by the thin beam of my headlamp and thereassuring whir of the A/C. And somewhere across the world agro pissed off towel heads take anotherAmerican head and I think thank God for the woods and the blissfulignorance of us, rowing, trekking free and full of beans high throughthe mountains of the East, oblivious. But not, of course. Sadly not.I think of Linda back in Idyllwild who sent me a box of "blondie"brownies that I never received and then never heard from her since asshe no doubt thought me ungrateful. Poor Linda. But the postalworkers are bogged down out here with thruhikers and perhaps a littlecareless, scanning the shelves full of general delivery hiker packagesand missing one or two, figuring they've found em all. So now I gottafind out what town them blondies are sitting in and get em forwarded tome and eat em up, yum yum. I hope she sent em Priority. Postal ladythis morning told me with Priority shipping they'll forward em as oftenas you like so long as they go unopened.And then there's Mike, in my mind these last few days when I noticed anexcess in my Paypal account and discovered he'd sent another donationto the cause. God bless him. I can count my Jigglebox supportersover the years on one, well, two hands I guess. God bless every one ofyou for believing in the Holy Grailesque Quest of this Gonzo Author. And thoughts of Dad this morning with Fathers Day just tomorrow and meall spun out on river dreams and trail magic and town-stop resupplyingbut wow! So happy happy full of fat buddha joy to hear Dad on thephone from New Hampshire the other day praising and raving `bout thewriting, loving my AT Journal, his voice all fulla pride and me, notknowing I did but needing to hear his pride, big time. "The way you describe your hike, I feel like I'm right there with you. I can see the roots, the rocks, the sky, fantastic." Something likethat. I love my Jesus-lovin' Dad and am pleased as punch that he'senjoying my not-altogether pious or God-fearing Gonzo ramblings. HappyFather's Day, Dad.Sitting here watching peripherally as PG & Spiceman chow down breakfastand I slurp coffee and type maniacally, knowing that soon I'll be backin the Blue Ridge and out of service area. Gotta send this shit outnow! Spiceman with jawbone beard and goatee and curly hair lookingevery bit Bob Dillon at age 21 chomps a banana and I thank God he'sstill with us after our mad rock face scrambling, rope less and stonedabove the river. All was well and Spiceman fingered his way up thatface like a pro, doing finger jams and hard reaches and always danglinghigh out over the river. I followed but got not nearly so far up ashe, and feeling stuck, let go and launched backwards through space tothe safety of deep water twenty feet below. But soon Spiceman was damn near outa sight some 60 feet up and in themidst of loosely-rooted cliff-dweller plant life. Then we heard theraking sound of a lost footing and the tiny trees fluttered and rockscascaded down to the river as Spiceman slipped and barely caughthimself. Good thing, too. Because unlike where I'd jumped from flatrock face to river straight below, the debris falling from Spiceman'sperch hit a lower shelf before ricocheting into the water below. HadSpiceman fallen, it wouldn't have been pretty. Unless of course he'sreally a Bumble and didn't tell us! Because as you may recall fromChristmas cartoons of years past, Bumbles bounce!-RSM[Postpostpostscript: Special thanks to Mama and Papa O in Charlotte, NCfor their kindness and fantastic southern hospitality a few weeks back.My last entry in Post 9 was a maniacal half-drunken ramble that hadeverything to do with my own personal discomfort with extended stayswith ANYONE, and nothing to do with them. I did well to last 10 dayswith one family. I've been such a loner for so long.]For the full story of Rick's journey, visit Jigglebox.com