Date: 2005-03-19
From: Low Gap, GA

To: Cheese Factory Site, GA
Miles today: 13.1

Day Seven: In which Jess has a leaky platypus, leaves hate mail for someone she's never met, attempts to talk to a small child, plays June Cleaver with a dirty hippie, falls down, and makes it to the Cheese Factory but does not eat any cheese: A tough day. My knees are getting worse, and though the new Superfeet feel good on the arches, they've raised my heels in my boots just enough to start rubbing new blisters. On top of that, my platypus sprang a leak this morning and dripped all down the inside of my pack. My stuff stayed dry, thank goodness - I'd wrapped it all up in enough layers of plastic to make sure of that. But having the water bladder out of comission meant that I had to stop and take my pack off in order to reach my Nalgene every time I wanted a drink of water.We lost Weatherman, too- he'd been battling an ankle injury for days, and decided he needed to get into town and rest. But we're planning to get to Hiawassee on Monday morning, and he may meet up with us there, if his foot's up to it. I hope it will be - Weatherman may in fact be the bona fide funniest person I have ever met in my life. ("Hey, speakin' of shoes that don't fit right, that always did piss me off. Kids today. My son, he's always gotta have the new cool shoes that all the kids got? And he wants 'em about four sizes too big some reason. But if I'm gonna pay eighty, ninety bucks for a pair of new shoes for him, they better fit right, you know? So he'd be tryin' em on and I'd be all, You sure those fit right? Lemme feel where your toes are. And the little bastard would jam his toes all up in the front of the shoes so it seemed like they fit. And I'd buy em for him. And then two weeks later he'd be sittin at the dinner table and I'd walk by and kick his leg, you know? And the shoe would go flyin' across the d**n room. Man, that pissed me off.")I'm looking forward to getting to Hiawassee not only for the reconnaissance with Weatherman, but also because it should put us right on schedule to meet up with the contingency of M Company who've been just ahead of us: Longhaul, Red Hat, and Wyatt in particular. Longhaul's been leaving messages in the shelter registers telling us to hurry up; most of them read something like, "Come on Scholar, CuppaJoe, and What's-her-face." I've been taking extreme delight inleaving my own pointed messages in the same registers - usually something along the lines of, "He couldn't forget my name if he tried. There'll be a reckoning to be reckoned with soon" - knowing that even if Longhaul himself won't get the messages, every hiker behind me will read them both. And, as I mused, the one nice thing about the unidirectionality of shelter register messages is that I always get the last word. I'll catch him soon. He won't know what hit him.Six miles into the hike, I stopped for lunch at Blue Mountain Shelter; most of the others were either already there or trickled in soon after I sat down. I was tired; Mike and I left the shelter last, and a scant few minutes later I had to stop not once but twice - first, because a misadjusted pack strap meant the lid of my pack kept slipping forward and whacking me upside the head, and second, because the tape on my left heel had slipped off. The descent into Unicoi Gap was treacherous and steep, and quite painful on the knees. I went slowly.There were upsides to the day, though: tired and hurting, I made it down into the gap to meet my first on-the-trail trail magic: Glenn and Tyree, a local couple, and their four year old daughter Meredith (whose trail name was Miracle Baby, and who was rightfully quite proud of herself for having just managed to go potty in the woods for the first time) were in the parking lot with their minivan and a cooler full of sodas and snacks, there simply to give out goodies to tired hikers. Cuppa Joe was there as well, chilling with Miracle Baby andwaiting on me and my bum knees. "You have beautiful blue eyes," he told her (She did.) "That's what Daddy says at bedtime," she said. She picked up a stick. "It looks like a snake," she said. (It did.) She started peeling the bark off the stick. "Are you peeling off the snakeskin?" I asked. "No, silly," she said, "it's a stick-snake, not a REAL snake." Of course.We sat there for a while, resting, talking to our trail angels, and enjoying the cold drink - which was going to be my fortification for the last three and a half miles. Glenn, Tyree, Meredith, if you read this, thank you so much for your kindness and generosity. You absolutely turned around a difficult afternoon.My luck hadn't run out there, either. The final climb, up and over Rocky Mountain, was a tough one, and I was pushing. Just as I was thinking, "I have got to be almost there," I saw tents through the trees, and smelled barbecue; as I walked the last stretch of trail into the campsites, a voice called out, "Honey, I'm home!" "Hi, dear!" I yelled back. "How was your day?"I don't know about his day, but mine was definitely getting better. The comedian turned out to be Crash!Bang!, a thru-hiker from 2004,(named for quintessential clumsiness; he fell out of a tree on the summit of Springer and was when I met him nursing a red welt on his forehead which, he claimed, he had somehow managed to inflict upon himself while putting on his shirt in the morning) who was up at the Cheese Factory tent-sites running a hiker feed along with his friends Smokey Girl and Azimuth. A plateful of grilled veggies, fresh fruit, and cookies later, I was delightedly singing their praises, which I will do again here: A million thanks to C!B!, SmokeyGirl and Azimuth for their wonderful treat - the food and the company were both enormously enjoyed.Then I sat down, fell over a log, righted myself, took a swig of soda, and belched. "Scuse me," I said. "I like this chick," said Crash!Bang!. "She makes me look graceful."