Date: 2004-04-01
From: Georgia

To: Maine
Miles today: 13.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Morning. April Fools Day, 2004 Mile 127My sleeping bag is a stinky sack of dirty and now hopefully dryclothes, my palm pilot and me. I had to put my palm pilot between mythighs for five minutes to thaw it out. I suppose it works cold butwhen it¢s cold I can't see the LCD screen. Which is fine because I amnow typing in the dark, this time inside the bag because the air tempoutside must be in the teens. Yesterday I walked through a brutal snowstorm. I'd get all worried cuzone inevitably gets wet from sweat in one's under layer and I wassoaked. Then my shoes got soaked. I had just to keep moving. Everynow and then while I'd be worrying or wrestling in my mind about thepossible mistake of letting Elly go, I'd remember Jack Barrymore'scharacter in that 30's film "You Can't Take It With You" and I'd say tomyself, "Just be like the lilies. Just be a Lilly and everything'sgonna be just fine." Trekking poles, it turns out, make really good snow smacker-offers. Some parts of the trail are so dense they're like tunnels. Now add alayer of snow to the branches and you've got one narrow tunnel! I'dknock the snow off with my poles and whoosh, up would go the treebranch, up and out of my way. Doug was amazed to find how many people had made their way through thestorm and to the shelters, Cold Spring and Wesser Bald. "I wasfollowing two sets of prints in the snow, that's it. I figured it wasjust you and Tinker I was following," he told me. The snow was comingdown that hard. When the drinking tube from my pack water bladderfroze (because it's so skinny it was the first thing to freeze), I tookto lapping snow off of rhododendron leaves for hydration. UndergroundRadio would have been fun to get through the snowstorm with. I misshim. I guess I never explained what happened to Tumbleweed and him. Basically, one day the foursome hit a shelter a little early in theday. Tumbleweed and Radio wanted to stay. Elly and I felt like goingon. And I haven't seen them since. Everybody here is talking about food. Tinker asks Sarge what he ate atFat Willeys. Sarge says something, then Tinker says, No, I asked WHATyou ate. So Little Engine, who appears to be Sarge's companionalthough young enough to be his granddaughter (and not black likeSarge), goes into great detail about the exact food elements thatcomprised their dinner at Willeys, some restaurant in Franklin,NC. It's brutally cold out and I have to go to the bathroom. Not lookingforward to this. When I sleep, I remove my Himalayan down jacket , zip it back up, andslip the foot of my bag into it, thus doubly warming my feet.   I puton my ''smart wool'' long johns and dry socks if I have them In the caseof last night where I didn't have em, I tucked my feet into the legs ofmy other long johns whose hip area needed drying anyway. I wear nylonspandex shirts because they dry so quickly and are warm. I have onlytwo long sleeve warm shirt items, a wool sweater and a thermalturtleneck. Both were rather damp after yesterday's hike, but I worethe sweater to bed and the tneck lay in here somewhere drying. My bagis of the mummy type and thus has a "hoodi" area that lay under one'shead and zips up around your head and neck. I sleep with the bagupside-down such that the hoodie lay like a flap over my head. In windywitch-tit cold weather like this, I hide inside. I'm telling you allthis just to avoid joining the crowd in the inevitable ice cold pack up of gear. Did I mention that Elly is gone? Yes, I suppose I did.   But hey, maybe there's potential with Little Engine? She can't beSarge's lover, too young. And I like what I've heard of her so far. Sweet, attentive to him as hell.   Maybe mid to late 20s. Ahh, hell. I dunno. But there's a woman for me out here somewhere. I just knowit. ¢RSM For the full story of Rick's journey, visit Jigglebox.com