Date: 2004-06-11
From: Georgia

To: Maine
Miles today: 15.0
Weather: clear sky

Morning.Awake.Shake dreams from your hair my pretty children, my sweets, my PowderFinger, my Whiskey, my Flatbed, Yovo, Wife & Beater, and me. Whiskey(of Whiskey & Flatbed from New Hampshire), true to her namesake,brought an Old Crow to the DuPont downwind Lycra-scented riverbend parkwhere we all sat last night `round the picnic table drinking, beermostly, and swapping AT war stories in the gentle dancing light offireflies abundant. We carry passes in our pockets, call em "noblehobo visas" signed by YMCA desk personnel to prove to the cops that weare indeed of the "2000-mile masochist" variety and not just grifteropportunist who happened by the open field between YMCA and factory topop a squat awhile on questionable motives. There are a few such folks out here in the field. The cops, if theycame by, would need not do a tent by tent check. They would need onlyask us. We thruhikers can spot our own kind in a heartbeat, and thusspot interloping posers, too. They walk through and no one knows them.They don't give their names or say much of anything, unless prompted. And their tents are a dead giveaway: Wal-Mart specials, huge and sillyand structurally poor, they stick out amidst a dozen of our smaller,stealth tents, hitech & expensive every one. I look out across thefield here by the river and just in the dozen thruhiker tents, (notcounting equipment stowed inside like $300 packs, $100 MSR alpine-readycook stoves, 2 & 3 hundred dollar sleeping bags, $75 Thinsulate groundpads) I see a couple thousand dollars. It is a Sunday morning in mid-June and this is Camp Zero, Waynesboro (Ispell it Waits-burro) Virginia, population I don't know, but apparentlythe largest town we will pass through on the entire AT. It is thesouthern gateway to the Shenandoah¢s, a hundred miles of ridge duringwhich the AT more or less parallels a commercial section of the BlueRidge Parkway where restaurants and tourist kiosks allegedly abound andthe trail crosses the highway an alleged 42 times. I have just walked90 miles of a pristine (no shops or cafes) section of the BRP in 4 &1/2 madly-driven days, and am not looking forward to the Shenandoah¢s. So here I sit, resting my mashed-potato feet and bullfrog-bloatedknees, tendering a slight Yungling Black & Tan 12-pack hangover andcontemplating my future. My immediate future. Aqua-blaze? Mychoices, as usual, are many. And for this I feel deeply blessed. I spent my first night back in my beloved Mtn. Hardware Wayfarer IItent after weeks of ugly sleep in the airborne cocoon of my HennessyHammock. After waiting out a postal day off thanks to old RonnieRaygun, I at long last collected my tent & REI mummy bag from theWaynesboro PO, where I had mailed it ahead in time and space to myself,for possible pickup or forwarding on to New Hampshire if all had workedwell with my summer bag and hammock tent. It did not. So I picked up my so-called "bounce box" and gleefully ran back to theYMCA "Distance Hikers Only" refugee camp to crack it open. Zip-zapwent my knife down the packing tape seams. I lifted the folds of thebox open and WHOOOOSH! A noxious wave of ammonia leapt out of the boxand hit me full face and I thought, "Oh, no." I knew immediately whatI was smelling. Seems back in Damascus in the thick of Trail Daze, I, in my drunkendaze, washed and only half-dried my $300 down bag, mummy wrapped it inHefty garbage green, and packed it away in a tight little box. Andthere it sat. For damn near a month. Rotting. Oh, the horror. -RSM For the full story of Rick's journey, visit Jigglebox.com