I'm sitting in the public library in Pearisburg this sunny and really hot morning. There's going to be a high of 97 degrees....

I got in early yesterday morning with that feller Grandpa Joe I mentioned earlier - he's actually not a grandpa, but a recent computer science student from Pittsburg, with whom I hitchhiked into town to a massive Wal-Mart - oh yeah! Soul-less consumption after 8 days in pristine woods! Loaded up on the "usze" as Amanda du 3eme would say ("usze" as in "usual"), which would be tuna, rice boil-in-a-bag, tortillas, a block of cheese, Cliff Bars by the box, dried fruit, bran cereal, dehydrated milk, and....ibuprofen. I also need some PQ, as les francais diraient...c'est-a-dire, toilet paper. I ran out and had to resort to rhododendron leaves. They don't do as good a job. I'll stop there. Anyway, as I was sitting outside on the Wal-Mart sidewalk next to the automatic doors and a Coke machine, removing the food I just purchased from the cardboard boxes and putting it into ziplocks, I complained to Joe, "man! 75 cents for a Coke?!" Later, this older lady with dark hair and a local accent came out of the Wal-Mart and saw me sitting there next to the Coke machine at this point, and handed me $3 and a fake 1 million dollar bill, which was full of Bible verses and how awful it would be if you were found guilty of a crime, and could either pay 1 million dollars to go free or go to jail for life. Well, since you don't have the million dollars, the baillifs start to take you away...when suddenly, out-of-nowhere, someone pays your ticket to freedom! Who could it possibly be? Jesus! Well, that's what this one million dollar bill said anyway. Jesus paid it all. I turned the bill over, and guess which president was on this one million dollar bill? Ronald Reagan! Yep. The Gipper. I kid you not. Before she left, the lady smiled and said, "I overheard you complaining about the price of the Coke machne. Well, here's something to help you out, and maybe God will bless your heart."

Back at the local Catholic church hostel, which is really a converted old barn, I met back up with Shine, 32 years old from Chikamauga; Jefe (pronounced like the Spanish for "boss;" an ex-Marine reservist who served in the Horn of Africa and is from Buffalo NY); Blackberry, a young ex-IBM network engineer with tattoos and both ears pierced and comes from Connecticut; Forge, and Jeff, an FSU grad from Tallahassee. We all basically sat on the porch of the barn, talking about recipes and food, gear, and our respective injuries. We then went to the All-You-Can-Eat (hereafter AYCE) Chinese buffet.....

Their AC must have been broken, since they had this huge oscillating fan blowing onto their customers, all mostly older white people in blue jeans and T-shirts quietly eating their Chinese and sweating. While listening to music Grandpa Joe described as "the soundtrack to Aladdin, like 'A Whole New World,' but in Chinese," we ate egg rolls, mongolian beef, chicken, pudding, and not very much rice. We were really easy to pick out from the crowd: flip flops; zip-off shorts/pants; quick-dry T-shirts made from some synthetic material; unshaven; skinny; ACE wraps on various joints; our wallets stowed away in small stuff sacks resting by our feet; and piles and piles of already-used buffet plates next to us.

Then we all came back to lie around and digest.

Afterwards, we were all unanimous in checking out this biker/firefighter fundraiser party going on across the street, where guys with their T-shirt sleeves rolled up and sporting handlebar moustaches were collecting donations to build a new Pearisburg volunteer fire station. Rather large women were sitting in lawn chairs and young kids were playing basketball. Again, we were easy to spot in this crowd. We paid a visit to the Marathon gas station across the street in order to pick up some beer, but that's when Jefe spotted the cherries.....we all figured it to be a great idea to get some cherries and strawberries to accompany our 22 oz. Bud Lights. From the biker/firefighter fundraiser, we heard this local band that introduced themselves as a band from Blacksburg, and after that all we heard was loud, screaming, incoherent, death-metal noise, and droves of the ladies previously sitting on the grass were leaving with their lawn chairs tucked under their arms. We parked ourselves in a neighboring lot and drank the beer and ate the cherries and strawberries and watched old pick-up trucks roll by, always with the lady in the middle seat next to her man as he drove; guys on motorcycles thundering past with their girls on the back showing off their legs; and the occassional police car. Jefe explained that in the North you don't see old vintage trucks and cars because they have to salt the roads and that tears up the under-carriage. You also don't see a whole aisle in a gas station devoted entirely to chewing tobacco.

The music started to get better, so we headed down into the small crowd...and boy did freshly cut grass feel good on our feet! The next band was a local act composed of older gentlemen covering Lynyrd Skynyrd, CCR, Clapton, and the Doobie Brothers. Once they kicked into "Sweet Home Alabama," and I saw these older guys start shuffling their feet around and trying to get their wives and girlfriends to dance with them, and the little kids running around and the trucks rolling past the Marathon gas station and the local firefighters looking tough for their girlfriends who looked really bored, did I think, "haha! Maybe God did bless my heart this evening!"