Date: 2003-07-14
From: Manchester Center, VT

To: Zero Day
Miles today: 0.0

A zero day in Manchester Center. This is a packed day. A lot of things happened today. We started off in the morning¢¦I woke up at 4:30. It was kind of hard to sleep next to the railroad tracks. A train never came by but a lot cars did go by the road which was only 50 feet away. Especially early in the night. I don¢t think either one of us slept very well anyway just do to the fact of where we were. It was full enough light by 5:00 or 5:15 that anyone driving by could see us laying on the side of the road sleeping. So, Spiderman and I decided to pack up really quickly and get the heck out of there. We were out of there before 6:00. We were packed up and walking down the street with our packs on. The only problem is nothing in Manchester is open at that time. We did find a donut store where we went in and got coffee and a couple of donuts. Then we just walked around town for awhile. We split up because I decided to walk up and see about lodging and lodges and other places. I walked up to, I believe it was called, Wilberton Lodge which was about a mile out of town. I took a look at it and decided that we could not afford this place.   It was obviously a very exclusive, classy place and I was to find out later in the day that indeed it was because last week J-Lo and Ben Affleck had gotten married there. Anyway, on my walk before 7am I ran in to Draftrunner who was headed out of town from the same place. Said goodbye to her. Didn¢t expect that I was going to see her on the Trail again. Maybe never. We said our good-byes and then I ran into Skeemer, who was also hiking out. Then I walked back to the center of town where I ran into Jason. We sat there at the park for awhile. I tried to make some phone calls to try and figure out what was going on with the hotels. Didn¢t really have any success. It wasn¢t looking good as far as us being able to stay in town. We weren¢t even really concerned at this point about staying in town. We really just needed a shower. It had been 7 days since our last shower and we were both in pretty bad shape. 7:00 rolled around and the Friendly¢s down the street opened up and we went down there. We both had a very big breakfast. Lots of coffee. We sat there and ate. Skeemer was a couple of tables down talking to some of the locals there. He was obviously trying to butter them up to get a ride. That never happened. They didn¢t get up and he decided to leave. We got done with breakfast and across the street was a laundromat which also opened at 7. So, we went over and started doing our laundry. At 7:00 this laundromat was packed. Absolutely packed. I talked to the lady at the laundromat and she said there was a horse show in town and that¢s why the laundromat was so busy. That also meant that all the hotels were full. So, we were pretty well screwed. We did try and call some of the hotels, including the Avalanche hotel down the street, and they were already packed. We were kind of stuck. I sent a message up with Skeemer to tell Mudd that we were looking for him because Mudd was going to share a room with us. We were going to try and go three to a room to save money. When we were doing laundry Mudd walked in the laundromat. We told him what was going on and that it didn¢t look good for motels much less a shower. He told us that on the way into town he had gotten a ride from a guy who offered to let him come to his house to shower. He turned him down because number one he¢d already made plans with us and number two he¢d felt a little uncomfortable¢¦.him being by himself and some guy just offering him a shower. So, he met up with us. We all got our laundry done and just kind of split up. The EMS Outfitter opened at 10:00 and Spiderman and I walked over there and started looking around. We were going to leave our backpacks at the outfitters and walk around town and try and get our chores done. While we were in the store the guy who¢d offered Mudd the shower had talked with Mudd again. Mudd came over and told us and all three of us went out and talked to the guy. The guy was really nice. I don¢t want to say his last name because I don¢t know how he¢d feel. Especially after I finish this. I don¢t know how he¢d feel about his name going out. So, I¢m going to call him Scott H. Anyway, Scott H was in a Suburban and he said ¢Yeah you can come over and take showers at my place if you want. No problem.¢   So, we all piled in and he took us to his house. He seemed to be a very laid back, very suave kind of guy and we had some talks and stuff. Got to his house and along the route he said for all he cared we could stay at his house as well. So, we got to his house and he said he had to go to work. Basically he said help yourself to whatever you want in the house. Here¢s the keys to my other car (a Subaru), run into town if you want and he left. It¢s unbelievable.   He left his entire house and his car in our care. Spiderman and Mudd jumped in the car and ran into town and did some chores. They went to get the mail and Mudd had left his laundry at the laundromat. So, they went and got that and came back shortly after. They took their showers too. At some point Scott H came back from wherever he¢d gone to get a whole van full of cut wood that he was going to split for the winter. He said that he¢d burned 4 cords of wood last year and still had a $700.00 per month oil bill. Scott H turned out to be an amazing person. He opened up his entire house to us. His entire family. His vehicles. Anything we wanted we could have. Part of the story is¢¦without getting too close to it¢¦he was a very successful stockbroker in NYC and was involved with the World Trade Center and had lost all his friends September 11th. He and his wife decided to get out of town and slow life down and bought this wonderful place right on this river, the Orvis River. In fact, Orvis¢¦the fly fishing company¢¦started on this river. Really magnificent 25 acres backed up against the river. This old barn built in the 1850¢s had been converted into a house with magnificent wood that from what he told us was priceless. People had offered him tremendous amounts of money just for the wood on the house. Scott was also quite an adventurer himself. He¢s done some things. He was very low key talking about what he did. But some of the things he¢s done¢¦.helicopter skiing where you¢re dropped off out of the helicopter on ski¢s¢¦ on mountains where there are no resorts¢¦. on virgin snow. He mentioned he had done this in Alaska. Just dropped out of the helicopter about 40,000 feet into virgin snow. He¢s also a pretty avid hiker. Another thing that he mentioned that impressed me was that he and his buddies had thru hiked the Whites in New Hampshire in the dead of winter. Which to me just seems absolutely crazy and dangerous and difficult. At any rate, he split his wood and then pulled his motorcycle out of the garage and said, ¢I¢ve gotta go for the day guys. Do whatever you want here. I¢ve gotta go pick up my father. ¢ The three of us got back in the Subaru and went back into town and ate. We parked the car at the Price Shopper supermarket and then walked down the street in different directions. Mudd went off to eat at McDonalds. Spiderman and I went to eat at a southwestern fare restaurant. Pretty good stuff. Great place. Good food. Good drinks. I stopped at Rite-Aid pharmacy on the way back and Spiderman went directly back to the Price Shopper supermarket to see if Mudd was ready because Mudd had offered a ride back to the Trail to some other hikers that had come into town including Slugger and Bob from Athens. I shopped at the Rite-Aid pharmacy and re-supplied with various things I needed and then ran back there too. Spiderman was sitting at the Price Shopper and Mudd wasn¢t around so I went inside and bought some washcloths there. I also went into Mountain Goat Outfitters and bought some waterproof socks there and a new hat. I¢ve lost my hat. Anyway, we met back at Price Shopper and figured that we¢d all bought what we needed. We got back in the Subaru and drove back to Scott H¢s house. We started re-packing our stuff. Scott had left a note on the table saying that we could help ourselves to anything in the house that we wanted. He said the beer fridge is out in the garage and to drink as much as you want. Which we did. So, we were very happily packing our stuff, re-tooling the gear. All that. The place was wonderful. They had not made the mistake of trying to completely revamp the place. It still had the look of an 1850¢s barn in many ways. A very comfortable place to stay. Very low key. Huge back yard. 20 acres of back yard. I don¢t want the journal for this day to get to long but I want to stress¢¦again¢¦because so many things happened that I can¢t begin to get this all on tape¢¦.Scott H was a very, very special person. Opened up everything to us. Obviously, very affluent and decided to get out of the rat race and use the money that he had to enjoy life. Maybe catch up on some of the things he had missed or whatever. When he came back, he came with his friend Matt and his wife. We sat in the little building that was separated from the house. I¢m not sure what to call it. A dayroom or whatever. But it was all screened in all the way around with windows. We drank wine and beer with all of them and sat and chatted. He offered for us to use the grill. Earlier Spiderman and Mudd had made another trip to town for steaks and potatoes and stuff like that. We decided that we were gonna cook. So, Scott H and Matt took the kids and the wives down into town to eat. We sat there and grilled our steaks and ate. They came back awhile later and we had decided to sleep in the garage. They couldn¢t understand that. Being a thru hiker you get comfortable sleeping in places that most people wouldn¢t even think about. We actually enjoyed it because we left the garage door open and let the cool breeze blow. Mudd ended up taking the couch which wasn¢t very comfortable. So, he was inside the house. We all went to bed that way, that night. That¢s the short story. The long story is that this is definitely the most enjoyable, most enlightening day that I¢ve had on the Trail. I think I owe it all to Scott H.