Date: 2013-09-03
From: Rangeley, ME

To: Poplar Ridge Lean-to
Miles today: 10.7
Weather: light rain

The sun is out and the clouds are moving on, and that's what we should be doing, but it¢s getting harder to leave town. I don't know if it¢s because it feels good to have a bed and have someone else cook for you or we just know our time is coming to an end and we are trying to prolong it. Don't get me wrong - I miss home but I know I'll miss these guys I've come to know and the sites and places I've been. But we¢re also ready for it to be over, so we are walking out the door!The first thing we do is walk down to the convenience store and get a breakfast sandwich and wash it down with a cold can of Coke. Then we start thumbing with no luck. We¢re in town and I noticed Andrea¢s car and we all go look for her. I go into this food store and ask if anyone has seen the owner of that car and I could hear one of the waitresses say, ¢There's a southern guy with an accent looking for you.¢ I had found her and she asked us if we needed a ride back. We tell her yes we do and she takes us back to the trailhead with no hesitation. We thank her and start our up and down day. We've got three tops to go over - Saddleback, the Horn and Saddleback Junior. The trail is 95 percent covered in water, either standing puddles or running, due to the rain yesterday. We try like heck to keep our feet dry but it¢s just impossible. And I kicked a rock so hard today I swear I could taste it and I'm sorry to say, but I've got the record today for saying the F word the most (6 times). Sky Pilot won it yesterday with 7 times and a couple of those were because I kept asking him, ¢What? What?¢ And he would keep repeating it over and over again. We both got a good laugh out of that.I told Sky Pilot I need to start a detox for hikers after they finish. Here's just some of the stuff I would offer: How not to cuss. How not to fart or burp in public. It¢s okay to wear cotton again. We can take showers every day. How not to eat junk food all the time. How to drive a car again. How to use the bathroom indoors. You don't have to use your camp stove to cook with. You can sleep inside, on the bed. How to go back to work.This is just a few of the items in Boo Boo's detox program. Alright, back to today's hike.By the time we made it up to Saddleback Mountain I was soaking wet with sweat and freezing. Sky Pilot was eating so I told him I was going to get behind him and wring out my wet clothes and if he didn't want to see a naked man, he¢d better not turn around. Now that he had that image in his head, I think I heard him repeating, ¢Dead puppies, dead puppies.¢ I guess he's trying to remove that image from his head! Once I had wrung all the water out, I joined him for some fine dining of tuna fish - yum, yum. We hiked on to the shelter where Cash Man is already set up in it. We are tenting just pass it. I get to try out my new Exped mattress and pillow/pump for the first time since the company sent me a replacement. My pillow/pump wasn¢t pumping hardly at all and the pillow hadn¢t stayed up in months. My air mattress had blown a baffle, so it had a lump in it. We only saw three south bounders today, two of which were Japanese and five north bounders. One of them was Roadrunner. He said he had Giardia and was off the trail for five days. His visa runs out on the twenty-sixth so he's picked up the pace. One of the songs on my iPhone that I play every day out loud is by the Beverly Hillbillies called Vittles. You can hear it here on YouTube at:www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohUYZB0ZCM8In a couple more days we will know all the words to it and yes, we sing out loud! (Maybe that's why we don't see any wildlife!)