Date: 2005-06-11
From: Pearisburg

To: Troutville, Va
Miles today: 95.0

Well, here I am in Troutville, Va on June, 11 after my longest stretch of pure hiking with no showering, resupplying, and restaurant opportunites and I made it through with flying colors. It was about one hundred miles. Troutville is a little interstate pop up town and I am still feeling awesome and ready to whip out major miles over the next few months. I must say, that I have now become part of the trail, and reached the point that I am no longer comfortable in normal society and I continuously comit various faux pas while trying to take care of business in towns by offending people with my rank stench and other hikerisms like talking about rashes and taboo matters mostly relating to horridly disgusting bodily issues. I think I am normal, but in the eyes of others, I am sure I am quite odd, but I totally dig my existence, and I grow happier at my lack of worries and concerns each day. Cars whiz by at amazing speeds, free toilet paper is an amazing concept at the public restrooms in towns at gas stations and restaurants which are an even bigger oddity. I am happy, free, and loving my lack of plans and expectations, which provide me with amazing opportunities to really enjoy myself and change things up at the spur of the moment. Here are my past few days¢¦May 31:I woke up at the hostel which was really cool. It is in the barn behind a church in Pearisburg. I think the priest who runs the church isn¢t too hot on the idea of the hostel being there on the church property and he wants to shut it down I guess, but he allows it. It is maintained by a guy named Bob who I assume is a parishioner, and his work and money has given thousands of hikers an awesome place to rest and break while in town, and I hope that he can continue to keep it open, and that the priest allows it to remain open for a long time. Getting a haircut was cool, and I ran all the way to the barber shop, while sunflower waited at the Laundromat for the clothes to dry. That night, we went to wal-mart which was the scariest experience I have had on the trail so far¢¦It was so weird being inside of that madness with all the blinking lights and noise, etc. It was scary. At wal-mart, someone had changed the restroom men/women sign and so I used the womens accidentally and freaked out the employees and it was funny. After wally world, we were hungry and we went to wendys with some killer desire for food, but the dining room was closed and when we walked though the drive though, they weren¢t very polite about it and for the first time ever, our claim of thru-hiker status didn¢t exempt us from the rules. We were not happy, but fortunately the gas station was still open and so we got some oreo ice cream sandwiches and some guac flavored Doritos and headed down the road for the hostel for the night.June 1:Today was my two month mark. That is pretty crazy that I been living in the woods for two months. I ate at the pizza hut buffet and then headed to dollar general for random stuff with sunflower and although we had planned on hiking out of town today, we basically convinced each other to stay another night, and it was cool, because it ended up getting really nasty that night and the weather was horrible. Sunflower beat me all day long at rummy and then we planned on cooking quesadillas but we ended up ordering Italian food. We joked on eachother for being total slackers, and we joked more about the birth order thing, how as we are both the birth order babies, we instigate and prod eachother to have fun and do less actual work than we probably should. It makes for a lot of fun, but we skip a lot of work that we should probably do too, however, it is loads of fun, and the Italian that we ordered was definitely better than the food we would have cooked. I slept pretty good, listening to the rain on the barn, while I was dry and warm in my bed for one more night.June 2:Bob yelled and woke us up, asking the hikers if anyone needed a ride, and knowing that it was now or never, we hopped in the back in the bed of his 4x4 and took off into town, laughing about how while I was running to get into the truck, my feet slipped on the wet wooden deck, and I totally wiped out and slipped and landed straight on my back. We ate at hardees and It was really good. I have been learning how to eat slower and today I did an excellent job, as I was even slower than NestHead which is a miracle. At the hardees, a man noticed we were hikers and offered us a ride back to the hostel. His name was Ed and his generosity of giving us a ride, as fate would have may have altered my life, as I learned some valuable info on cycling. We were talking in his car after picking up some blizzards from DQ about cycling and I learned he had biked across the country which is a huge goal of mine, but I didn¢t think financially feasible, but after talking to him, I learned that it isn¢t that costly, and that there is a company that prints out maps just like the trail maps that I currently use. I t was so awesome and it got my wheels turning as to how to make my cross country cycling trip happen by next summer. Sunflower and I finaly packed our gear after a generous offer from bob who said we could stay another night, we knew it was time to get back on the trail. We headed to the grocery store in the rain, feeling great at around 4:00, which is pretty late. We ran into redbeard who informed us that our long lost friends were inside the bar and so we ran in to say hi. Cold Feet informed us that they were all staying at her fianc©s and she said that we should stay there tonight to hang out instead of starting hiking again. Well, me and sunflower were itching to get on the trail only moments ago, but the thought of a night with friends was to powerful to resist, and so we rode into Blacksburg to check the awesome college town and hang with our buds, It was a blast. I got to play my guitar with some folks and we drank good beer, and ate good food, not like we really needed it though, after so many days off!June 3:Wow¢¦Ummmm¢¦No Comment¢¦.Good Times¢¦Moooo¢¦.Moooo¢¦Mooooo¢¦.We saw star wars today! A huge group of us went to the theatre and I fell asleep during the climax where it is revealed how darth vader assumed his identity. It was funny. It was definitely an interesting morning, trying to catch taxis and busses and hitches into the town where the theatre is, but it was fun. I bought a bright white hat at the store by the theatre that was begging to get dirty on the trail, and we ate at a great Mexican restaurant, and the great salsa music had me dancing in my seat, wanting to go out that night for some real dancing¢¦We ran out the theatre, and barely caught the busses at the end and saxy forgot her jacket. We walked around the awesome campus of Va Tech and I was surprised at its beauty. Me and sunflower played pool at a bar and it was good to beat her finally! WE are both really competitive, so it makes for interesting bouts, but we¢re both good sports, we just give it our all, and try to whoop the other. No one else besides sunflower and I wanted to go dancing, so we left the bar and went to this club where the bouncers made fun of our attire and we danced finally tiredly for quite awhile, not wanting to throw in the towel, after talking about dancing for so long, even though sleep was needed and the body was not too peppy. There was probably 10 girls for every one guy in this bar so it was funny that there wasn¢t more hikers, b/c most hikers dudes would be in heaven at this bar¢¦In a day or two, I will update the days I have missed so far,(June 4-11)Take it easy everyone!-B-Rocket