Start: Spruce Peak Shelter
End: VT 11 & 30 (Manchester Center)
Miles: 1.6 today, 1631.0 total
And it all works out. Got a hitch into town with Freeman. He's a pretty cool guy. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area, he's a software guy - does lots of Windows apps with Visual Basic. Apparently he made a lot of money off the dot com boom, but didn't lose it all when the whole thing fell apart, so he's been living it up since January. He took a trip to Costa Rica with his girlfriend, took a trip to British Columbia with his family (parents, siblings, etc), and now he's hiking the AT from Harpers Ferry to Katahdin. We're splitting a double room at Sutton's Place, my second motel of the trip. It's $27 each, which is much better than the $40+ I spent on a room back in Helen, GA.
So I got into town ok and with plenty of time to do the P.O. stuff. The sleeping bag is amazing. It's really puffy and fluffy, but you can compress it down to the size of my rolled-up fleece blanket. Took a shower, did laundry. Had a pretty good chat with a retired guy while our clothes were in the wash. I spent a good while at Eastern Mountain Sports (EMS) trying to figure out what to do about my boots. The guys there were REALLY going out on a limb for me, offering to take my boots back and exchange them for something else, coming up with some pretty crazy ideas just to help me out. It's like I heard Freeman say (I think): those who know the Trail treat you like a god, those who don't treat you like a bum. Had a Denny's-style breakfast, a spaghetti dinner, and a Ben & Jerry's "Blue Blaze" for dessert.
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