Date: 2016-03-16
To: Trail Magic - Tejas style!
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

I am trying to keep my preparation posts to a minimum, but I just had to toss this one out at you. I'm not out of Houston yet and I am already experiencing trail magic. In fact I received three heavy doses of TM in the last 24 hours. I'll share them with you in no order of relevance:My buddy Keith has a group of hunters from Pennsylvania down to hunt wild hogs. Despite being slammed with last minute stuff to do, I went down to the deer lease (15 minutes from our farm) to meet the group and enjoy a quick dinner. The quick dinner turned into a few beers (Cheladas nonetheless!) and a lot of good stories. They are good people. The Pennsylvania boys had carted down a big bag of homemade smoked cheese from home and Bump (no shit that was his name) suggested I take a chunk for my start out in Springer. He gave me a chunk the size of a softball! Let's call it a Pennsylvania smoked pepper jack cheese incident. Next, a while back kid at the Magic Cauldron (place here in Houston that you could get all kinds of things including incense, sage essential oil and probably even stuff you could use to put a hex on your boss) mentioned that he collects animal skulls. That's a different collection, but who am I to judge. Running across a skull is not unusual in the woods. Throughout the fall and winter I remembered to collect anything that I found and ended up with a small bag of coyote and deer skulls. I dropped them off today as I decided I needed to buy a small vial of patchouly oil. I figured if I'm going to stink I might as will stink like a hippy. When I went to pay for the patchouly oil he said consider it a trade for the skulls. Sweet! Finally, last weekend I stuck my farm truck up at our farm. Think stuck, like real bad ....as in up to the axles. I called on my good friend Bob. Sensing my stress level peaking at 9 or a 10 with the anticipation of the hike, Bob told me to just leave it and he would round up the Chester Boys and take care of it. Bob runs with a posse of guys that pretty much live for this shit, and I knew I was in good hands. So the truck stayed buried in the woods and I went home. Yesterday, armed with winches and a come-along the Chester, Texas army went to work on my problem. 20 minutes later and several Natural Lights my farm truck was free from it's mire. Bob, Butch and Jason retired to my summer kitchen where they found that I had left a 30 pack of Natural Lights in the refrigerator for the the celebration of the liberation of the stuck F150. I told Bob,and I meant it, that if the shit ever hits the fan and I had to climb into a landing craft to invade another country or something wacky that ....I wouldn't go if guys like Bob, Jason and Butch were not also in the same landing craft. These are not "let's catch a grande-latte at Starbucks" kind of guys and the world needs more of them.On a final note I just received my REI dividend letter today in the mail and it's over 100 bucks... Which pretty much means I spent way too much money at the co-op this year. Crazy thing is I am done with buying crap for my hike. I am going to buy a pair of Keen river shoes with the dividend money and the 20% off coupon which ironically expires April 4th, the day I will be landing in Atlanta. I'll either have Kelly mail these out when it gets to be hot or they'll be waiting for me when I get home. It's getting close.