Date: 2002-09-08
From: Maine

To: GA
Miles today: 16.0

Sunday, day 33, September 8, 2002Hard keeping track of days. Kevin who camped next to me last night started in Gaspe, Quebec and he is walking back to his home in Virginia and he is fast. I don¢t know how he does it but he is going to Glencliff today and that is 20 miles.   Don¢t know how old he is. I am out here early, got up and going at 6:30. Just met a north bounder named Hoss he is from Ohio. Real nice kid. Gave me some advice on where to stay tonight.   Going down the trail I ran into his trail buddy, !sloopy is from Ohio too and said they were on the trail 3 weeks apart and they finally caught up to each other and found out they were from the same town and knew the same girls and everything. Met up with !sasquatch from Daytona Beach, Florida, going north. Sasquatch had 2 walking poles about as big as he was and about 2 inches in diameter. Just met a young lady all by herself, she had a nose ring in her nose. 2 water bottles on her shoulder, her name was !trip, she is from Alabama. I met !nasty and he is from Florida, he is north bounder and he is wearing sandals. Met World Traveling Redneck, and met Blister from Florida, also a north bounder. Met Birdman from Maine and dogs name is Bella, been with him since Irwin.   Met !werewolf. Met !sandman from Ohio. Met Poetry from Illinois got her name because she has poetry tattoos on her body so it¢s poetry in motion. Met MacGuyver, and got his name cause he likes to make things, little speakers, electronics, lights etc. Like MacGuyver on TV.   Just reached summit on Moosilauke Mountain and that is the last mountain I have to summit above treeline. Now I am on a downhill run and I think I would like to camp in 3 miles.   It¢s 6 miles to Glencliff and talked to a guy that said there is a nice hostel there but their hot water heater broke down so I might not try to get there in too much of a hurry. I sleep just as well in my tent as I do in a hostel bunk. It is nice and cool here on the mountain. Met a north bounder Mahtombo is his name he is from New Hampshire. Met !superbee another north bounder from New York.   Met Wicked Lizard from Maine, NB.   Talked to Wicked Lizard and he was a very nice young man and I should have asked him what he did and why he was out here. But you know you¢re always in kind of rush to go and get going and I am a downhill and he was on a uphill but maybe if we were on a flat we could have taken more time to visit. Was just now thinking about my classmates. They are having their 45 reunion in Owasa. I was thinking about that and how I used to be. I was such a little stinker. A little rebel rouser. I always thought I had to be a tough little a-hole to gain the admiration of my dad and my uncles because they were so tough. So consequently I never made many friends, always-picking fights; l was littler than the rest of them, just a little scrapper. I was just hateful, I hated the world, and I remember when I got to be freshman in high school and getting picked on by a certain person in the shower room all the time. Won¢t mention any names but he knows who he is. Oh I hated to go in that shower room, I hated every second of it. I was just a little runt when I was freshman, 5¢ 2¢ or something like that and anyway about that summer and my sophomore year I did a lot of reading, always did. Escaped into books. I believe it was the summer of my freshman year and I look back on that year and I thought nobody really likes me and nobody wants to spend time with me and I wondered why and I examined myself and said I need to do something about that.   And I went to the library and found a book by Andrew Carnagie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And I took that book and I studied and I renewed it and I studied it and I started putting those things into practice the next year in that book. And it was all very simple, you try to find out what the other person really likes and you ask them about it and get them to talk about it and you get outside of yourself and what they do and what their dreams are. What they want in life and be genuinely interested in them and try to remember peoples names. It was full of stuff like that and I tried to incorporate that knowledge into my persona and you know what, I started making friends with my classmates and the other classes and I know before the other classes hated me. I treated them like crap especially the underclassmen. So that sort of changed my life and I still use some of those same principles today and sometimes I forget and regress to being an A-hole again. Here I am out of woods walking on a blacktop road, acting like I know where I am going, but I don¢t know where I am going. Looking for White Blazes. Come out of the mountains and there was this Pasture a field of clover, boy that was nice to see and it reminded me of home and there were some cattle in there. Just Beautiful. I am in for the night at Jeffers brook shelter. It¢s only a mile from Glencliff where I will pick up my mail drop and I was going to stay at the hostel there and I do need to do laundry but I can¢t see spending 14.00 for the hostel in Glencliff overnight. If I had come in earlier I might have. But I will get up early and get into town and do some laundry etc. Made 16 miles today and climbed 2 mountains and that is something. Must be getting better. Going to fix some supper and here comes an older fella walking his dog.   He introduced himself.   Les Hope was his name. He was from Warren and it¢s just a few miles down the road here. He had an old cocker spaniel 16 years old, dog is deaf and can only see out of one eye.   But he was a fun gentleman to talk to; I got a kick out him. He sat around here for almost a year and a half. He was telling me about when he was over in WW2 and about their home in Florida. They are gonna leave here in a couple of weeks. His wife has Alzheimer Diseases so he has to watch her pretty close. He had run a service station at one time, he must have some money because he has 400 feet of property down in Florida, plus he has 40 acres that his house sits on and said it takes him 2 days to mow it so it must be nice. Before he left he offered to call Mary and tell her I was okay and that he saw me in the woods and I said No that is okay, I am gonna call her tomorrow. I am here all-alone tonight and got a campfire going and I think I am gonna stay right here in the shelter. Going to put my tent up, good thing I am getting a food drop tomorrow, because I am out of food. Came from Eliza Brook Shelter today to Jeffers Brook Shelter. 16 miles climbed 2 mountains. Mount Moosalauke, was one of the steepest I have done. Went up a waterfall so there are times when it was straight up but when I got over the summit it was a long, long downhill and it seems like it just took a long time to get here. I wasn¢t about to go to town so I said this is it. I got in about 5:30.