Date: 2003-09-26
From: Damascus, VA

To: Damascus, VA
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: few clouds

Well, I had a very interesting night last night. Smokey, Cephas, and I went to eat pizza for supper and then went back to the hostel and sat in the dining area and talked for awhile. Smokey's cousin lives nearby and came to visit. After sitting for awhile I got tired and I decided to go lay down. When I went to lay my sleeping bag out, I noticed it was gone. After looking around some more, we realized that more than just the sleeping bag was gone. Smokey was missing a camera and a new pair of socks, Cephas was missing a headlamp and some other things and I was also missing my radio. When we got to the hostel around 2 o'clock this afternoon a very questionable guy was there. He was definitely drunk and he left during the afternoon. We were very glad to see him go. We figured that it had to be him that came back while we were eating and stole our stuff. We knew from another northbound section hiker in town that this guy was sleeping under a bridge in town, so Smokey's cousin drove us around town to the bridges and Smokey and I got out with our headlamps looking for the guy. We saw a campfire at one of the bridges and we thought that he must be staying there. We walked down there but he wasn't there. We had also heard that he had 2 grenades in his pack, so we decided we better not go after him alone. Smokey and Cephas persuaded me to call the police and we rode around town with the policeman for an hour and a half. We went to every bridge in town and to all the camping spots. We found Smokey's camera near the city pool. It was smashed and demolished and laying beside an empty beer can. After we didn't have any luck, we went back to the hostel for the night. The hostel isn't heated so I had to sleep in all of my clothes and I woke up around 4 AM and I was cold! I threw a bunch of towels over me to warm me up. I didn't sleep too well last night because I thought this crazy guy might come back. Smokey and I got up around 7:30 this morning and walked around town looking for the guy again. We carried our trekking poles just in case:) After going under a few more bridges, we went back to the hostel for awhile. I then decided to call mama and let her know what was going on. While I was on the phone with her, Cephas and the guy who runs the hostel pulled up and said "Jump in the truck, they caught him." So I said bye really quick and jumped in and we drove off. They found him buying beer at a local convenient store and they got him to take us to where he was camping out. It was under one of the bridges that we went to the night before and Smokey and I went there this morning. He was about 10 feet from where we looked. When we got there, his stuff wasn't there and he said that somebody had stolen his gear. After the policeman kept questioning he finally got caught in a bunch of lies and confessed to it and he told us where our stuff was. It was in the woods about 25 feet away. So we got extremely lucky and got ALL of our stuff back!!!! The policeman arrested him and said that we have to come back to court in January! I'm not looking forward to that, but if it'll keep that sorry bum off the street I'll do it! This just shows how amazing God is! He has taken care of me the entire trip and I'm very thankful for that! Damascus has really turned out to be a friendly and helpful town!