Date: 2007-06-11
From: Damascus!

To: Damascus
Miles today: 1.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Well, we got up and had a great breakfast with lots of fresh fruit, scrambled eggs, pancakes, cheese grits, OJ, coffee, muffins, jams, baked apples, etc. and talked to Carol and Walt, the only other guests. Then I went off to the laundromat while Whiskey Jo called the car rental place and did some other stuff before surrendering to one of the chairs on the front porch. After eating at Sicily's Italian restaurant, she retired to a hammock in the back yard by the stream. I joined her at first and later read inside and who can remember? We just goofed off all day, you see. Sicily's for dinner and then a walk to the end of town where we walked in. Then a celebratory beer at Baja Mexican restaurant before heading home and watching a little TV: soldiers in Afghanistan and Bazaar Foods in which the host travelled to the Phillipines and ate really wierd grubs and worms and, tu duh, the balut (bah-LOOT), which almost sounds like pollute, a goose egg fertilized for 18 days and then boiled. When it's broken open it has some feathers and legs and beak and stuff!! We wished we'd known about balut when we'd met Suzanna in Troutdale so we could ask her about it! A nice long bath for Whiskey Jo and there you go, bedtime.The next day, someone from Enterprise Rent A Car picked us up and showed us around Abingdon a bit before we drove from about 11am to 3 pm home and returned the car about a half a mile away, and, then, our adventure was basically over. We spent the next few days cleaning tents and downloading pictures and whatnot, and taking care of mail and whatnot, but, golly, the adventure is now naught but a sweet memory. Now that it¢s over (boohoo) I think back to some of the things that didn¢t come up in the day to day writing and the some of the now-that-its-over conclusions.Thru-hiker stink! There is a smell that we get when we have been sweating a lot and not bathing for days that, when you are around thru-hikers, you smell regularly. We smelled regularly. Other hikers smelled even worse. We were a bit self-conscious when we arrived at motels until we¢d showered and laundered. I imagine that in the past (and perhaps in many places today) it¢s just something that is a part of everyday life and everybody gets used to.When we started I think the people who we passed were leading the pack to Khatadin. As the days went on, and expecially after Trail Days in Damascus (May 19-20) we passed bulk of hikers. The leading edge were more serious, getting up early and walking long miles. After that it seemed more like groups of friends who stuck together even though it made them slower. This is where the smoking started I think. After that it seemed like 75% of thru-hikers smoked. Many of them, of course, started on the trail because others were smoking, and, I presume, because they were away from their usual support group of friends who would have discouraged them from ever starting. After that came the groups that seemed to be more into drinking beer than reaching Khatadin before it¢s park gets closed down in mid-October. We felt smug when they¢d say they were going all the way, we¢d think: The hikers a hundred miles ahead of you might not make it, there¢s no way you¢re going to make it!Not only was it fun to meet many (but certainly not all) of the other hikers at shelters, it was fun, and sometimes vital, to talk to hikers that we¢d pass on the ridge, or wherever. We¢d always ask ¢How are you?,¢ which, out here in this world would rarely be answered ¢Not so great,¢ but every so often on the trail someone, sometimes us, would answer that. We would then let them know how far water was, or what the terrain was like, or just say, rest for awhile. Once, on Dragon Tooth, someone gave us water when we said we weren¢t doing so great. Most of the time everybody says, ¢Great¢ and we just pass each other. Half the time, though, someone (usually us) would have a question ¢ How far until the next water, the next shelter? Is it still rocky up that way, too? Is there camping around such and such a spot? It occurred to me that we were like ants ¢ we¢d stop for a short time and touch antennae and then move on, with vital, easily conveyed information.Some of my before-trip expectations that got shattered were that it would be hot, and rainy, and that we¢d increase our mileage faster, that we¢d get blisters, that I didn¢t have any extra weight to begin with, that we¢d have lots of free time once we got to camp, and that we¢d sleep better. Hot: Because we were usually between 2,000 and 5,000 feet up and almost always beneath the canopy of the benevolent forest trees, we were quite cool. Fairly cold Whiskey might even say about the first week of the trip. There were a couple of miles in the sun that were a bit warm. As for rain, this was the driest May on record Whiskey said. There was a little bit of rain during a couple of days early on, but it barely got through the canopy. It was only in the last week that we had one day, and about three nights of rain. The day it rained I got soaked. We just walked straight into Troutdale and all our wet troubles evaporated. The nights it rained I packed up the tent still a bit wet in the morning. One hiker said that last year (his first attempt to do the whole trail) it rained for two and a half weeks once! Yikes!!Mileage: well, we misoverestimated how fast we¢d be ready and so we yellow blazed a bit to compensate. I guess we never walked far enough to get blisters. Our longest day was just over 12 miles.At the Relax Inn we went on a weight-trimming rampage and got rid of quite a few pounds of extra stuff: one headlamp, one toothpaste tube, warm clothes since it seemed to be getting warmer and more.Free time: At first setting up camp, and fetching and filtering water, and cooking, and washing dishes, and brushing teeth, and hanging the bearbag just seemed to take hours! When we were finally getting faster at it, we were walking a little farther so we didn¢t have a whole lot of time to sit around. I would only write in my journal about every three or four days. Before leaving I had thought about getting a ¢backpacker¢ (light and small) guitar and I did see a couple on the trail, but two weeks in I was thankful I hadn¢t brought it because I wouldn¢t have had the time to play very much. I brought an alto recorder and played that now and then. It¢s very small and light.Sleep: Maybe if we were doing umpteen miles a day we¢d have been exhausted after finishing dinner. Though our legs were tired, we weren¢t more sleepy. I also have RLS, which is not bad if I get in bed when I¢m ready to fall asleep, but we would end up getting in the tent an hour or more before falling asleep and then my legs would start jumping and, even if I fell asleep my legs would still move periodically and I wouldn¢t get good rest and Whiskey Jo wouldn¢t be able to sleep as well either. In the last week, we were finally feeling pretty good about doing ten miles or more. Shelters tend to be spread out every 6 to 12 miles or so, so it wasn¢t always very easy for us to skip a shelter because then we¢d need to do 15 miles. When one shelter was too short a day and the next one made for too long a day, we¢d plan on camping, which usually worked out, but sometimes didn¢t. The last week we had a couple of days where we got out fairly early (sometimes by eating a cold breakfast) and got a bunch of miles in by midday so we could take an hour break and then go for a bunch more miles without our feet hurting too much. We were finally starting to feel conditioned and almost like thru-hikers.When we left I brought 4 fuel canisters for our stove because we couldn¢t mail them and we figured from the wording on the side that they¢d last us four days or so, meaning that 4 would last two weeks and we¢d buy more along the trail. I guess because we had mostly instant stuff that we¢d made from a friend¢s book, we didn¢t use as much fuel as expected so at the end we still had one completely full fuel canister ¢ almost a pound that I carried the whole way, but didn¢t really have to. We also had little, very light headnets that we got for bugs that we never used.One observation we made was that there weren¢t many squirrels on our route. At times there were a lot of chipmunks, but, even though I thought that squirrels were ubiquitous, they aren¢t!There were many times when Whiskey or I thought about the natives who had lived here for thousands of years before the sudden change started 500 years ago and wondered what it would have been like to live there and experience the forests with many more huger trees and more wildlife. There is a sign at Elk Garden that explains why there are no longer elk there.Some other names for Whiskey Jo:Tangy (relating to gas production), Toothpick (the still picture at the end of a movie about Wendy Jo would be of her picking her teeth with a toothpick), Chip (she ate a lot of potato chips), Falls On Poles, Miss Piggy (for eating as much as me!), Homeless Whiskey Jo (kuz she had just moved two weeks before hitting the trail and most of her stuff is still in storage).Other names for Lark: Spicy (relating to gas production), Regular Guy (relating to using the privy and to the fact that every few days someone would say I looked like someone they knew ¢ which happened again yesterday at the movie theater!).The Big Wrap-up: Before I went on the Appalachian Trail I liked hiking and I loved being outdoors, but I didn¢t dream of spending a month or three on the trail like Whiskey Jo did. Now that I¢ve gone I am very glad I did and I would do it again if circumstances allowed. The vistas actually were worth the effort. Living outside for 25 days was wonderful. Spending so much time with my love was priceless. Talking to a number of cool people was worthwhile. Losing fifteen pounds was not a bad side effect. Getting stronger and gaining more experience camping and taking care of ourselves in the most basic manner was a good lesson, and it certainly makes having easy access to drinking water, a shower, a stove you don¢t have to set up, an easy place to clean dishes, and a refrigerator, etc. more appreciated. I suggest you go on The Trail! If you don¢t have a trail name, come up with one, or ask your friends to give you one. {Whiskey here. The wonderful adventure is over, but the impact will last for a long time. It was everything I had hoped for and more and I feel incredibly gratefull to have had the opportunity to experience it, and of course in particular to experience it with my loving partner and trail-journal-writer-extraordinaire, Lark.}More of our pictures can be viewed at:http://www.kodakgallery.com/AlbumMenu.jsp?rand=1182139509109&