Blazing

Ally has returned safely to California, and I have pushed on. This morning I woke up, walked through a 5 mile section of supposedly haunted forest, and now am in the wonderful town of Waynesboro, VA. The people here seem awfully friendly towards hikers and it should be a quick stop over so I can get back on the trail and start hiking through Shenendoah National Park. This next section is supposed to be "easy" as it mostly parallels Sky Line Drive. If a car can drive the topography that usually means for an easy grade of hiking.

I think I have passed through the bubble of what are known as "hiker trash". The caste system knows no bounds! Even out here on the trail you are still put in boxes. Hiker Trash are the free loaders who stop at every town taking advantage of the charity that comes our way and crawl along in a constant state of hangover filling up all the good trail shelters. Most of them left in early to mid March, and I have passed through the bulk of them it seems and am now surrounded by people who are on the trail to actually backpack.

Despite having broke through that particular bubble incidents of "pink blazing" and associated stories are on the rise. Pink blazing is a term used for a guy who has altered his pace to spend time with a girl. I have met a few of these pink blazing couples so far. A couple of nights before I got off the trail to go see Ally I arrived late at a large two story shelter and quickly set up to go to bed on the second floor. There was a pink blazing couple there and a couple of other hikers all on the lower level. At about 10:30 PM a very rhythmic rubbing of nylon started emminating from the lower level of the shelter and was far too sustained to be someone itching bug bites, or stretching in their bag, or doing pushups, or the countless other things that I kept trying to convince myself it could be. It continued on until one of the other hikers that was staying downstairs started rolling around and then got up to pee at which point the rhythmic rubbing of nylon stopped. Holy awkward turtle Batman. Yesterday I showed up at a shelter and was reading entries in the shelter register and earlier that day a hiker I know named Rag Time walked up to the shelter to find a couple "doin' it" as he put it. You would think that people would have the decency to seek a little privacy considering it can be found a plenty out here, but no why do that when they've built all these nice shelters that people like to congregate at. Congregate indeed.

Well, I am going to get going. I am looking forward to my next stop for a rest which will be at my sisters sometime in this upcoming week. I'll be writing again from there. Hope all is well out there in the wide world!

-Wrong Way