September 25th

This will be a short post.  It's Tuesday, September 25th and I'm at the Story Spring shelter (I think) with Mtn. Goat, Sarah the Biologist, Nascar, and Bullwinkle.  Nascar and Bullwinkle are 2 dudes in their late 50's that have hiked the whole Appalachian Trail in sections.  Tomorrow will be their final day.  Pretty cool.  The past few days have been a bit rough.  I think it's a combination of sleep deprivation (which everyone suffers from out here), disgusting food, the fact that the initial rush is over, and the fact that for the last 3 days we've been hiking in what we're calling the green tunnel.  We've had a ton of climbing and descending with no real views for days.  It gets a bit depressing and disorienting.  To top it off, Mtn Goat, Sarah, and I rolled into a shelter last night as it was getting dark, exhausted and wet, when we saw 2 people spread out in a shelter that holds 8.  Some ridiculous dreadlocked white boy hippie tried to tell us that there was only room for 2 and then pointed to what he thought would be a nice place for us to set up our tents.  We all know what old Todd would have done with Mr. Dreadlocks, but new Todd set up his tent, took what seemed like hours to hang his bear bag, and spent the night freezing his ass off while sliding toward the bottom of the tent at the spot the Hippie said would be a good place to set up.  For the record, I think hippies, in general, are a pretty good group.