Night 46: Hard Times In Hanover
Friday, January 20th, 2012
Tuesday July 20, 2010
23.4 Miles, 1737.3 Miles to Springer, 441.8 Miles Hiked
My iPod alarm sounded at 4:15, 4:25, and 4:35 A.M. I woke up on the last of these. I set it early hoping to catch the sunrise, but I was under the false assumption that the sun was still rising as early as it was at the start of my journey in Maine.
I got out of my sleeping bag and looked out the windows of the tower. The clouds were rolling by the windows and the wind was rushing all around the tower made it feel like it was swaying. I couldn’t see anything with all the clouds up here so I crawled back in my mummy like sleeping bag and waited.
It was an hour before the sun began to break over the mountains and fill the tower with an orange-redish glow. As the glow grew more intense the clouds around the tower began to dissipate and a million different colors between yellow and red began to appear over the cloud capped, pine covered mountain tops, mist adorned mountains.
The sun continued inching its way up above the mountains. It was beautiful, beautiful in ways I can’t describe adequately so I’ll do it very inadequately by saying it was like when the orange and red coloring of the marshmallows in Lucky Charms begins to bleed from the marshmallows into the white milk, in this case the sun was the marshmallows and the sky the milk. As I watched these colors blending I didn’t feel tired at all, just glad to be awake alive, living my dream and able to say I slept 60 feet high above the trees and mountains and watched the sunrise in and old fire tower in the New Hampshire wilderness.
Once the sun had fully risen I gathered my gear, and carefully climbed down the rickety wooden steps of the fire tower to the sturdy ground below. I sat on the last step of the stairs and ate my Kellogg’s breakfast bar, 3 packs of oatmeal and a granola bar and washed it all down with the remaining can of Coke that I had from the Hostel I met Riverdog at the day before. Coke and Kellogg’s, the breakfast of champions as people nowhere would call it. I was ready to start hiking and I was beyond excited to get to Hanover, and to know that I’d be going home to see my family, Sarah, and friends and that I’d be able to really rest and allow my body to heal from the destruction the first month and half of this hike had already unleashed upon me.
Bishop walked past me as I ate and said good morning. Bishop got back on the trail a few minutes before I had finished my coke and as he walked away I realized I might never see him again. We were strangers who had met, become friends, slept within six inches of each other and would by all odds never see one another again. I knew I certainly wouldn’t see him for over a month, with the big head start he’d be getting over the next couple weeks while I was at home making no progress towards my remaining mileage.
I brushed those thoughts behind me and got back to what I’d gotten really great at doing, hiking. My day started of great. I got into Lyme, NH and in the middle of the trail was a sign that read, “ice cream, water and soda” and it pointed toward a blue house just off the trail. While I thought this could be the start of modern day Hansle & Grettle type murder story or the plot for Human Centipede I decided the possibility of ice cream and more breakfast soda was too tempting to resist, plus I had heard about the Ice Cream Man and I didn’t want to miss one of the many characters of the trail.
I walked toward the house and knocked on the front door after seeing an old man walking around inside and walking towards a room where an older woman sat in a big plush chair reading the newspaper. While it was only 8:00 A.M. I was ready for some ice cream so I knocked again in case he hadn’t heard the first one.
“Hi there. Want some ice cream?” The old bald man, with pants pulled up to his breast line and a faded white shirt that read, “1981 Fun Run” for some event I can’t recall.
“I’d love some ice cream, and could I buy some of these sodas from you?” I asked.
“You may. You’re awfully early, do you want some coffee?” He asked.
“Sure” I said.
“There wasn’t much left in the pot so I added a lot of milk and sugar.” He said as he handed me a mug of milky coffee and a Nutty Buddy ice cream cone.
“That’s just how I like my coffee.” I said as I took the mug and the ice cream cone.
“How were the whites?” he asked as I sat on his front porch.
“The weather was really scary, and I was constantly scared of being struck by lightning, but besides that they were great.” I laughed.
“Yeah, a guy about your age just died near Mount Washington a few days ago, probably right around when you were on Mount Washington. He slipped and hit his head and that was it.” He said.
I heard about this young man’s death on my AM/FM radio and was aware of it when it had occurred and I in fact was right near where he had died when it happened.
“Oh, and last week someone had to be air lifted from Mount Katahdin after they fell on the knifes edge and broke their back.” He said, “And a few years back a woman on her honeymoon got struck by lightning in the White Mountains, she had one of those metal frame external back packs on.”
As he relayed these tragic and frightening stories I sipped my coffee, ate my ice cream cone, and became more and more glad that I was no longer in the Whites and would never have to be back in the whites ever again.
I left the Ice Cream Man’s house with a smile on my face, sodas in my backpack, and a feeling that I had met a genuine and truly wonderful person who has devoted a great deal of himself to making the lives of other people a little bit better.
The rest of the day was pretty boring and filled with easy hiking. I normally would have loved this, but I ran into almost no water all day, so the four sodas I bought from the Ice Cream Man were my main source of hydration. I did pass a stream the flowed right alongside an old cemetery, but the cemetery was old enough that I felt the coffins were probably made out of old would crates and had gaps in them, and I felt like there may have been a chance that dead people juices could have seeped through the ground and into the water and I just couldn’t deal with drinking water that could be filled with remnants of other dead people. Crazy, yes, rational, no, my logic, indeed.
Once I got out of the woods literally and onto the soccer field that indicated I was in Hanover the dehydration, the fatigue, none of it mattered, I was one step closer to going home and getting some rest.
I had been craving Quizno’s ever since I saw it on the map of Hanover in my guide book and that was where I was immediately headed. It took me a mile to get into down town Hanover, which is actually on the trail’s route. I asked a local where Quizno’s was as I couldn’t find it where it appeared it should be on my map.
“Quizno’s has been closed for a year now.” They said.
“Noooooooo! Why, why, why, of all the injustices and terrible things that could happen to me, why this?” I screamed in my head, but said, “Oh, okay, thanks. Is there anywhere good to eat that’s not too expensive that would let someone who looks and smells like me sit down in their establishment?”
I was so depressed. I had been thinking about a toasted classic italian sub with vinaigrette dressing and raspberry lemonade for so long and I wasn’t going to have either. I had been fantasizing about these things in a manner no one should fantasize about food. All I wanted was for my Quizno’s fantasy to come true and it wasn’t going to. The look I carried on my face had to no doubt frighten the people I was talking to, they probably assumed I had just heard of a death in my family.
They pointed me in the direction of a burrito place called Boloco’s. The restaurant was in the lower basement level of an old row house and from the outside it looked like it might be too nice for my kind. I walked up to a mother and daughter sitting at a table outside the restaurant and asked,
“Will people be offended if I walk in their smelling, covered in dirt, and looking in general like I do?” I asked.
The two women looked at each other and laughed and then assured me that no one would care and told me my B.O. would probably be masked by the similar smell coming from the burritos, which she said were delicious.
Was I just hit on by being told my BO smelled similar to delicious burritos, no what am I thinking, no one in their right mind would hit on someone who looked and smelled the way I did.
I ate my first burrito and then went back up to the counter to order another.
After gorging myself on burritos and sodas I headed towards the fraternity and sorority rows of Dartmouth College.
I had heard from a few thru hikers and read in the shelter logs that some fraternities and sororities let thru hikers spend the night, fed them, and got them drunk. As all of those things sounded nice to me I was eager to put my best foot forward and wow some frat or sorority house into taking me in.
My first stop was Phi Tau. I walked up to their front door and knocked.
“Do you take in thru hikers?” I asked.
“We do, but we’re already at our limit of thru hikers.” The girl said.
“Oh, how many thru hikers are here?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” The girl said. This seemed a rather infuriating statement to me, they were already at their limit for thru hikers but she didn’t know how many were here, and I had only run into one other SOBO in the last week or so.
“Do you know if any other frats or sororities take in thru hikers?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think anyone else does.” She said. “But if you want we have a picnic table in our back yard that you can sleep on or underneath.”
This blow really hurt. I was not only offered to sleep on or under a picnic table, but I had been rejected by perhaps the nerdiest weirdest fraternity slash sorority in the world. The people in this house would have made the geeks form “Revenege of The Nerds” look like popular jocks. They had oval photos on the wall of old class years, and their were pictures of people dressed like star trek and star wars, people wearing cloaks, people dressed as witches. People petting cats. The photos were in general very off putting and it made me sad for them, but mostly for myself and the fact that these were the people determining whether I was worthy to sleep in the house or under a picnic table outside.
“Okay, thanks, I’ll think about it. Is there anyway I could at least shower here so I look a little nicer as I go to the next frat and sorority houses?”
“Yeah, you can use the bathroom upstairs.” She said. “Let me get one of the guys to take you up their.”
An Asian kid came down stairs and showed me into the shower stalls.
“Is there a towel and some soap I could use?” I asked.
“No, but you can use the paper towels in the dispenser to dry yourself.”
I looked at the dispenser and there weren’t any paper towels.
“There aren’t any paper towels left in the dispenser.” I said.
“You can use some of the toilet paper.” He said.
I laughed, and then realized he wasn’t joking.
Was I no longer a human? Was I now some trash person who showered without soap and dried themselves off with toilet paper? I had hit a new low and I was ready for a break from the trail.
The shower was unsatsifying to say the least. I ended up stealing some shampoo I found in someones shower caddy in another stall. But the small amount I took had left me feeling pretty grimy. I dried off with the toilet paper, which just fell apart on contact with my body, and I didn’t even try to dry off my nether regions as wet toilet paper caught in untrimmed pubic hair was a level of disgusting I wasn’t ready to lower myself to.
I decided this frats lack of hospitality was actually an assault on my person, so I decided to lay an assault of my own sorts on their bathroom. I left a dump that took thirty minutes to produce while I flipped through an old Playboy I found on the bathroom floor. When I was done I didn’t flush and I closed all the windows in the bathroom. I grabbed my pack, feined a smile, and said thank you and prepared to leave, with no intention of returning ever again.
“Wait a sec.” The girl said.
“Yeah?”
“We have this big cookie thing for all the students on campus and since we can’t take you in we at least want to offer you something, so grab as many cookies as you want.” She said.
I declined her offer even though I really did want the cookies. I now felt bad for what I had done to their bathroom and decided that withholding the cookies from myself would be my penance. I left the house realizing the trail had turned me into an insane person.
I headed to the nearest liquor store in town and bought myself a six pack of Woodchuck hard cider and a bag of ice to ice my ankle. With my cider in paper bag I walked down the street in my mid thigh Danskin dancing shorts and my oh so classy sweat stained maroon shirt with my white trucker hat to cap it off.
The first frat house I walked passed had people playing frisbee in the front yard.
“Hey do you take in thru hikers?” I asked.
“What did he say?” The girl asked the guy she was playing frisbee with.
“I don’t know, just pretend you didn’t hear him and don’t look at him.” The guy whispered to the girl, but in a voice loud enough for me to hear.
I continued walking down the street, knocked on the next door and asked the same question.
“I don’t know what that thing you said you are is, but no, we don’t let strangers sleep in our house.” The guy said.
The third house I reached was a white mansion looking house, very similar to the house from “Fresh Prince of Bel Air.” There were guys in the front yard grilling and blaring classic tunes from speakers set up on the balcony just above the main entry.
“Do you guys take in thru-hikers?” I asked.
“Yeah, you need a place to crash?” The blonde, jacked, tang top, and backward hat wearing typical frat dude asked.
“Yeah, I do.” I said.
“We’ll find you a place to crash. What’s your name?” He asked.
“I’m Justin, but my trail name is Triple P.” I said.
“Triple P. Well that’s cool. Follow me inside and we’ll get you settled in.” He said.
The blonde frat brother led me up one of the double staircases, past the windows that opened onto the balcony where another young man was dj’ing with a golden retriever at his feet.
He led me into one of the bedrooms and told me I could sleep on the couch in the room which was in front of another brick fireplace and had a rabbit in a cage in the corner of the room. There was also a doorway that led to a deck which was above the car port. It was exactly what you’d imagine the perfect frat house in any college movie to look like. It was awesome!
I set my things down, got settled in an adorondax chair made out of old skis, cracked open my Woodchucks and tried to call Sarah. She was still at work coaching, so I made some calls to other friends. I talked with my friend Ally, who was living in Miami. She kept saying that she couldn’t believe I was doing this and she couldn’t believe how long I’d already been hiking, and that she was really happy for me that I was living my dream and thought it was so awesome that I was doing what I was doing.
When my phone calls were done I started looking up buses from here to Boston, and trains from Boston to D.C. By the time I had my travel plans booked I had drank four of my six Woodchucks and still hadn’t heard anything from Sarah.
Just as I was about to go inside and call it a night some of the frat brother opened the door to the deck and asked if I wanted to come downstairs and play some drinking games.
“Yeah, that sounds like fun.” I said. I was genuinely thrilled to be invited to hang out with other people, drink and be merry. It had been so long since I had had the company of other people who were normal, fun, and full of life, and doing normal young people things.
I had texted Sarah just before the frat brothers had asked me to come hang out, “Hope today wasn’t to busy Im in Hanover at a frat house for the night give me a call if you want”
“Ok good I was worried.” Sarah texted.
“I’m m actually going to be with the guys at the frat for a while so I’ll talk later, I didn’t mean later, I meant tomorrow.” I texted.
“Fine.” Sarah texted back, knowing her I knew she didn’t mean it was fine, but if she wanted to be passive aggressive I’d let her, so I plugged my phone in to charge and headed downstairs.
The basement was designed for parties. It had built in benches around the entire basement and the bathroom had a trough style urinal so multiple people could pee at once. One of the frat brothers had his little brother there with some of his high school friends for his 18th birthday. They taught me how to play beer pond Dartmouth style. This game involved actual ping pong paddles. The cups were also filled almost to the top and were set up like a christmas tree with one cup as the trunk base. You could only hit underhand, and if you hit a cup but the ball didn’t go in your opponent had to drink half of the cup. If the ball did go in your opponent had to drink the entire cup. Once we started I was informed that the house rule was that thru hikers had to drink two cups to their partners one. After a couple hours of this combined with the Woodchucks I’d drank beforehand. I was stinking drunk, talking about personal intimate details of my life with these strangers, talking about my dreams, my concerns about what was next, and my sadness that the college phase of my life that I had loved more than any other was over.
“Don’t do it. Don’t leave college. Do whatever you can to stay as long as you can. Biggest mistake I made was leaving. Wish I could go back so bad. Savor it. It’ll be over like that.” I said with the snap of a finger and I rambled on and even though I was intoxicated I would have said every word sober and meant it with the same sorrowful emotion I expressed it at the time. I was sad the college was over and that I was doing this hike with no idea of what would come next.
Seeing as I felt so full of liquid of the alcohol variety that I couldn’t imagine drinking any more we headed upstairs and snacked on anything we could find, mostly chips, and some left over burgers and hot dogs from earlier in the night.
After three hours of drinking games, and hanging out, I returned to my coach upstairs and was greeted by the caged rabbit drinking aggressively from his water bottle. I checked my phone to see multiple new texts from Sarah one sent just after I had gone downstairs and the other an hour later,
“Actually it’s not really fine but I’ll deal with it.
“Just calling to see what I did to you for you to act this way.”
She was angry and I knew I was in trouble. This was not the way I planned to come home to see her for the first time since I’d started my hike.
“I didn’t have my phone with me because I was charging it, sorry I missed your calls and texts. I wasn’t aware I was acting any sort of way since the last thing I saw you text was, ‘fine.’ You sound like you’re mad so I’ll wait to hear from you when you’re not upset and are ready to talk.” I texted her back just before I went to bed.
I went to bed dreading the conversation that awaited me with Sarah either over the phone or in person when I got home. I was tired and sick of feeling bad for doing something I’d always said I was going to do and had always dreamed of doing. I was sick of feeling like all my dream did was make her resent me. My alarm would sound in five hours and I’d be on a bus to Boston, maybe I should just stay here.
Rose – Hanover and Hanging out with the brothers at Phi Delta Omega.
Bud – Going Home.
Thorn – Sarah being mad at me.
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