Date: 2012-06-07
From: Matt's Creek Shelter

To: Glasgow
Miles today: 2.2
Weather: scattered clouds

I woke up at 6:15a with that odd knowing feeling that a bloody nose brings. I fell out of my hammock frantically trying to keep everything sort of clean. It was then that I recognized the hammock nearby as PMo's. I found some pants and a poncho on my way to get my bear bag. They also belonged to PMo. I was excited to see her again. I made some coffee and she eventually came back to camp after socializing with the folks at the shelter. She told me that nobody thought I would show up for another day. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta. I played some of the fiddle parts from James River Blues for two reasons. One to get us in the mood for the upcoming river crossing and two because my coffee was still so hot. PMo permitted my stall tactics. We headed out at 8:30a. It was two miles into town. I wasn't stressing, but by golly, there was breakfast to eat. Mmmm, town food. As we crossed the James River on the dedicated Foot bridge, a train came roaring past us. It must have been treacherous prior to the building of the second bridge. Thank you, William and Laurie for your very clever and helpful addition to the trail.We saw the Troverts and Trekking Pole in the parking lot on the other side of the river. We immediately got picked up by Ken, a trail angel who drove us along with Beast Mode into the far town of Big Island where we had sent a few packages. My box of stuff had not arrived but my shoes did and it was great to see them. People don't talk about it much, but you destroy shoes out here. Mine didn't even look or smell that bad but they were broken on the inside. I have worn this same style of Salomon for a lot of years but the trail delivers a womping unlike anything else. ~800 miles, no real complaints here.Ken took us into Glasgow where we got some breakfast at the Family's Inn Restaurant. Everything is house-made there and we made friends with the owner who took a lot of pride in her cole slaw. I happen to love a good slaw and she brought me out a special breakfast portion, after I had already eaten a platter of french toast, three eggs, a bowl of grits, four slices of bacon, and most of PMo's toast. The slaw was certainly worth a return trip. They started serving lunch in less than an hour!We walked over to the in-town shelter and set up for showers. Hot showers. This was a really nice set up. And rare. I haven't seen a town welcome a posse of dirty hikers quite like this before. PMo took my laundry over while I was in the shower. I saw Semplesee again and we caught up fast. Beast Mode took it upon himself to grill up a dozen eggs over the fire. Bonkman and a few other hikers were hitching out. This was a pretty good spot to be. Knoxville and the Embassador grilled up some burgers. We set up our hammocks nestled in the trees that surrounded the big grassy field the shelter was in.All this food made us pretty hungry (again) and there were two convenience stores right across the road. PMo and I headed over. But as I was walking toward one store, PMo tugged my sleeve and motioned for me to go to the other one. She proceeded to take me in the exit and around the corner from the cash register. There she excitedly showed me a little gem from her thru-hike in 2002: one of the stores had a terrible ceramic figurine that nobody would ever buy. Not in a decade at least. There was an impressive amount of dust covering this thing - at least a millimeter! I couldn't believe that somebody dreamed something this awful up. And then had it manufactured. And managed to sell it to a store. Thankfully this wonderful world is chock full of such mysteries. We actually had to go to both stores to get all the ingredients for our simple little BBQ. A pack of beef patties, 16 slices of fake cheese, an onion, a tomato, and a pack of expired hamburger buns. We added a six of crisp dry cider and were in business.Back at the shelter, we got Semplesee in on the action. Unfortunately, I lost a beard hair in his burger. He was pretty good-natured about it. Then we walked over for ice cream and played some football in the field. Off in the distance, a very large rainbow stretched across the sky. A lot more hikers had shown up over the course of the afternoon and we walked over to the carnival together. They had a mechanical bull, but we sat down to bingo. PMo won a pot on her first ticket. I won on my second. We were up $7.25 for the table. Pretty darn good. EZnomad and Beast Mode came over and we passed around our tickets.PMo decided there needed to be funnel cake in our futures and made it happen. It was equal parts, gross and satisfying. We went back for our jackets, hung out for a little bit, making small talk with hikers we didn't know at all, and then watched lightning rip across the dark night sky. They announced the $100 coverall bingo round and we hurried back over to get seats like true professionals. Midway through the round, rain opened up from the sky and dumped. It was soon splashing upward from the puddles a foot or so off the ground. It was so intense, the bingo players and announcers collectively paused and took notice. In the end, I won the jackpot. But I had to share it. My stake was a whopping $11. We had all joked that the winner had to buy breakfast. There were nine winners. We spent thirty minutes checking the results, and at least thirty more waiting for the rain to let up. We gave up and walked back, slipping into our waiting hammocks. I listened to the trees drip the huge puddles collecting on their leaves down onto my tarp. I wondered how PMo would do with her very small rainfly and jacket combination. I asked her if she was ok and of course, she was fine. Nothing stops this girl. Goodnight all.