I've got hiker's hobble...

Day 0 - 4/16/10
Took the zero day today, just to give my feet another day. I'm a
little bummed because I'm missing out on gorgeous hiking weather and
I've heard tomorrow might be my first rainy day, but I'm sure there
are more sunny days to come. I guess it'll give me a chance to test
the rain gear too.

I woke up at a leisurely 9 am and took another shower. That's two days
in a row, almost like a regular person. Got dressed, went to the lobby
to see when check out was (11am) and saw some food from the hiker box
that looked good so I helped myself. A hiker box for those that don't
know is just a box or large container of some sort that has food and
supplies other hikers have discarded. It's nice to be able to grab
some freebies here and there. I got two things of instant potatoes and
a couple hot cocoa packets.

After that I went down to the PO to drop off some stuff and then hit
up the grocery store nearby for a resupply. Place was called Ingles.
Had never heard of it, but it was plenty big. I got back to the Inn
just in time to get my gear out of Hot Wings (Davy's new trail name)
and my room, and then his Dad who was visitng brought me 7 miles down
to the blueberry patch hostel.

Walked in and there were 3 other hikers here, all stayed last night
and decided to stay 1 more. 1 of them was Buddha Jim, so I snapped a
photo of him. The other two already had gnarly beards so they didn't
start with a clean slate like I did. Slates covered now though! I also
learned a new term from them today. I was walking around all gingerly
and awkward and they said, "Oh, you've got hiker's hobble." Made me
laugh.

Anyway the owner of this place, Gary, is a real nice guy. Friendly,
generous, and accomadating. He showed me around, told me the rules,
and then did my laundry for me! Now that's hospitality. I walked
around his property a bit and took some pictures of his jackasses
(there's two here and no I'm not one of them) and the goats. They came
right up to me, probably thinking I had food. Then I had some time to
talk with my Dad for a few, then my friend Davin who will be meeting
up with me later in June. I'm eating lunch now, having helped myself
to two ramen noodle packs from the hiker box here at blueberry. I'm
starting to really like these hiker boxes.

It's been a few hours and now I'm sitting in the parking lot of a
Hardee's waiting for another hiker named Tickspit to finish up eating.
Gary let tickspit and I drive his Jeep down to town to get a few
things done. See what I'm talking about when I say generous? I'm going
to give him a good size donation for all his kindness. Anyway it's
almost 7 pm now so when we get back I'll probably be heading to bed
soon and then it's back on the trail for me! I'm really excited about
tomorrow morning because Gary cooks up a big breakfast of blueberry
pancakes, sausage, and eggs for all us hikers. Can't wait.

Big C, thanks for your posts bro. I like hearing about current affairs
stuff every now and then so keep that up whenever you feel like. And
throw in some Sox news too. For views there's been some pretty epic
ones from the tops of the 4000+ footers. You can see all the other
mountains you've just climbed and how vast these forests really are.
I'm waiting for some real eye poppers in the smokies though.

Also it seems like many are interested in if I'm eating enough, so
here's a typical day.

Breakfast @ 7:30AM: oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar, two poptarts
or a cereal bar and some dried fruit. (Usually my oatmeal portion is
so large I have trouble getting it all down.)

Snack @ 10:30/11: A snickers or two and some gorp.

Lunch @ 1:30/2: bread or roll with PB or hard salami, gorp, dried fruit.

Dinner @ 6-7PM: instant mashed potatoes or noodles, salami, gorp,
candy bar.

That's all for today. Don't expect too many posts that are this long,
I just had some catch up time because of the zero day.