Monday, May 3, 2010

Security Cameras and Rain

I hiked from Hot Springs, NC to Erwin TN (mile 340) with Snickers from New York and Atlas from Canada.  Here are some funny stories from the trail:

1) On the first day out, we took a side trail to check out a fire tower.  When I got there I really had to pee.  So I decided to go off in some bushes near a small building that housed some equipment for the nearby power lines.  I looked around to make sure no one was there and did my business.  I then climbed the fire tower and had a nice lunch with Atlas and Snickers.  As we were climbing down the ladder, we heard a beeping.  Turns out that the power company had a security camera that was mounted on the building and was pointing to the exact spot where I was peeing! Oops, lesson learned.  I'm sure some security guards got a good laugh that day.

2)  There are a number of black bears on the AT.  They aren't dangerous but we do have to worry about them stealing our food.  So every night we tie our food up in trees.  Actually usually Day Tripper ties mine up for me because the process involves throwing a rock over a limb and I have bad aim.  One of the funniest moments on the trail so far happened during a rainy evening with Atlas and Snickers.  We cooked our meals in our tents and then I attempted to bribe Atlas to set up my bear bag because Day Tripper wasn't there.  It's easy to bribe hikers with food!  The sight of this bearded Canadian trying to hang bags of food from the tree in his cotton underwear was just too much-  I definitely got some great laughs to end that rainy day.  Looking back it doesn't seem that funny, but the take home point here would definitely be that finding things to laugh about in hard times is going to be what gets us through this.

We got to Erwin in the afternoon and decided to camp in the yard of Uncle Johnny's hostel.  For all of you future thru-hikers I would recommend not staying there.  It's very dirty and the people who work there are insane.  But I guess you get what you pay for, and I wasn't paying much.  But it was nice to eat a lot- we had an AYCE (all-you-can-eat) pizza buffet for lunch and Mexican for dinner. No margaritas because TN has strict liquor laws. AND I ate a pint of ice cream.  I'm training for the half gallon challenge in Pennsylvania, which is an attempt to eat a half gallon of ice cream as fast as possible. 

More on later adventures to follow!

Love,
Thunder

2 comments:

  1. if you eat a half of a gallon of ice cream as fast as you can you will puke.

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  2. I hope the prize for eating the half-gallon is another half-gallon...?

    ReplyDelete