Saturday, May 24, 2014

[Spyro] The Four State Challenge

At long last, we're at Harper's Ferry!

It's a historic town, the home of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, and the "psychological midpoint" of the Trail. But it's also the starting point for a hiker challenge.

By starting out just before Harper's Ferry and ending at the Mason-Dixon line, it's possible to go through 4 states (VA, WV, MD, PA) in 42 miles, and doing so in 24 hours or less is called the Four State Challenge. Crazy? Maybe, but we're going to try it anyways!

So starting at 2am tomorrow morning, we'll be on the move! My SPOT will be broadcasting my location live, and I'm going to attempt to live-tweet on my Twitter feed when I have service under the hashtag #4statechallenge (surprisingly, someone has previously used the hashtag for that purpose).

So pumped! Watch for updates!

- Spyro

(this challenge fueled by Elizabeth's Hudson Bay Bread)

The one where I earn my name

(This post only covers to the night of 5/9. Yeah, I know its really late. I wrote 95% of it more than a week ago...)

I haven't talked about my name since I got it on the blog yet. So I'll explain it the way I do when I'm meeting a hiker. (They'll be called A)

A: So what're your names?
Spyro: I'm Spyro.
Me: I'm Pussel-gut.
A: Apostle-what?
Me: No, Pussel-gut.
A: Oh, Pussel-gut. That's a unique name. Where'd you get that one?
Me: A waitress gave it to me in...
Spyro (he has this down really well): Franklin.
Me: We were eating at a...
Spyro: Shoney's.
(At this point Spyro starts talking to someone else.)
Me: And we had just given our order, when the waitress comes up to me and says, "I have a name for people like you. Pussel-gut."
A: That's weird. Why did she say that?
Me: Yeah, it turns out it was for drinking too much sweet tea.

(There are two endings here, one from before I figured out what it meant, and one after.)
Before::
Me: I tried to look it up, but couldn't find anything about it online.

After (its a word as pussle-gut)::
Me: I found it in the dictionary of American Regional English. Its a southern regionalism that means potbelly.
A: But you don't look that fat.
Me: Not now, but I assume its because I have a pussle-gut when I leave town.
(A gives a courtesy chuckle. Topic of conversation changes.)

When I left off last, we were in Damascus. We've had some fun since then. We started by putting in some big miles until I complained. Then we put in a 7 mile day after resupplying in Merion. Thats when I met Mio, Tandem, and Buzz. (Spyro met them the night before, when I went to bed early because my feet hurt.)

We saw that someone had been keeping score for a game of Kanasta (sp?) in the log, and 10 mins later Spyro was explaining the rules as we started playing. And I started getting bad sleep. We played 3 nights to finish a game. (IMHO it gets worse the closer one team is to winning.) Then we branched out, playing Yuker (sp?) and Cut and Burn (I do know how to spell that one)

Then we realized that our schedules were diverging. The 3 of them were planning on a shorter day to get to Woods Hole Hostel, which me and Spyro skipped. We celebrated the night by packing out a six pack of Devil's Backbone, and 18 pounders of Bud Light. Upon arriving at the shelter we (obviously) made friends, and Skittles showed us how to play Pass the Pig (not a card game). Then Buzz and Tandem wrecked me and Spyro at Spades, despite Spyro going low blind while also I made my bid of 5 exactly. (That was our only good round.) Afterwards I taught the group President (/ Asshole), which we played until the beers ran out around 11. (Which is really late, by the way.)

We went straight from there to Pearisburg, where I decided to go to sleep early and take care of things in the morning, after eating at an all-you-can-eat Chinese place. After I got into my bed at 8, I realized that I had lost the ability to sleep while a TV was on, and stayed up until the end of whatever baseball game was being watched, at 11.

Which meant another bad night of sleep, and getting out of Pearisburg around 1. Which put us in an interesting spot, since we planned to make 19 miles that day. We did anyway, eating lunch at 4:30 and night hiking for a little under an hour. The moths really bothered me, though. I killed 94 and 95 with Callandor.

Oh wait, that probably made no sense. My old walking stick (unnamed) was broken when it ran into some inclement weather (ie, Boy Scouts). I picked up a new one, and called it Callandor, since it looks sword-like with the guard, and keeping with the WoT and going crazy themes. I'm also keeping a count of the insects I kill, for no real reason. It was slow going at first, but now I'm killing between 3 and 10 a day. They are also doing a pretty good job fighting back. I'm covered in bites.

Oh, and of course I got to bed around 10:30 after my night hike. The next night I got some good sleep, though. I hiked with Gazelle a good bit, and we talked about nothing for hours. It was fun, sonething I hadn't done in a while.

And then we got some great views. The Dragon's Fang (I mean, Dragon's Tooth), McAfee Knob, and the Tinker's Cliffs were all great, though slightly rocky. Coming down from Dragon's Tooth was the worst.

And then we were in Catawba, where the Homeplace is, a all-you-can-eat family style restaurant (not buffet). It was great, and so much BBQ pulled pork. I of course ate faster than Spyro until near the end where I was full and he kept going a little. After that we managed to waddle a mile down the trail to a shelter.

And the next day we got into Daleville, and ate at a BBQ place, where I again got pulled pork. So much good. I had some trouble finishing the sweet potato fries at the end, but I managed. I did not manage to finish the banana pudding that thru-hikers get for free, though.

In Daleville we made sure to get our errands done at night, and we stealth camped pretty close to town. (Stealth camping is camping not at a designated campsite. Its allowed on most sections of the trail.) Gazelle and DaVinci were there with us.

Our next stop is Buena Vista, and we have Trail Days next weekend!

Pussel-gut

Friday, May 23, 2014

[Spyro] Virginia

5/23/14

We're almost to the end of Virginia now, and I haven't made a single blog post on the subject. And Virginia alone comprises over a quarter of the AT! Let's see if I can summarize...

DAMASCATHON
We entered Virginia the same week as the Boston Marathon. Ari suggested that we do 26.2 miles on Marathon Monday, which we laughed off as a joke. But in fact, we ended up doing 26.3 miles past the TN/VA line and into Damascus, the quintessential trail town, that Friday. I thought I might have sprained my ankle on the way, but it was nothing that a zero day couldn't fix. Pro tip: all you can eat pancakes at the Blue Blaze Cafe, and they will serve them a la mode. MMMM.

Ponies
We climbed Mt. Rogers, the highest peak in Virginia, a few days after leaving Damascus. I went up to the (anticlimactic) summit to knock off another state high point. Mt. Rogers borders the Grayson Highlands, a beautiful section of trail with many exposed ridges and views... Oh, and wild ponies! These ponies were supposedly left alone in the wild but in practice they had seen so many humans that they were just not afraid of me. Pretty cool.

New friends on the trail
For the better part of a week, we hiked with a few new friends - Tandem, Mio, and Buzz. Buzz and Tandem were a father/daughter pair, and Mio was hiking about the same pace as them. Hiking with this new group changed up our routine quite a bit - every night, we'd teach each other new card games (including Canasta, Spades, Euchre (sp?), and Presidents) and one night we even hiked in an 18-pack of 16oz beers to enjoy and share with the other hikers. The good thing about the trail is that you get to meet a lot of new people; the downside is that your pace will never match up exactly, so you end up moving from group to group.

Ziplines
Pearisburg, VA was about 1.5 weeks after Damascus. The day we left it, we wanted to get to "The Captain's" house, who allowed hikers to camp in his yard. The catch: the yard was only accessible by zipline! Naturally, this only made us want to camp there more, so despite leaving from Pearisburg at 1pm, we still tried to make the 20 miles to The Captain's. Unfortunately, once it became clear that it was going to be a long, miserable night hike to get there, I stopped a little over a mile short to wait for Pussel-gut and make camp there instead - but we still got to play on the zipline in the morning :).

Dining in the Appalachians
One of the restaurants that we had been hearing about for weeks was called the Homeplace. It was an All You Can Eat restaurant in what used to be a nice house on a large plot of farmland. It's so popular that we waited over an hour to get in! The food is served family-style without too much variety - all of the vegetables and sides are set, and you get to choose 2 meats out of a selection of fried chicken, BBQ pork, roast beef, and ham. The dishes are brought to the table to be split among your party, and when the dish is empty, it is refilled. And refilled. As much you want. :). We had chicken, pork, biscuits, red beans, green beans, baked apples, mashed potatoes, and blackberry cobbler a la mode for dessert.
The next town that we hit was Daleville/Troutville (2 towns squished into one). Since we had already hit a "Troutdale", the naming conventions were starting to become repetitive... In any case, we continued the food adventure and had an awesome Southern barbecue dinner there with our friend Gazelle.

"Good View"
Over the course of the next week, we had 1 big climb a morning for 4 mornings straight, starting off easy and getting harder each day. The benefit was that we had some awesome views in that section! (Which was appropriate - in the middle of that week, we went into a little mountain town called Buena Vista.) The downside, of course, was that we finished off with a 3000 foot climb on the last day, with a thunderstorm that dumped down almost 4 inches of rain that day. Everything was soaked! 4 inches of rain is quite a lot, and we got to ford a river (actually, 3 rivers) for the first time the next day.

Trail Days
My parents came to meet us in Waynesboro, VA for the weekend of 5/16 and we all drove down together to Trail Days, an annual hiker bash all the way back in Damascus. I'd estimate there were at least a thousand hikers there, in addition to all the vendors and townspeople. Of particular interest were a hiker parade (featuring water guns pointed both into and out of the parade), food, craft, and gear vendors, a gigantic bonfire at night, and reunions with friends we had lost contact with on the trail. We saw Mio, Buzz, Tandem, Titty Cakes, Solo, and Gargamel, among others. It was tons of fun, and I'll try to go back another year!

Bonding Time
When we got back to Waynesboro, my mom headed back to CT, but my dad (trail name "Mtnrunner") stayed to hike with us for a few days through Shenandoah National Park. The park was a very different experience from the other trail sections, since the trail runs along Skyline Drive (filled with vacationers and day hikers), but we got to reap the benefits as well - I saw 9 bears while in the park, and the park wayside restaurants are known for their blackberry milkshakes! We got some great views from the park peaks as well. A few other hikers commented to me privately that I must have a very athletic dad to be able to keep up at our pace - and all in all, it was a great experience to share with Mtnrunner . :).

Onwards
Like I said, we're almost out of Virginia - 3 more days will take us to Harper's Ferry, WV, and from there we'll be attempting the Four State Challenge - more info on that soon.

Shoutout
I hear that the students and teachers at the Oxford Center school have been following these posts - hope you enjoy this one!

Photo Captions
State line!
Pancakes a la mode
PONIES
Grayson Highlands
Gazelle on the zipline
The Keffer Oak (largest tree on AT in the South)
View from Dragon's Tooth (an appropriate place for a Spyro selfie)
Food at the Homeplace
Bears in a tree!!
Turtle on the trail
You mean I have to ford that?
Pussel-gut and I in the Trail Days Hiker Parade
Another bear!
Mtnrunner on a mountain
Father/son selfie off of Mary's Rock
View across Skyline Drive before leaving the park


Sunday, May 4, 2014

[Derek] Progress Chart

Now you can see our progress on a Google Doc as well! It has charts of miles per day and total miles.

http://goo.gl/9kD4vG

We're here in Pearisburg, VA (no, that's not a misspelling) - since I have access to a physical computer I figured I'd update this. Looks kinda cool to see our progress like that.

At this point we're over 600 miles and over 25% of the way to Katahdin - woo-hoo! More updates soon, we promise.