Date: 2014-05-25
From: Washington Monument State Park

To: Pine Grove Furnace
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: light rain

Halfway and the Half GallonRon and Jan Wolod are two of the most lovely people I have had the pleasure of meeting while on the the trail. Dinosaur, Midnight Sparkle and I spent a very relaxed day and a half in their home near Annapolis, Maryland. They pampered us and made us truly welcome.They are retired with two grown daughters and two talented granddaughters. They are easy folks¢ people that are comfortable to converse with, laugh with, share with. They are unpretentious, but upright. Dinosaur and I took to them right away, and by the end of our stay we asked if we could adopt them for our very own aunt and uncle. They seemed quite touched and said yes¢ and so my family grows!On Memorial Day we very slowly packed up again and were driven back to the trail where we had jumped off of it: Washington Memorial State Park. We didn¢t get walking until after noon and so decided not to try and push a longer day. We saw tons of weekend warriors and revelers out to take advantage of the long weekend. It was a festive day to be on the trail. We stopped around 6 at a shelter 13 miles up from where we started and were beginning to settle in for the night when a new face showed up: Da Vinci. I¢d heard of her from Lady Moose (as we slack-packed into Harpers Ferry) and was super excited to place the face with the name. She¢s one of the most upbeat hikers I¢ve yet encountered and her laugh is infectious. As she took off her pack she mentioned that there was a possibility to order pizza at this shelter because it was so close to a road crossing. It didn¢t take long for the group of us to home in on this idea and run with it. Within an hour and a half we had four piping hot extra large pizzas sitting on the picnic table being greedily consumed. As we ate more hikers arrived and partook of the feast. Lady Moose and Hagar the Horrible arrived first, and later on a pair of bromance-best-friends, Roshambo and Shakespeare. Together we managed to lick the boxes clean and went to bed stuffed and happy.Dinosaur and I were up early and gone by 6:50 the next morning with plans to make a 20+ mile day. But it turned from a hot and muggy morning into heavy rain by early afternoon and we didn¢t make it past our moderate goal. The wet deterred us from tenting it, so we made for a shelter and pitched our soaked packs inside next to Pint Sized¢s things. She had made it in just ahead of us and most of the rain and watched rather protectively from her dry corner as we began the process of pealing off wet things. Pint Sized is one of the few middle aged women out this year. Although hikers are a diverse group, the ratio of females, when divided by age, is heavily skewed to the young. Men, in contrast, are more evenly split between two general age groups: 18-25 and 40-60. There is even a small contingent of men between the ages of 25 and 40¢ fathers and husbands stealing time from their established lives for a quick adventure into the wilderness. But there are few middle aged women out here¢ at least without their husbands¢ and fewer still mothers. They are not exactly white elephants, who¢s sightings are to be gawked at and documented for purposes of science, but I have found that their lives, as a general rule, are more interesting to hear about. The set of circumstances that allow adult women to ¢make the break¢ for nature tend to surround extremely unique individuals, of which Pint Sized certainly is. She is private and doesn¢t talk much about herself, so the things I have learned have been in small, rich chunks, like good chocolate being doled out rather than greedily consumed on the spot. I haven¢t seen her too often because she walks like a fiend for a week or so and then takes a couple of days off to see family. The pattern being that I am left stunned by her dust and then don¢t see her for a week or so, during which time I recover my dignity, and then she comes up from behind to startle me again and renew the process. Pint Sized a good conversationalist, well spoken, and adds an ora of excitement whenever she¢s around. It¢s easy to tell that she loves to be out here. That evening we ended up with the same crew as the night before, plus Simba, Mama Bean and Bean Dip. The last two were south bounding so that Mama Bean could say goodbye to everyone she¢d met before she had to fly back to Australia. This was her last official night on the trail and she was EXCITED. ¢I get to sit for 24 hours straight on the plane ride home!¢ She promised to think of us fondly from her desk chair back in Brisbane. ¢ I¢ll just sit there and laugh and think ¢I¢ve got a chair and they haven¢t.¢¢She really did earn the name Spirit Crusher.It was again a merry evening.In the morning we gave our final hugs to the Beans and Bean Dip promised to catch back up to us the following week after she¢d seen her mother off in DC.After the goodbyes we were eager to press forward because we had reached a very important moment of our hike: the official halfway point... and the ¢Half Gallon Challenge.¢ Now, it is important to note that this trail seems to have a lot of halfway points. They say that Harpers Ferry is the mental halfway point because you are finally out of Virginia and you¢ve hit the quadruple digits, milage-wise. But, then you also pass over the Mason/Dixon line, which officially ends your time in the South... But the Half Gallon Challenge is the real deal. It separates the wanna-be¢s from the true Thru Hikers. It is a celebration. It is a right. It is a challenge. I¢m not kidding. This is serious stuff. People have been discussing and dreaming about this day since Georgia. I have listened to more ¢strategy¢ talk about this challenge than I would care or be able to describe. It¢s embarrassing, really, how much AT hikers like to eat.Anyway, the Half Gallon Challenge is located in Pine Grove Furnace, Pennsylvania, conveniently located next to the Iron Mansion Hostel. Which also conveniently closes its doors from 9am to 5pm... so there is literally nothing to do during the wait, except visit the AT museum (definitely worth a looksee) and try your hand at eating a lot of ice cream in a very short amount of time.Dino and I got ourselves there nice and early in the day to scope out our choices. It should be renoted that Dinosaur is a vegan... so she did NOT* gorge herself on dairy products and subsequently have an unyielding stomach ache. We decided to be weenies and split a half gallon of chocolate chip cookie dough since she was not technically supposed to eat it and I had been noticing a change in my digestion over the last few days. I put down the discomfort to being lactose intolerant and quietly sent up a prayer asking that the ice cream would be kind to me.We finished our shared 1/2 gallon in 18.5 minutes and were exceedingly pleased with ourselves until we realized that Pint Sized, who is indeed pint sized, ate her ice cream in 19 minutes by herself. We sat there at the end, shivering uncontrollably and sticky with escaped and melting dairy product, congratulating each other on a job well done. I washed down my quarter gallon with a ham and cheese melt, a basket of fries, a bag of potato chips, a coke, a pack of sour straws, and a banana... you know, to be healthy. The rest of the group had a similar gustatory experience. We lazed in unconcerned repose in the AT Museum until 4:30 when Earth Tones, the custodian, informed us that he was closing and if we didn¢t leave he¢d lock us in. We removed ourselves to the porch of the hostel where we remained until the owner finally opened the doors. I had a stomach ache all night long... but it didn¢t matter. I was halfway to Kahtadin.