Date: 2005-05-11
From: Partnership Shelter, VA

To: Relax Inn, Atkins, VA
Miles today: 11.6
Weather: clear sky

I started late this morning since I knew we only had 11.6 miles to go. Stopped in the visitor¢s center right near Partnership before heading out and discovered a really awesome fire safety coloring book featuring, among other things, a picture that was supposed to be of a mother taking matches away from her child but could just as easily been of her giving them to him. You couldn¢t help feeling the book was more likely to encourage arson than prevent it. I bought a few candy bars and then left. I walked alone nearly all day, and since it was a short day I wasn¢t in any rush. So I took a nap on the trailside ¢ sunshine is hard to resist, and I was sleepy anyway on account of last night¢s snorers. I¢m still marveling at the Virginia countryside: rolling hills and pastures so lovely and green, and the scent of some unidentified flower drenching the air. I woke up this morning with a weird pins and needles feeling in the sole of my left foot, a very specific spot, near the base of the fourth toe. Like a shot nerve. But I couldn¢t find anything wrong there, so I shrugged and walked out on it, entertaining paranoid fantasies about severe and crippling neurological disorders. (Every hiker¢s favorite twisted hypochondriac pastime.)It took me seven miles to Chatfield Shelter ¢ and increasing shooting needle pain in my foot ¢ to figure out, genius that I am, that I¢d been walking on a splinter all morning, which I had failed to notice at first because it was already so deeply embedded. I must have gotten it last night, running around the shelter barefoot. So I stopped at Chatfield long enough to refill on water and poke at my foot long enough to decide there was no way that splinter was going to come out without major intervention and a needle, and I might as well go the rest of the way to town where I could deal with it properly. About two miles past Chatfield, at the VA615 road crossing, I hit Lindamood Schoolhouse, an old, wooden, one-room school from the turn of the last century which has been restored into a visitors¢ museum. The teacher¢s desk was strewn with genuine era textbooks, dusty and leatherbound. I¢m a sucker for that stuff. The best book of them all was called ¢Maury¢s Elementary Geography¢ ¢ you have to look at the photos, as soon as they¢re posted ¢ different chapters informed readers that a) enlightened European nations have been putting a stop to the barbaric practice of African slavery, b) Turkmenistan is not a place worth visiting, and c) the Japanese, not quite yet the Yellow Peril, are more progressive than their Chinese counterparts.When I left the schoolhouse it was onward to Atkins at US11 and the legendary Dairy Queen ¢right on the trail! For real!,¢ which people have been rhapsodizing about for miles, no joke. The trail leading up to the road crossing (and the DQ) is especially tricky because you can see the road about three miles before you actually get there, all very tantalizing and teasing. But I made it at last, and a Blizzard was my reward. The meek shall inherit¢¦ice cream with candy mixed in. We walked next door to the Relax Inn after a little while to get a room for the night, and I had an out-of-body moment thinking how weird it was that it didn¢t seem weird at all to go hide on a covered bridge on a highway roadside in order to keep out of view of the curmudgeonly motel proprietor while collectively figuring out how many people to cram into a motel room. (Six.) After a shower and laundry we settled in to watch Terminator 2 (Scholar is unparalleled at bad-movie narration) and I dug at my splinter for a while unsuccessfully with a needle borrowed from Serenity and sterilized with a lighter. But the needle turned out not to be sharp enough, so I STILL have a splinter in my foot, which is ridiculous, but at least Trail Days is upon us and I don¢t have to walk much on it till Sunday. Twelve miles on a splinter, ca suffit. I ate a lot of food collected from people¢s maildrops; Poet¢s mom¢s rosemary cookies being probably the most noteworthy. Poet cut Scholar¢s hair with scissors borrowed from Jake Break and Low Gear, who were staying a few rooms down; later we were all afflicted with a case of the collective giggles, which started when Serenity called her mom and then told Feelin Free to talk to her, and continued when Free started kicking Scholar, who was lying peacefully on the motel room floor in her sleeping bag. Scholar was obliged to fight back, but didn¢t bother getting out of her sleeping bag to do so, so she was thrashing around on the floor like a giant purple worm, and by the time we finally calmed down, Jake Break started pounding on the door asking for his scissors back, so I started tripping all over everyone trying to find them, and while this all may sound odd fodder for humor, you¢ll have to take my word as to its hilarity.