Date: 2005-08-15
From: The Vortex Known as Toms house

To: Mark Noepal Lean-to
Miles today: 13.7

We woke up early because we had some errands to run before leaving town. We packed up and left Tom's housel We hit up Duff and Dell's for breakfast. It was huge and delicious. The atmosahere was fun too. All of the locals seem to hit this spot in the morning. They all seemed really interested in our hike and Crazy Horses hair(dreads to his ass). One lady turned aroud and told Piker to be careful because she had seen bears in her backyard recently. I never thought that it was a possibility that we would see a bear in MA, but I guess it is. After breakfast we headed to do our laundry. After we still had a few hours to wait before we could go to the library, so I called my Mom and sister. I made a plan with my Mom for her to pick us up in Bennington on wednesday. It is so nice of her to come and pick us up since it is a 3 hr drive. I was a gappy Mileage all day because I knew I would be seeing my family soon! We hit up the library right at noon and spent 2 hours there, updating our journal and checking email. The library was great-very friendlyjpeople. Before we left town we stopped and had Philly Cheessteaks at Angelina's Subs. Team SLOTH was there and planning a zero, so we stayed away from them. After eating we headed out of town at 3:00.         We started with a nice roadwalk through Dalton and then we started to climb. The walk to Cheshire went by really quickly.   By 6:30 we were walking thry Cheshire, we even walked by an Ice cream shop that is on the trail. Piker could not believe that I walked by it. Thoughts of the Huge Sub that I ate were still fresh in my mind and I was beginning to feel a little sick. We blew through town and then began our climb up Greylock. We had to climb 1400' feet up to the shelter. We climbed and climbed but there were also some really nice flat ridges to walk on. We got to the shelter right as darkness was falling. There were alot of people here but only one NOBO who had left town. We were Surprised. There were some SOBOS and a lot of section hikers. All of the tent platforms were taken so we set up our tent on a slanted area fo grass in front of the shelter. We skipped dinner and crawled into bed. I was still feeling horrible and felt that I had to vomit. I layed and tried to fall asleep but almost immediately was jumping over Piker to puke out the door of the tent. Miserable. My guess is that it was the richness(lard) of the cheesesteak. All I know was that I felt a bit better, layed back down and tried to ignore the stomach ache. I must have dosed off. I hope that we don't roll down the hill tonight. Mt. Greylock in the morning.                              Ms. MileageTranscribers note: Piker here punching in Mileages journal. It seems that she forgot to mention that we did actually have a BEAR encounter today. As we passed a couple sobo's they mentioned that they saw a bear cub wandering around without it mama. This kind of behavior is very unsettling so our awareness was heightened as we made our way thru the swamp. I heard heavy steps of to my left and saw a dopey yearling bear. We were excited to be watching this uncoordinated little fellow. He hung around long enough for us to get a real good look and then took off. I guess because he was little the sobo's thought he was a cub.Sorry about the choppy typing, I'm trying to do this fast.