Zeroing in Harpers Ferry
Another post by the wife…
After we ate breakfast and took Thistle for a walk, I gave Rob another haircut and shaved his neck, and he gave his beard a good trim. He asked me if I thought he should just shave it off, but I advised him to wait until his tan had faded, or he’d end up looking a bit weird. (Can you imagine?) He agreed and said it had been pretty itchy in the early stages, when it was just growing in, and he wasn’t too eager to go through that whole phase again.
Rob’s clothes were smelling mighty mildewy, so I washed them all, after putting them through a presoak. And then I washed them all again, with another presoak. And then I soaked them for an hour in water with OxyClean odor blasters. And then I washed them all AGAIN, with yet another presoak. And then they smelled kind of... okay.
We then headed back to the ATC to spend more time going through the photo albums there and looking around a bit. I took a ton of pics of photos in the album that I hope to put into an upcoming post. I want to kind of put faces to names for a bunch of the hikers Rob has mentioned along the way so far. I also noticed that a couple of the hikers I’d met when we did Trail Magic at Beagle Gap had come through the center the same day as Rob, but we’d missed them somehow. Jaywalker (or Jwalker?) was actually right before Rob (#722).
So Rob and I are thumbing through one of the albums while a young hiker (Mowgli, but a different one than Rob talked about a while back) was busy signing his photo, and we’re pointing out all the familiar names. Rob’s saying, “Oh, there’s Joy... and Sings with the Pines... and Cheeks” and so on. And I’m saying things like, “Is this The Juice?” and “Wow, I thought Heavy would be taller for some reason.” And Mowgli starts looking more and more confused. Finally, he turns to us and asks, “How do you all know so many hikers?”
I point to Rob and say, “He’s a thru-hiker.” And Mowgli looks even more confused. And then he asks, “How do you look so clean?” And we just started laughing.
I was going through the albums from 2023, looking for a YouTuber I really like, and this gentleman comes up and asks, “You wanna see my photo?” Of course, I say yes, and he flips to the last page of the album in front of me and says, “I was the very last person to finish last year. I guess that means I won!” There’s a common saying that the last person to Kathadin “wins.” He added, “They usually close this office around December 20th, but they kept it open for me, because they knew I was on my way.”
I think he said he finished on December 21, but he’d started back in March! He explained that he’d had to come off the trail a bunch of times along the way — he’d gotten norovirus, and then Covid, and broken five bones (not at the same time) from falling. I observed that he was clearly very determined, and he told me his wife had died of cancer in 2018 and that he had been raising money in her honor. He ended up raising $26,000! He was a lovely man and is working on a book now with his daughter. Here’s his Insta if you want to learn more: Steven_c_Wright
Outside, a nice hiker took some pics of me and Rob in front of the sign, and then another thru-hiker sitting on the bench nearby (Beans) asked Rob if he would sign his pack. Mowgli was there, too, and asked Rob to sign his as well. I thought that was sweet.
Beans is on the left and Mowgli on the right.
We hit Walmart next, and Rob got himself a new pair of shorts, a bowl and spoon (apparently, eating cereal is difficult with a spork!), resupply food, and a can of waterproofing spray. Rob’s main complaint about his pack is that it soaks up all his sweat and then stays wet, so not only is it gross, but it also adds a good four or five pounds to his pack in water weight. We’re hoping that if he can waterproof those absorbent parts of his pack, that might minimize how much it soaks up and holds on to. Time will tell...
We grabbed an awesome late lunch and a couple beers at the 1839 Restaurant and Bar before heading back to the Airbnb. While we were there, I got a Facebook message from an old friend of Rob’s who lives in Maryland and was concerned about him being out during the heat wave. I got his number so Rob can text him when he’s in his area, and maybe they can meet up.
Interestingly, Miss Janet’s van was parked at a house a block or so down from the place we rented. We passed it every time we went out and came back, and we’d always slow down to see whether we could see her there but never did. We don’t know whether that’s where she lives or whether she was just visiting someone. Or maybe she just parked the van there while she was off doing something else.
The Airbnb had a whole special “movie room” on the downstairs level that was super swanky (it even had a white suede couch, which I had to cover with all the blankets I brought from home to protect it from dog hair!) and had a monster-sized screen. We finished the day by enjoying a couple of barrel-aged beers from Decipher (Karabash and Artemis), watching Napoleon Dynamite, and trying not to think about saying goodbye the next day.
