Date: 2006-06-18
From: The River Weasel's Birthday!

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Miles today: 0.0

Wow, what a day! I needed to get an early start in order to make it to Harpers Fairy by 4 pm before the Appalachian Trail Conservancy Headquarters closed. When I woke up and got ready to leave, I couldn¢t leave. I wanted to skip breakfast but I felt that I needed to eat and talk to Queen Diva. When I got upstairs for breakfast, I talked to Queen Diva. I told her that she had spoiled me so much last time I came through that it had made me want to hike the trail. I finally got out of the hostel and headed down the trail. I came to the David Lesser Shelter which is the 1000 mile mark for this year. There was a post there that had just been erected a few minutes before. I was the second person to see it. After a photo shoot with it, I kept moving. After a few miles I got close to some thing that I never thought would happen for the last 500 miles. I turned a corner and saw a small sign that said, ¢Welcome to West Virginia¢. The emotion that I felt was incredible. It¢s amazing how a 1 by 2 foot piece of pine wood can change your whole emotions. I was out of the longest state. I let out a yell. "Yeah, Hell Yeah, @$#! Yeah!" I was so excited. After I took my picture I moved on around the corner and ran into 2 guys sitting their. They asked me if everything was alright cause they heard some yelling. I tried to explain that I walked from Georgia and they didn¢t understand. I answered a few questions but had to keep moving. The section going into Harpers Ferry was rockier than I remembered, and since I was trying to make good time it was harder. I finally made it to town and got to the ATC headquarters. I got my picture taken for the records and got my number. I was number 397. That means that I was the 397th person to start in Georgia to make it to the physiological half waypoint. The actual halfway point is farther up but everyone considers Harpers Ferry the physiological halfway point. From here I had planed on taking a few days off to visit Washington, DC. The next train wasn¢t leaving until the morning. I was on my way to the hotel when I ran into FDR and Mule in the outfitter. We decided to grab a drink before walking up the hill to the hotel. Once we got to the hotel we went to our rooms before meeting up in the room that FDR and Catch Up split and had to pay $60 more because it had a TV. Once we final were ready to go we went back to the historic district to grab a few. We went to the Armory first where they had an open mike night. There was a killer guy on the harmonica and kid from Romania who was quite impressive. We started talking to these 2 girls and asked them if they would give up a ride up the hill to the next bar. So FDR, Catch Up, Goldfish, Mule and I piled in. When we got to the bar it was closed. The girls said they knew of another place they would take us and bring us back. So off we went whipping through the country roads of West Virginia. When we finally got to the next town over she pulled in a back lot. At this time the only thing they had told us was that we were going to "Tony's Place¢ we didn¢t know if it was a bar or some guy¢s garage. We got out of the car in the ally and started walking between the buildings. We all admitted we were a little scared when we left the car and headed for "Tony's Place". When we came out of the ally we went into an empty pizza place. At this time I figured that we were about to get robbed and find our own way back to the hotel. Before we got robbed we saw some stairs and heard a band. We went down stairs to find one of the coolest dive bars around. When the locals found out it was my birthday and that we had walked from Georgia the shots came flyin. After rocking out with the band we realized it was time to head back to the hotel we made the trip through the back roads of West Virginia. FDR insisted that the girls needed a trail name. After a short pause he yells out, "Wild and Wonderful." We all thought he was talking about the song. He meant that should be their trail names. When we got back to the hotel we took some pictures and watched some of the expensive TV and recapped the crazy night.