Date: 2007-03-29
From: Franklin, NC

To: Siler Bald Shelter, NC
Miles today: 3.7
Weather: overcast clouds

So last nite was cool. Kay and Gadget showed up, everyone had their doors openand everyone was just walking around and talking. Shalome's musician boyfriend showed up and he was singing music. I could hear it in our room.Nicole and I decided to order Pizza Hut, but I was still pretty stuffed fromlunch, so I ordered some wings instead and shared them with Kay.So what "chores" are there to do in towns? It generally goes like this:Get to town, get your room, take a shower, eat a real meal, do laundry, explodeyour pack, air out your gear, inventory your supplies, figure out how many daysin your next leg, go shopping, wash your cooking\water gear with actual waterAND soap, socialize, make phone calls, check your emailIt is a lot to cram into one day, but I think I'll get better at it.Nicole and I were talking yesterday and we both realized something about ouroutlooks on this hike. For me, it happened on day 1 of hiking. I thought I"could" potentially be one of those people that always focused on Maine. I havebeen a goal-oriented person for much of my life. Well, during the first fewmiles, the enormity of this journey hit me emotionally, physically, andpsychologically. I realized that day that I was not at all concerned aboutMaine. I was really living in the here and now, in the moment and not worryingabout anything but enjoying myself and where my next water source was. I can'tdescribe how liberating it is to truly live in the present and not have to worryabout tomorrow's meeting or appointments. I believe it is the way life wasintended to be, until we humans got involved and created the insane "system" weall live in now in this country. The majority of you reading this don't haveenough time in 1 day to sleep enough, eat good foods, ! exercise your bodies, spend time with yourself and family, and go to work. Somehappen at the expense of others. It isn't right, and there needs to be a majorshift in priorities in our culture.   Away from stuff and money and towards realrelationships, healthy living and unity with the incredible natural world aroundus. I don't mean we should all join hands and sing Koombayah around a fire, butthe greatest gift we have is time and we all seem to be wanting for more.I am going to try very hard to keep this in the present mindset when I do haveto re-enter the dark side. LOLAlright enough soapbox, but so far, my beliefs of how screwed up our culturalpriorities are have only been confirmed, and it has only been 16 days! Geez,what am I setting myself up for here? LOLTo Lipstick, trail journals converts my colon and parenthesis into the smileyface, Rachael is not doing that. (Lipstick asked me how those were appearing inthe text of my entries). Ahh, the magic of the internet huh? LOLSome thoughts on physical preparation. I did exactly zero preparationphysically (unless you count practicing eating lots of ice cream!) So far, mycardio has been the first to get tired, way before my legs. In other words, Iget out of breath when I physically feel like I could continue. This onlyhappens on ups by the way! After 2 weeks out here, I personally believe that no gym machine or strengthtraining can prepare you for this. I think cardio workouts would be mostbeneficial, but like most things, a hundred people will probably disagree withme. The trail will serve as your strength training, and as long as you listento your body, do low mileage, and expect some exhausting days, you'll be fine. I have strong legs and muscles, they are just hidden by a real nice insulativelayer of fat! LOL So, onto today's hike. I didn't get to sleep till 2:00 this morning and was upat 9:00 a.m. Didn't sleep too well for some reason. We planned on catching the11:00 shuttle back to the trail.   We have been buying milk and little boxes ofcereal for breakfast in our rooms when a fridge is available. Cuts down onspending. I ate 3 of those mini boxes today.The weather stated chance of showers and storms all week...boo hoo, and Nicoleand I have a rule, if it is raining when we wake up, we stay put. Well, today,it was overcast but the sun tried to peek thru, so we decided to do a nero(almost a zero day with low miles) and hike the 3.7 miles to the next shelter.Well, we started hiking @ 11:18 this morning, and at about 11:45 the rainstarted. We stopped to put our pack covers on and get our rain jackets out. Itwasn't too hard so we just hiked in it without wearing our raingear. It feltgood, because you build up a lot of body heat while hiking.Then it started raining a lot harder, so we finally put our coats on. The trailwas like a giant mud puddle. Rain and temps in the low 50's is primehypothermia weather, so you have to be careful. The sound of the rain in the woods was really cool though. It sounded like abillion little people applauding. I stopped for a moment to just look up andreally feel the drops, something you're not supposed to do in the "real" world. It was beautiful.Sometimes, you feel like you're hiking thru a rain forrest out here. Plush greenleaves, the sound of streams, and a dampness that won't go away. There have beentimes I expected a tiger or monkey to just appear. A banana tree would looktotally at home too! LOLWe got to the shelter, which is .5 miles off the trail, at 1:30 p.m. I learneda big lesson today, don't let your hair get wet. I got chilled pretty quickly,and we were the only 2 here, so we both changed into our dry warm clothes andcooked our hot meals. Then we both layed our sleeping pads and bags out andcrawled in to warm up. The rain would pound and clear the fog, then it wouldstop and you could literally watch the wet fog roll back in and hover over you. A pretty miserable day weather wise. Nicole fell asleep and I dozed, but diddiscover I probably could sleep in a shelter if I had to. I was chilled stillbecause of a light breeze. I finally decided to get up and get my down jacket,which helped a lot. By this time it was about 4:40 p.m. and I decided that ifit was just Nicole and I, I'd rig my tarp to block te breeze.Just as we were sure we'd be alone, here comes a hiker named J. Nice man, butthat changed evverything for me. He told us he snored, so as soon as the rainlet up, I hung my hammock. Nicole has her tent set up in the shelter, which willhwlp keep her warmer.I put all the captions of my current pics in an email to Rachael, and finallyate dinner around 7:00 p.m.It was just getting colder and ickier, so at 7:45 p.m., we all called it a nite.It is currently a very cold and wet 54 degrees inside my hammock. I am evenwearing my glove liners. The plan for tomorrow is if it is still crappy, we'll hike 2 more miles to thenext road crossing and get a ride back to Franklin, where a huge hiker bash ishappening this weekend.If the weather breaks, we are going to "try" to go 12 miles and head towards ournext stop, the N.O.C.It is still lightly raining, and all I hear are drops and the occassionalairplane flying overhead. There was a stillness today that reminded me of how itfeels in Oklahoma right before a huge storm hits. Fog and haze everywhere.A Grouse flew away just 20 feet in front of us. We couldn't see it due to thefog, but it was loud and actually startled me. LOLRight now I am chilled so I best get zipped up in my bag. We'll see whattomorrow brings.~Certain