Date: 2003-05-20
From: US 60, Buena Vista

To: Seley-Woodworth shelter
Miles today: 14.0
Weather: overcast clouds

We cross the 800 mile mark today! Yes Jimmy Hendrix, I am feeling EXPERIENCED! Does that mean I know what I am doing? Ha!Well, well, well... a surprise. Sunny outside this morning! This rare '03 event deserves remarking upon. The hikers Fig and Recycled join us at the GreenForest restaurant for breakfast. By the way, this eatery wins an award for THE best pancakes on the Trail so far. Crispy around the edges, tasty, fluffy, platter-sized, inexpensive and LOADED with blueberries. I could not finish my two. Recycled is still trying to finish a year-2000 thru-hike. Last summer, he got as far as Connecticut before breaking a bone - every hiker's secret dread. He keeps starting over from Springer. People argue this with him, but I say "more power to ya." He is hiking his own hike. Too many folks would like you to hike THEIR hike.Fig also said a guy and a girl came through the shelter last night after we had left. "They knew you," he said. "When they read the register, they said 'Oh good, she's not far ahead, we'll get up real early and get ahead of them.'"Not "hike WITH" them, but "get ahead?" That could only be Wench and Hotdog.And Fly-by-Night lost the 4-pancake challenge. He could not finish the four platter-sized blueberry pancakes the GreenForest Restaurant served up. They were great pancakes too.No ambition was spotted in the Buena Vista Motel. Twenty one mile days will do that. I wonder how efficient these long days really are. We napped and watched TV. When they came to rout us at 11 am, we went and ate again and lolled about the porch in the blessed sunshine.We are starting to relax a little bit about the relentless onward press. I can really see the difference in Fly and Smoothie, they are much more laid back. "I really like the "whatever" philosophy," said Smoothie.My Dragon's Tooth meltdown is probably what mellowed me, plus the realization that I'm still hiking in the vicinity of the same people I started with; Hotdog and Wench, Fly and Smoothie, and Notes who started just a week after me.I also did some math today. If I average 13.6 miles a day, I'll summit the end of August. That's without days off. I have to exit a week in July for my brother's wedding, and I'll need some zero days. So I am on track for a September finish, my original plan.Note's girlfriend Caroline kindly drives us to the Trailhead. She will be joining Notes in PA to the end.There is always disbelief when shouldering a pack coming out of town with a full foodbag. Do I really need all this grub? The weight of a pack compresses the human spine and joints, smashes the feet flat. I've said it before, I'm not enamored of this pack-mule business. I believe it to be an unnatural act.When folks would ask me at Trail Days how my hike was going, I would say "The hike is great, it's this durn BACKPACKING that is killing me." I meet a section hiker coming southbound. "You're going the wrong way," I tease him. "Ha! No," he says laughing. "YOU'RE going the wrong way. That is one bad-ass climb."We are climbing out of a gap at 2,065 feet, climbing to over 4,000 feet. I just plug along slowly.We have the hot sun climbing, but low humidity despite all the rain. The breeze kept sending gulps of cold air at critical moments in the ascent. It's a splendid day for hiking. And to think I didn't want to do this anymore in Catawba. Just goes to show you, tomorrow is always another day.The first climb terminated at Bald Knob. I hadn't been up at 4K feet in awhile. The oak leaves up here were scarcely longer than my little toe, barely grown. Did they know something? We also traversed the balds of Cold Mountain, no not the book mountain. Yes it WAS a cold mountain, and I put my raincoat on as a wind barrier. Fly and Smoothie bypassed the pretty meadow where we originally thought we would camp. A swing hung from an oak tree, and I swung and chatted with the hikers there while I made up my mind whether or not I wanted to stay. A warm breeze blew through, and I was away with it.It was nearing dark when I finally came around the shelter corner. Fly and Smoothie were there. Wench and Hotdog were waiting for me with the International Pack 31 motto/insult: "Lollygagger!"It is interesting to me that, after 800 miles, varying hiking paces, differing numbers of zero days, different hiking styles, injuries and other delays, here sit five members of Pack 31 - thru-hikers who started on 3/1. I must note another rare event - I found a Trail meal I actually liked. Lipton's red beans and rice, with real bacon crumbles. Yum!The evening's drama was provided by poor Yogi, who felt very ill and lay groaning, head over the shelter edge. Something he'd eaten didn't agree with him. I was about to enter my sleeping space in the shelter next to him when he shouted "Watch out" and upchucked loudly. He felt better after that, and adjudged it safe for me to enter the shelter now.In the night, Yogi ventured Round Two, but I was thankfully out cold for that one.