Date: 2013-05-01
From: Erwin, TN

To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

I woke up early in order to attempt the hotel's complimentary breakfast. I wanted to give myself optimum amounts of time for a digestion test before checkout time. I figured that I'd somehow managed to avoid vomiting the whole night, so if I could hold down a bagel I'd be set to hit the trail again. I ate my bagel and waited. I was feeling mild discomfort, but by checkout I hadn't lost my breakfast. Dan and I lay on our bed debating heavily. I hadn't been sick since the car ride, though my stomach had been killing me the night before. Allegedly the bug going around on the trail took forty-eight hours to pass however, so for all we knew it could rise with a vengeance. We agreed it was best to play it safe and stay one more night. We rebooked, and laid around for hours, until Dan became hungry. I was clearly feeling better, but Dan didn't want to push his food choices on me, so he left it up to me. Basically, we could order a pizza, or we could try and find a ride across town for chinese or mexican food - the two appealing options as they are not available in most of the small trail towns we pass through. Eventually, we sort of wandered out of the motel to try our luck. We figured we might as well give my stomach the ultimate test, and Mexican food seemed the perfect choice for that. We walked down to the intersection that would lead us to our destination, and scoped out a good hitching spot. I was getting bored holding out my thumb, and we debated just walking down the couple of miles. We stood by our post however, and the first taker turned out to be a police officer, in a bright shiny SUV. He asked where we were going, and upon our response he agreed to give us a lift - on the condition he had to run our IDs to get into his vehicle. He promised this was a quick process, and called in our information. To our typical luck, this was no quick process. We waited in the parking lot for an hour. The officer apologized as he repeatedly phoned dispatch for progress. During this time, another officer rolled up, and chastised his choice to even run our IDs. We watched him pull away and pick up another hiker down the road painlessly. We joked that he had probably just picked up the axe murderer, and wouldn't know until he was watching the news in his lazyboy later. Finally the officer ushered us into his vehicle and took us the short drive down to the Mexican restaurant. At this point we were starving and shoveled food into our bellies rapidly. Fortunately for us, the Dollar General was right next door, so after gorging ourselves, we managed a small resupply. The whole hitchhiking experience we'd just had made us weary, so once we were done resupplying, we decided to find a new solution. Dan thought it best to order some food from a pizza place in the same plaza, delivery, on the condition that the driver take us too. We figured we could eat the food later since our room had a microwave. We strutted up to the counter, and before even placing our order, we laid out the law, and fortunately for us, they agreed. We hung around for our food and ride with practiced patience. I wandered outside for a bit, and shortly after my exit, Dan followed me out carrying our food. He looked at me and said, "So, he said he can't give us a ride - too busy." I glared at him, and just as I was about to go ballistic, he laughed, "Just kidding! He'll be right out." I sighed with relief as the delivery guy rounded the corner. We followed him to his car, which was a frightening piece of machinery. The driver window had flimsy plastic duct taped over it, and the fabric on the roof interior was torn and flopped onto our heads, but we didn't care, we were happy to be on our way back to the hotel. The driver had been able to tell we were hikers; quite an obvious observation as we all wander around in dry fit shirts, zip off pants and crocs. He had initially asked if we were headed to the hostel in fact, which was where we had intended to stay when we reached Erwin, until I fell ill that is. I'm certain he was pleasantly surprised to hear we were going to the much closer Super 8. Anyhow he dropped us off swiftly and we scampered up to our room to spend the rest of our evening in rest and relaxation.