8/17/01
There's nothing like a zero mile day with a bunch of other thru-hikers around to enjoy it with. I slept in until well after 9 a.m. in my corner bed in the huge barn loft this morning. The noise of cars and logging trucks passing by was drowned out by the two ceiling fans and one window fan in the loft. I skipped breakfast, choosing to down a quart of chocolate milk instead, along with a candy bar and later a can of sardines, sent by Ken from home in the care package. It was cloudy and rain was forecasted so it was the perfect opportunity to catch up on journaling. I tackled the 12th of August through the 16th which took me several hours to put down on paper. Finally around 2 p.m. I broke free of the pen and paper and packed up the packages to go out in the mail. I walked in a light mist to the PO, then a little farther to Burger King for a quick lunch before making a U-turn on Main Street to head back to The Barn. Priceless had suggested that we go to an afternoon matinee in Berlin, NH, the next town west of Gorham, another 7 miles down the road. I figured Phantom wouldn't be back from a 60 mile hitch yet (he had boot problems and had to go to a town 30 miles away) and Redneck was having a rough day with a money problem at the ATM (the First Bank of Rabbit got him through it though!) so I didn't think he was up for the movie either. Just as I got within sight of the Barn, a minivan pulled out of the driveway there and headed straight to me. Paul, the owner of The Barn and Libby House B&B, volunteered to drive us to Berlin to the theater. I hopped in and found Priceless, Finn and Slider (a Sobo) inside. Paul dropped us off outside the small theater and we walked inside. American Pie II was the movie Priceless had read about in the paper, but we noticed rather quickly that the movie wasn't showing. It only took a couple of minutes to realize that Priceless must have been looking at the wrong newspaper. We walked a block to a convenience store to look at the newspapers and, sure enough, he had looked at a Boston, MA newspaper that someone had purchased and left at the Barn. By total coincidence there is a suburb of Boston named Berlin, and Priceless thought it was Berlin, NH, not Berlin, MA! We got a good laugh from his faux pas, then stuck out our four thumbs in hopes of a quick hitch back to Gorham. A pickup pulled over and we all piled in the back for a rainy ride back to The Barn. I sprinted from the pickup truck to the library for another 20 minute e-mail session on a very slow computer before returning to The Barn. I forgot to mention that a mid-morning highlight this morning was Finn playing barbershop in the driveway of The Barn. Slider, a Sobo from Washington State, was complaining that her hair was too long, so Finn used his clippers kit from his bump box to give her a first class buzz. She has five months or more to go on her journey and was very pleased with Finn's fine work on her head. All of the thru-hikers gathered for the spectacle and cheered Finn's efforts. After writing another day's journal, we hiked along Main Street to find a Chinese buffet for dinner. We ended up at the Fortune Cookie. Our table for four grew as Izzy and Stump (two Nobos we just met recently), Slider, Priceless, Finn, Phantom, Redneck and I put a dent in the AYCE buffet. Gorham was littered with thru-hikers as we also saw Reader, Swagman, Bad moon, Mud, Hard Time, Medagator, Cy, Frankenstein, Stray Cat II, Lucky Strike, China Girl, Lucky Duck and Vacilando during our zero mile day (all Nobos). Most of these brave souls stayed at The Barn or stealth camped under the bridge across the main street by the river in town. After dinner we returned to The Barn to join the plethora of thru-hikers (there must have been 20 of us staying there) in various and sundry conversations until one by one we went upstairs to the loft to sleep for the night. It would be very easy to get sucked in for another zero mile day tomorrow, but our joint plan (the Fab 5); Priceless added to the original Fab 4; is to get out of town early. Today's stats: low 70, high 75. Cloudy with light intermittent showers (but the drought continues).
