Date: 2009-04-18
From: Pearisburg, Virginia

To: Daleville, Virginia
Miles today: 92.7
Weather: clear sky

Trail Followers:Well after a delightful, but all-too-short two day visit at home for Easter, I was back on top of a mountain on Sunday, April 12. This past week I put in daily hikes of 11.5 miles on Monday, 23, 24, 18.5 and 22 miles. Tuesday and Wednesday were miserable. Those rainy day hikes compounded my discomfort as I developed a couple of blisters on my feet.A section hiker I met at a shelter, Wednesday night, Leadfoot, from Lexington, Kentucky doctored up my feet with gauze and duct tape. This enabled me to complete my last two long days for the week. Leadfoot is pushing 70 and is back on the trail this year because he fell and broke his wrist last year near Roan Mountain, Tennessee. That's perserverance.Leadfoot, two other section hikers, "The Karma Police" and I shared a shelter on Wednesday and camped together on Thursday night. That's plenty of time to find out that you're with good people.While Leadfoot is a great trail doctor, his wife Sonia is a true Trail Angel. On Friday morning she got up early and drove from Kentucky to some god-forsaken backroad (Route 199) south of Pearisburg to meet the four of us with hot Wendy's cheeseburges, fries and cold sodas! This was after we had hiked 11.5 of our 22 miles for the day. Do you know well a burger tastes under those conditions? Sonia also met us in town after another 5 hours of hiking. Leadfoot, don't lose that girl of yours!Now I will admit that I was the first to the cheeseburgers and then first into town. After a shower at our Holiday Motor Lodge (chosen primarily for its location), I walked the one block to the Dairy Queen. After quickly downing my large strawberry milkshake and large chocolate sundae, I looked around me. For about ten minutes there, I could swear that at 180 pounds, I was the lightest person in the Dairy Queen! Welcome to Pearisburg!Tomorrow is Sunday and it is back on the trail for most of the AT hikers here in town. I caught back up wit; Lunatic and Penn-J. So with the Karma Police, there will be at least five of us heading to Daleville, Virginia. The terrain will be moderate, but the weather for the next two days; you got it, MORE RAIN. It comes with the territory. I've already stopped looking at the elevation charts on the maps, I might as well give up on The Weather Channel.It should take 5-6 days to get to Daleville and then after another day I will have passed Mile 725, having completed one-third of the trail.My goal over the next 14-15 days is to make it to Waynesboro, VA (Mile 852), approximately 225 from here. I will then take a little more R&R, as Kate and I go to Alaska for a 7-day cruise. Well, if I'm going to get off the trail...I wanted to share with you some of the feedback from my last posting. The general consensus: less deep philisophical dabblings and more pictures of dead ponies. One comment from the peanut gallery was to the effect, "A deep thought from a Daileader is as rare as a great game of golf."Okay, so I'll go out of my way to look for roadkill photo opportunities. If I get another deep thought I will lay down (probably in poison ivy) until the feeling passes.The other feedback I'd like to share is that there was universal consensus that I looked like a cross between a porn star and Burt Reynolds. I sure miss that moustache...See you all down the trail.