Date: 2011-06-17
From: 1.8 miles before George Outerbridge Shelter

To: Jailhouse Hostel, Palmerton
Miles today: 3.0

(In which hang out in Palmerton and sleep in the basement of the municipal building)When I set up my tent I realize that my hiking sticks, which have gradually been wearing down over the past several hundred miles, have finally shrunk to the point where they can no longer optimally support my tent. One side of my tent is no longer taut, and throughout the night of rain the side of my sleeping bag gets wet. Luckily the night is warm and I don't even notice until the morning, but the incident means that I will have to reevaluate my choice of trekking poles sometime soon, and will likely not be able to carry German Sheppard's old stick to Katahdin as he had hoped.I get out of my tent to discover that I have made my camp a few feet away from a rabbit den, from which four babies, only a few inches long, come exploring. The baby rabbits are cuteness embodied in furry, clumsy, tiny packages and I take pictures as they climb over each other and nibble at blades of grass.Mehap and Tom walk by and are envious of my tent site, having stopped a few miles earlier at a less desirable spot. We all walk the three miles to the side trail to Palmerton, which the guidebook advices to use instead of trying to hitch on the fast moving, shoulderless road. Unfortunately for us the side trail is closed due to ongoing construction work in the area, and the road is indeed as impossible to walk or hitch on as the book warned. We call the hostel and the library, trying to get advice from the locals, but they don't know anymore than we do. The only other available option seems to be the train tracks, so we walk single file down the tracks the mile and a half in to town.Palmerton itself is bigger than I was expecting, with nearly a mile of shops along its main road, including two pizza shops, an ice cream shop and a diner-like restaurant that serves breakfast all day. The hostel is in the basement of the municipal building, and after showing our IDs to the town secretary upstairs, we are free to head down to the basement, which as been set up with hiker bunks (like regular bunk but without the mattress, since we all carry sleeping pads and bags). We take hot showers and then head across the street to wash our clothes. The hostel's hiker box contains a sweet pink silk robe, so to class laundry day up I wear the robe instead of my normal rain jacket while my clothes wash.We surf the net at the library and then head over to the town park to toss around Tom's frisbee. I take pictures of Tom diving for catches, but after three full body belly flops on the ground he decides that we have enough pictures, apparently lacking the dedication of the National Geographic jumper whose impressive collection of flying-like jumping photos I recently saw.In town I run into Checker who, for the time being seems to be doing much better. I'm glad that he has chosen to stay on the trail and continue hiking north, though if he keeps his speed up he should stay ahead of me until Maine, so I will likely only see him again if something goes wrong again.Mehap's friend Travis (as of yet trail-nameless) arrives in the evening for a weekend trip, and we all go out for dinner at Bert's, the restaurant with all-day-breakfast, among other things. I order french toast with cheese fries, and while we wait for the food we try to come up with a trail name for Travis. After several failed attempts, we try generating random consonants to rearrange and add vowels to for inspiration. Since our only random number generator is a coin, we split the alphabet up into halves, quarters and eighths, and eliminate half of the remaining letters with every coin toss. When an odd number of letters remain we flip to decide whether or not to include the middle letter in the remaining half; hardly the most efficient way to generate letters, but an entertaining one. Before the food comes we only get as far as generating two Vs, which does inspire one suggestion, but not one that Travis will consider, much to the rest of the table's disappointment.It's a slow, lazy day, and I think about how much richer my hike is with these breaks between hiking. I am lucky I know to be healthy, to be hiking near friends, and to have the luxury of ample time to finish my hike. It's a good life out here, and I'm in no hurry for it to come to an end.