Date: 2017-05-29
From: Blue Moose Restaurant

To: Brookside Inn
Miles today: 23.0
Weather: overcast clouds

As Gandalf and the dwarves invaded his snug and warm hobbit hole, Bilbo Baggins thought, ¢I don¢t camp. I don¢t hike.¢ Ah, but he would.¢I don¢t camp. I don¢t hike.¢ Not the words I expected from the father of a long trail. Dick Anderson was driving interstate 95 in Maine in 1995 when the idea leapt into his head. ¢Why me? Send this message to someone who likes to hike in the outdoors.¢ He fishes; he hunts; but he doesn¢t hike. ¢The message came to the wrong person.¢ If this were a comic strip there would be a light bulb above Dick¢s head as he sat in his speeding car and next to it would be: ¢The Appalachian Mountains continue north from Katahdin to Newfoundland, why doesn¢t the Appalachian trail?¢ Fathers don¢t get to choose their children.But this particular father was politically well connected in Maine. He was the state Commissioner of Conservation and a good friend of the governor. A short while after the genesis of the IAT concept, the governor asked, ¢Dick, I need some great new idea to promote Earth Day!¢And Dick said, ¢How about announcing the creation of an International Appalachian Trail?¢ Maybe the message had found the right person after all.IMF. I am going to write this in this journal often enough, I¢ll need an abbreviation.We camped on the large back lawn of the Blue Moose restaurant, grass as soft as piled goose down. At 6:30 this morning I headed back on the old railroad bed ATV track. I almost did a 10-by-10 (ten miles by 10:00 am), but I wasn¢t trying. I need to nurse my foot, and an ankle that¢s saying words I can¢t repeat to the princesses. We popped out in Houlton and had lunch in a Tim Hortons restaurant. Hot chocolate and a panini. Life is tough. Tim Hortons drink had a slogan I really liked: ¢I don¢t camp. I don¢t hike.¢ Rolling Thunder and I found out we have more in common than a love of long trails. Neither of our parents camped or hiked or did much of anything in the outdoors. But mine took me to Boy Scouts. And Rolling Thunders¢ took him to The Church of England Boys Society. The Scouts and the Society took us each camping once a month.Also in Houlton I entered somewhere I never expected to go while on trail ¢ a Walmart. Here¢s me with my Walmart greeter. IMF. That¢s shorthand for ¢I Miss Frodo.¢ (Note from Frodo: So here I am, transcribing Scout¢s journal entry, thinking ¢What¢s this IMF thing? He shouldn¢t just throw it out there and not explain it. That¢s dumb!¢ And then it turns out he¢s being sweet. Scout had told me that he should hike the first three days without support from me, so it would feel like the beginning of a real thru-hike. So I took myself off to Prince Edward Island to be a tourist and then stopped and visited hiker friend Coyote (Dave Wood, PCT ¢07) and his wife Sheila I Nova Scotia.)As Rolling Thunder and I tread along our 11-mile country-lane road walk, I hear a car slow behind me. Frodo. We expected to see her this evening, since we are all staying in a motel that¢s right on the trail. And I was so overjoyed to see her that I completely forgot that this means I have the opportunity to slackpack. I was honestly surprised when she offered, ¢Would you like me to take your pack?¢Tonight I used my one Walmart purchase ¢ a large 4-inch magnifying glass. [Princess alert] Damn. The magnifying glass shows the tiny tick head is still in my leg. I tweezer it out. A dose of doxycycline it is.Off to bed. A real bed.