zero days are good for the soul

so i hope everybody back home in mississippi, alabama, and tennessee is okay! i've seen some of the footage of the rough weather that y'all are having. we're getting some of that tonight, so swayze and i are staying off the trail until tomorrow morning. my budget didn't account for tornados.

yesterday was awesome. :) we had a tiny hike into a parking lot that was roughly eleven miles from the town that i was supposed to resupply in. i had planned on maybe getting to the town early, resupplying, and then getting a ride back to the trail to camp last night, but we had absolutely no cell phone reception when we got to the parking lot. boo that, haha. so a guy that i've met on the trail and i started walking into town. we had just enough cell phone reception to send and receive texts, but not make phone calls, so he sent his mama a text message and she called the hotel that provided shuttle services into town. they came to pick us up, and i'll be danged if it wasn't miss janet that was driving the bus!!! :) that might not mean a lot to y'all, but i was starstruck! hahaha... miss janet is pretty much famous on the AT and whiteblaze. when one of the guys got dropped off at the place he was staying, he was like, "bye miss janet!" and i was like, "are you THE miss janet?" i got her autograph and a picture with her and she even gave swayze dog treats! :) she also fussed at us about how we were going about hitchhiking the whole wrong way. she said the three rules of hitchhiking are:

1) stop walking. if you're walking, that means you're okay and you don't need help.

2) get to a place where people can pull over. even if they want to, if they can't get to you, you're screwed.

3) smile and act happy. no one wants to pick up a freak.

also! it turns out that the people who gave us the lemon cookies and root beer the other day is actually a guy named taylor who is slackpacking the whole way to maine and his wife is meeting him at trailheads and driving him to an rv every night. they are SO nice! he came and found us at the hotel last night and drove me to the vet clinic that was three miles up the road so i could get swayze some tick medicine and then took me to mcdonalds. it might not've been a homemade or five guys burger, but i finally got that cheeseburger and sweet tea. :) he's also offered to pick us up in the morning to drive us to the trailhead.

and today has been wonderful. zero days, man. i think it's just what i've needed. granted, i probably shouldn't take many in towns because towns are expensive, but even swayze seems to feel better. i've had a nap and two hot showers within the last twenty-four hours. it kind of sucks because almost all day today the weather was pretty (it's starting to look pretty rough here now), and in the back of my mind i was thinking the whole time, "man. you're not getting any miles in today. you should be hiking. what're you doing?" but hopefully i'll feel better in the long run for doing it. i've heard it said, "start out slow, and then go slower." well... you can't get much slower than 0.

and for those of y'all who've been asking... i will let y'all know where i'll be soon, i promise! (just so y'all know.. i will only be posting WHEN i will be places on facebook and only my friends will be able to see it... just to deter any creepers.) i will say that my list has changed... i'm no longer asking for ground coffee. that was dumb. i don't feel like waking up in the morning and boiling water and filtering coffee. i'm slow enough as it is at breaking camp. if the whole wide world depended on me to break camp in less than fifteen minutes, we'd all be screwed. i've not built a fire since i started, so i no longer need dryer lint, hahaha. and i think i hate peanut butter now so i've taken that off the list. (nutella is still a go, though. ;D) snickers are always welcome in any shape or size. they're pretty much payment between hikers. ("i'll trade you a couple of snickers for some hot water for my oatmeal.") but i think i've sworn off oatmeal, too, so i don't need any of that.

thank y'all so much for all y'all's support thus far. i love y'all and miss y'all. :)

oh, those prayers

roarrr. y'all pray for swayze please. her pack is rubbing her and she's really tired. i gave her some pain meds tonight, but i'm out of duct tape and athletic tape just isn't cutting it. maybe i'll trade somebody a few feet of duct tape for a few snickers tomorrow.

happy easter, y'all. today was a gorgeous hiking day. it was hot and i got sunburned but i'll take sunshine over rain anyday. i'm exhausted, though. since swayze's having trouble with her pack, i let her slackpack (go without a pack) a few times on the uphills. i'm sure she loved it, but i weighed MY pack the other day at the hostel and it weighed 43 lbs. adding her pack to mine today probably put me in the neighborhood of 50. needless to say, i'll be knocking myself out with a hydrocodone here in a few minutes. i'm too tired to even eat tonight.

thank all y'all for any prayers y'all are sending our way. you know, it's absolutely amazing, but all of my prayers have been answered on this trip thus far. God rocks. :) in reverse order, i was really prayin' there'd be a trail angel in the parking lot when i came off a mountain today. a trail angel is anyone who helps a hiker out, whether it's food or shelter or a ride into town. swayze and i came down the mountain today and there was a couple sitting in a car. they rolled the windows down and asked if we needed a ride into town, but i don't really need a resupply just yet and i'm still kinda skeptical of hitching (even though just about everybody on the trail does it), so i told them i was fine, thanked them, then swayze and i sat down in the shade to have lunch. right as they were leaving, the lady called out to me and offered me some lemon cookies and half a root beer. yes, ma'am... i'll take that. swayze was a fan as well. :)

one of my absolute pet peeves is a sparsely-marked trail. yesterday we pretty much hiked alone all day, and when we got to the last four miles or so, the blazes became few and far between. i was tired and hungry and all i could think of was, "Lord, just show me a blaze. let me know i'm goin in the right direction." and sure enough, every time i'd ask, there would be a blaze soon after. also last night, i was praying that there'd either be a familiar face or no one at all at the shelter. when i got there, there were two people from our "group" and two new people. i breathed a huge sigh of relief. the same exact thing happened again tonight. when i got to the campsite, it was just me and a guy i haven't seen yet. i specifically asked for someone in our group to show up, and not half an hour later, i heard a familar voice.

there've also been two instances where it's poured down rain at night and i've laid there in my tent and said, "God, just please let it be gone by daylight," and it quits at sunrise. :)

so whatever y'all have been praying, keep doing it 'cause it's working. thank y'all so much. maybe we should start working on a big, fat, juicy hamburger with lettuce and tomato and pickles and ketchup with a really ginormous glass of sweet tea and some salt & vinegar chips. at this point, that'd basically be heaven on earth.

oh hey there antibiotics

so i was supposed to leave for georgia today, but it just absolutely wasn't meant to be. my friend katie, who was driving back to charleston from california and was going to swing by jackson to pick me up, somehow contracted pneumonia and was put on breathing treatments so had to be driven back to charleston herself. and as if that wasn't a big enough sign that i wasn't meant to leave today, i came down with a fever of 101.2* yesterday and felt like crappp. i still felt pretty poopy today, so this morning i was at MEA when they opened at 8:30. turns out, i have strep throat. they gave me a butt shot there at the clinic this morning and a prescription for an antibiotic and three days' worth of lortab with one refill for that hit-by-train feelin' i've got. the refill should come in handy on the trail.

i'm kind of glad i haven't left yet. i don't feel ready. i still haven't practiced my bear-bagging skillz and i still need to set my tent up with the rainfly all tied out. i need to finish buying my food and i still probably need another pair of shorts. plus, there's apparently some pretty nasty weather that's supposed to roll in here in the next few days and that would put me starting the AT on a rainy day. i know, i know. no rain, no pain, no maine, but still. i'd like to start out on a good weather day if possible. :)

maybe i'll leave tomorrow. my dad volunteered to take me to springer if the need be.

i took swayze to the vet the other day. she wasn't due for her vaccinations until july, but i didn't want to have to worry about finding a vet on the trail and she needed her bordatella booster if i'm going to be boarding her through the smokies. she also got a shot for a six-month heartworm preventative. that's cool... that's one less thing i have to worry about carrying &/or having shipped to myself while we're on the trail. the vet also said that if swayze was hiking with me, she could stand to gain a few pounds. she's been enjoying that. :) peanut butter on crackers, extra dog food, etc.

i'll be taking my cell phone with me on the trail. we bought a solar-powered cell phone charger off amazon the other day for like $30. it's also got an AM/FM radio and a weather radio. i'd rather be able to play mumford & sons and old crow on the trail, but since i don't have an ipod, i'll take what i can get.  

four energy drinks, a cop, and a pay phone...

arrrr. the drive back to mississippi suckedddd. i didn't leave charleston until right at two. i always do that. i procrastinate leaving a place if i really like being there. home. bristol. and apparently charleston. i stopped by starbucks before i left, and everybody there made me cry. tears fell for twenty miles up 26.

the drive took approximately twelve hours for eight hundred some-odd miles and five stops, only four of which were planned. the fifth one involved being stopped by a cop less than thirty miles from jackson who felt the need to let me know that the back end of my truck was wider than the front end and that i should keep an eye on my lanes. he was really nice about it, so i didn't feel the need to inform him that the reason i was iffy about keepin' it between the lines was because i was nodding off as i passed him. i just said, "yes, sir, thank you, sorry," and kept on goin'. i freakin' love mississippi cops. they never *knock on wood* write me tickets. i think it's the wink. just kidding.

my cell phone battery lasted just long enough for me to call my mama right before birmingham to find out what kind of weather i was headed into. there was crazy awesome lightning, but i basically wanted to know if it was gonna be raining the whole way in. turns out, i was headed into tornado warning territory. excellent. we just all slowed to thirty and used our flashers for a dozen miles or so. right before my battery died, i received a text from bank of america that my debit card had been temporarily suspended because of "curious activity" on my account. dear bank of america: south carolina and georgia are next door neighbors. it's completely possible to travel amongst the two states in less than twelve hours, so please refrain from putting accounts on hold if there's spending going on that close to each other. ya poops.

so because i couldn't use my debit card, and my cell phone was dead, and all of my chargers were packed into the back of a 16' moving van, i actually had the privelege of using a pay phone tonight. i know, right? i was surprised they still had those, too. i was almost worried about catching something from it, but i figure it was probably last used about eight years ago and any germs that were living on it then are probably dead by now. so i call bank of america and verify my email address, blah blah blah, and the guy says that he'll put a temporary travel notice on my account. i told him he might want to make it more than temporary because within the next few months i'll be traveling a lot. he asked me to list each state, and bless his heart, i think he lost count when i got to pennsylvania. he then just asked for a general route, "so will you be going from south carolina to new york city?" and i said, "nope. georgia to maine."