I'm going to make a new blog called "Pictures of Stevie Holding a Cat". You'd subscribe to that right?
So you've probably heard about a few Appalachian Trail personalities at this point, there's a lot of weirdos like me who have used the trail to enable their life of pseudo homelessness. Some of these weirdos are the enablers of said homelessness. Some of them suck, some of them are fucking great.
One such fucking great person is "The Cookie Lady" whose name I don't know but let's you tent in her yard, pick blueberries from her garden (or orchard, perhaps?), and has a seemingly unlimited supply of homemade cookies, lemonade, and soda. Cool.
Also staying at The Cookie Lady's is Warren Doyle and his crew.
How does one explain Warren Doyle? Well, he claims to have hiked the AT about 17 times, he signs all the registers with the number 36,000 to demonstrate his mileage, and he's one of the personalities who totally suck.
Take one look at Warren Doyle and this is what you see: an older man wearing a much too large cotton tshirt, glasses with one lens held in entirely by duct tape, and athletic shoes from walmart. He looks like a random dayhiker. Not exactly the kind of person you'd expect to have hiked almost 40,000 miles... But maybe this is indicative of the AT and what kind of people seek refuge here.
Anyhow, Doyle's crew (aka cult) is a group of hand selected people who slack pack (carry very little and have provisions waiting for them at every road crossing) every day. Sometimes they're going south, sometimes they're going north, but always they meet back at a van where their supplies and shelter is waiting for them. I mean no disrespect to these people, but Warren Doyle is an ass.
It seems like he's almost always hiking south and he almost always stops me to chat (aka antagonize) for a bit. Much to my frustration, he likes to impart bad advice unto me (and everyone else). Advice like, "Giardia's not bad! It's natural! Your body adapts to having it!" or how about, "You young kids spend too much money on expensive coffee, why don't you just go to McDonald's?" and other such oddities. He also claims to be Jennifer Phar Davis's "mentor", whatever that means, and has talked a fair amount of shit on Scott Jurek.
This pisses me off the most.
Not only does he associate himself with Jennifer and then talk shit, making it out to be like he's speaking on her behalf, he makes all sorts of wild accusations about Scott. Maybe it's the vegan warrior inside of me, but I cannot stand this. Scott Jurek (and all vegans) should not have to endure so much criticism and abuse for little to no reason by people who have no connection to them whatsoever. It's not up to Scott (or anyone else) to have to endure this. At the end if the day, both Scott and Jennifer are tremendous athletes and I respect them both an incredible amount. I don't want assholes like Warren Doyle creating some false rivalry between them.
End rant.
114:
It's 4:00 in the morning and we're camped out in The Cookie Lady's yard. Thunder peels are closing in on us from the distance and as they approach, I get more and more worried about the oncoming storm. This thunder is unlike any I've ever heard, and I'm from Oklahoma, the land of totally insane thunderstorms. It shakes the ground and rumbles on for a good half minute with every flash of too bright lightning. Fuck, this is scary. Before we know it, it's on top of us, wind whipping our tents around like crazy, and I'm suddenly thinking very hard about the very large almost dead pine trees looming dangerously overhead. Stevie watches as every tent lights up with headlamp illumination, the obvious sign of hikers making sure their tent (or tarp) is working properly. I'm not any different, I'm searching around frantically, making sure that my ground cloth is protecting me and my gear from most of the rain, but it's too much water and I'm getting continual "splash". But the storm is over soon enough, and it's back to what little sleep we can get.
We get up late, letting the sun rise and bake the moisture off our tents, fill up on well water that tastes a lot like hard boiled eggs, use a broken toilet in a seemingly abandoned house and set out.
The trail is increasingly covered in fallen pine needles, much to my delight. In my opinion, pine trees are superior to all other trees, or maybe I just like the change. But pines don't feel as suffocating and provide awesome ground cover. We're obviously getting farther north.
I switch between listening to my audiobook, Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World, one if my favorites and a book that provokes feelings of warm nostalgia and familiarity in me, and talking nonsense to Stevie and Cheyanne, mostly quoting our favorite bits of The Office or some stupid Chris Farley movie.
I run into Mr. Doyle again and he pays me some offhanded compliments, first asking me if I've been institutionalized and following up by clarifying, "You seem too articulate and too much of a free thinker to have been institutionalized". I think this is his way of apologizing or at least remedying our previous discussion. Maybe I don't hate this guy.
But I still don't like him.
Soon enough we're in town again and the local hardware store has free denatured alcohol outside. Dope. The owner chats with us for a bit and I say something about needing to fix my pole so he gives me some really really strong adhesive, also free. Double dope.
Another such fucking great person is Thomas Levard, a "trail angel" in Dalton, MA who lives literally right on the trail. His yard is a makeshift shelter, his porch is a phone charging station, and his spigot is a high pressure mountain spring. He'll even drive you to Price Chopper! Next to Price Chopper is a Starbucks. Holy crap.
We had planned on hiking out of Dalton tonight, but we loiter for far too long at Starbucks and end up back in Mr. Levard's yard with about fifty other hikers. How silly, looking at so many tents packed into a small residential backyard.
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