Rainy days

After taking way too many zeros at Tarzan's house in New Jersey, we decided to leave early and do 26 miles to a monastery pavilion where we could camp for free. It was a rough leaving the comfort of a bed, looking out from underneath my blanket I could see out the window that it was raining hard, at a steady pace. Tarzan, Ross, Pack Rat, Nate, and I packed up and headed toward the trail. The rain continued to fall all day. We had to rush through the exhibits at a zoo the AT runs directly through... the cold rain quickened our pace. We finally made it to the pavilion around 7:00, ate a quick dinner and went to bed early. The next day we had another 26 mile day planned and the weather was looking much better. The trail was pretty muddy but at least it wasn't raining. We got an early start the next morning and hit the trail at 7:00. 19 miles in, there was an awesome shelter that you could order pizza for delivery. I was starved! I wimped out of the 26 miles, stayed at 19 and emjoyed my pizza. Ross joined me. An hour or so after eating my pizza, Tarzan and Nate came running up to the shelter without their packs and asked us if we wanted to to go to some guys house and then to a bar to watch a band. Seven of us went with Nate and Tarzan. A random guy posted a sign 3 miles ahead of the shelter saying that he was boarding hikers and driving them to a bar because his buddy was playing in the band that night. He was recruiting an audience. Turns out this guy, Bill, through hiked in '06 and bought a house 0.2 miles from the trail. They gave us some beers, we hung out got a bit and then headed to this pretty trendy bar in Cool Springs, New York. We rolled with seven hikers... none of us showered after a full day of hiking and we all looked like bums. The place was packed but we got lucky and snatched a table right by the band. I guess people could smell us because a waitress walked by and discretely sprayed Febreeze towards us. Bill, his wife and kids got hit in the face by the spray. He got ultra pissed at the owner of the place and had to change his shirt. It was hilarious because about ten minutes later, the same waitress brought us all ice cream. It was delicious! After a night of drinking a few beers and going to sleep late, we all woke up pretty late in the second story of Bill's garage. Bill's wife made us waffles. They were so good! Turns out Bill has skydived like 74 times and works for a skydiving company. Tarzan went with him that morning to skydive, super random but he said it was badass. It would have been cool to skydive for the first time in the middle of a through hike. That night, we stayed at a landscape business that allows hikers to pitch a tent on their property. There was a fantastic deli down the road and I smashed a huge pastrami sandwich. The tent space was between a road and some train tracks so it was a loud night. Today we woke up early and got out before 7:00. We were heading for Mt. Algo Shelter, in Connecticut!  It was a shorter day, around 16 miles. I really wanted to get to the shelter early so I could avoid the afternoon showers. I got rained on for about 2 hours but it was lighter rain and felt good. I'm excited to be in another state and only have 5 more to go. Tomorrow ill go through Kent, Connecticut to get a small resupply. Still having a blast :)