7/6/20 Day 61: Mountain Home Cabin (972.4) to Blue Ridge Mountain Road parking lot (992.2)

Monday, July 6 11:44 pm 19.8 mi

Birthday Surprises!

AT 972.4 Mountain Home Cabin → AT 992.2 Blue Ridge Mountain Road parking lot

Weather: HOT, sunny, sweatiest day yet, thunder rolling PM

Trail Conditions: Incredible shelters along the way, just not where we needed them!

My Condition: Overwhelmed and on top of the world

Happy birthday Leafy Greens

I have a trail family

I look like a goober

And I smell like one too

I am completely, totally overwhelmed by the kindness of these amazing people. Blue concealed a container of 12 mini cupcakes in her pack and managed to keep them in perfect, pristine condition. At the Jim and Molly Denton shelter, I stopped for water at the spring while Blue and Cage hiked ahead “to get water at the shelter.” I hiked up and they had cupcakes out and were singing happy birthday. Puddles joined later as we all smooshed two cupcakes at a time together, cakester style. Puddles, as is her tradition for new members of her trail family, wrote me a poem.

He always carries lots of snacks, tubs of frosting too

Funfetti, Little Debbie’s, he might just share with you

He grew out his beard for the trek, it’s oh so long right now

His presence is so magical kids see him and say “wooow”

He’ll never eat a vegetable, this he really means

He says it’s doctor ordered – don’t eat Leafy Greens

As if that wasn’t already an overabundance of kindness, Blue’s friend showed up at 11:15 with a birthday cake, PBR, and a gallon of water for each of us. These people are AMAZING and seriously blew my mind today. Blue, Puddles, Cage, and Toy Story (who left earlier and kept hiking on to the next shelter to avoid potential bad weather) – we are family. Thank you all for your incredible generosity. This seriously has to be one of my best birthdays ever!

Post Trail Analysis

What an awesome day! Unfortunately, my Aftershokz headphones had stopped working this morning – the power button no longer responded when pressed and I couldn’t get the things to turn on. I had a lot of gear that I loved, but these headphones might’ve been my favorite. They don’t actually sit in your ear – rather, they wrap around the back of your head, go up and over your ear, and sit in front of the opening. Nothing actually goes into your ear, and the sound is transmitted through bone conduction. This allows for you to stay completely immersed in your surroundings – the sounds of nature, oncoming traffic, and conversation. They’re rugged, weatherproof, recharge quickly and hold their charge for a full day of hiking. Not only that, their customer service is second to none. I contacted them in regards to the problem that I was having, and they quickly sent me a replacement pair. Normally they have you go through a process of returning your current headphones so they can verify the issue before they send out a replacement, but the customer service representative made things so easy for me on the trail. I’d have them waiting for me in Warwick, NY! In the meantime, I played music from my phone speaker until I was able to get headphones at the next town, striding along to the sounds of Jock Jamz radio on Pandora. I hate to be that guy playing loud music in the backcountry, but hey, it was my birthday! The birthday cupcakes were just the thing I needed to get my mind off the fact that one of my favorite pieces of gear had stopped working, and were one of the few times on trail when I experienced a genuine sugar crash. The Jim and Molly Denton shelter is incredible – pavilion and picnic tables, a porch with adirondack chairs, and an outdoor SHOWER! The shower didn’t seem to be working currently and I wasn’t planning on taking one anyways, but it was still pretty cool that they had one. That birthday surprise was so unexpected, and I was totally caught off guard when the celebration continued later that night. I wasn’t the least bit suspicious when Blue suggested we camp at a parking lot – the mileage was about right, it was near water (which unfortunately was bone dry), and honestly you camp where you can find space. A parking lot struck me as a great place to stealth camp! The parking lot turned out to be pretty rocky, with no real good tenting spots. They were all pretty adamant that this was the place to stop though. We heard some nearby trees come crashing down, scarily close to the edge of the forest that Puddles and I had chosen for our tents. For some odd reason, nobody was going to sleep and it was getting well past hiker midnight (AKA when it gets dark). Blue’s friend Alicia and her girl GiGi showed up and the birthday celebration continued. I couldn’t believe it as I heard the singing start again, and was treated to a cake and candles, along with PBR, and a glorious gallon jug of water. The next morning, we awoke to an old romantic flame of Blue’s showing up with breakfast sandwiches for all of us. This surprise I definitely knew about – Blue said this guy had ghosted her and was looking to get back into her good graces, so obviously this was the perfect time to wring some trail magic from him! Cage and I joked that we were going to give this guy a hard time and interrogate him over why he ended things the way he did, but he turned out to be pretty big and intimidating so we chose not to. GiGi braided Puddles’s hair before we all set out for another great day of hiking.

I’m also realizing now that this is the first time I mention my trail name, Leafy Greens! Right before starting the trail, I had my first kidney stone. The experience was excruciating – I thought at first maybe I had hurt my back doing all my squat variations the day before, but then I realized the pain was more in my flank. I couldn’t even type the symptoms in to my phone before I’d seize up in pain. I couldn’t sit still in the emergency room waiting room, rocking back and forth trying in vain to find some relief in the movement. I got up and paced, to no avail. The employees who had had kidney stones themselves knew right away what I was going through. The “spicy Ibuprofin” they gave me, a smooth muscle relaxer, worked its magic almost instantaneously - the pain subsided as the blockage cleared, and the blood and urine tests confirmed that it was indeed a kidney stone. During the process of getting discharged, I was told (and had both parents there as witnesses) to “avoid eating leafy greens.” Apparently, they were a potential culprit for the stone's formation. Little did the medical professionals know that I had been doing that my whole life! Blue and Cage were bound and determined to return from their blue blaze with a trail name for me. It would be Puddles, Toy Story, and Fresh Ground that would end up pulling this story out of me, following the threads of my laughably unhealthy food bag. At this point I was stoveless and subsisting on a diet of honey buns, Snickers bars, cosmic brownies, Slim Jims, pepperoni, tubs of cream cheese frosting, protein cookies and bars, fruit snacks, and various other candy. I was getting my calories for sure, but what those calories consisted of definitely wasn’t pretty. My trail diet was ever evolving, at times consisting of entire packs of Oreos for dinner and 3-4 blocks of cheese per day. I got a kick out of the name Leafy Greens and thought it was incredibly ironic, especially when someone would make the (wildly false) assumption that I was a healthy eater based on the name. Leafy Greens, a name that is doctor ordered and cooked up by some of the most important people in my journey. Most of the time, it was shortened to LG.

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