Chapter 50: Waffle House

Catering exclusively to the blacked-out drunk and/or the financially and culturally impoverished, Waffle House is quite possibly the worst restaurant in the world. If fast-food chains were cities, the vastly superior but still unspectacular IHOP would be be Providence, Rhode Island: venerable, relatively inexpensive, not too terribly unhealthy, maybe a bit boring. Waffle House, meanwhile, would be Gatlinburg, Tennessee: garish, ugly, a blight on all creation.

The menu at Waffle House consists of six different types of waffles, eggs, omelets, and various combinations of highly processed carbohydrates and extremely fatty meats. If you're a vegetarian like me, your best options would be either the waffles, the eggs, or starving to death, of which starving to death might be the most pleasant. And tastiest. The International House of Pancakes, on the other hand, serves nine different types of pancakes, at least six different types of French Toast, waffles, crepes, eggs, omelets, soups, salads, burgers, etc. Almost all of which are edible, if not exactly palatable, to a vegetarian.

At IHOP, food is prepared in the kitchen, well out of sight of paying customers. Which is probably for the best. Most sane people don't want to know what kind of rodent hairs or bug excrement might make its way into their New! CINN-A-STACK™pancakes. At Waffle House, on the other hand, they make your food more or less right in front of you. For better or mostly worse, you can see exactly which horrible ingredients will be contributing to your imminent congestive heart failure.

I admitted to Bandito that I had never been to Waffle House. Bandito naturally misinterpreted this as an impassioned plea on my behalf, and so insisted that we go there for breakfast. His grandparents had taken us to Shoney's^® for an all-you-can-eat dinner the night before, and that hadn't gone too disastrously, so I agreed, and was woefully unprepared for just how truly awful Waffle House would be.

I ordered the strawberry waffles, then watched in morbid fascination as the waitress sprayed a waffle iron down with some industrial-strength aerosol lubricant, squirted batter onto it out of a tube, and then added freeze dried strawberries that may or may not have actually been made out of horses' hooves and food coloring. Out waitress was a wonderful lady, her sad eyes and droopy visage betraying a breathtaking soullessness. She looked like a stubby, discarded cigarette butt, just waiting for someone to snuff her out, and prepared our meal with all the enthusiasm and zeal of a death-row inmate heading to the gallows.

And my waffles ended up being about as appetizing as a tax audit. I was mystified. What was their appeal? They weren't exactly flavorless; in fact, they tasted strongly of wood chips and airplane glue. So strongly, actually, that not even the most copious amount of corn syrup could disguise their inherent disgustingness. But that didn't stop me from trying.

I was feeling fat and bloated by the time we finally got out of town. Which was around ten o'clock. Which was a problem, because we had very ambitious plans. Bandito's grandparents asked where we wanted to be dropped off.

"You can let us off where you picked us--" started Bandito.

"Actually," I interrupted. "We'd like the skip the road walk if we can. Just take us to the next trail head, if that's okay with you?"

"No problem," said Bandito's grandpa.

Bandito started to object, but I punched him in the mouth.

His grandmother gasped, peering at him in the rearview mirror. "My dear, you're bleeding!"

Bandito started to explain, but I stomped on his foot.

"He's okay," I said, "He just fell down a flight of stairs. He's so clumsy!"

And I laughed, pointedly glaring at Bandito. He wasn't going to ruin my yellow blazing attempt. Not this day. Not ever.

And so we yellow blazed for the second time. We might have skipped eight tenths of a mile, bringing our grand total of missed trail to just over a mile. Sue me. Considering it was almost eleven and we had twenty six more miles to go, I wasn't particularly thrilled by our meager accomplishment. Bandito and I profusely thanked his grandparents for their help and hospitality, and then set off.

Hours passed. I found myself wondering where Caveman and P-Nut were, and whether they had gotten their church group-sponsored trail magic as intended. Would they have made it out of town before we did? Could they be very far behind? Could we possibly be behind them? All of which is an elaborate way of saying the hiking itself was boring, or that I just don't remember it. I do remember that we were averaging a steady two miles an hour, which put us on pace to reach Wapiti Shelter sometime just after hell froze over.

It was nearing sunset when we emerged from the forest and came, seemingly out of the blue, upon a suspension bridge spanning Kimberling Creek. What was something of such technological complexity doing there? Was it necessary? Or were the trail architects just showing off?

Who cares? It was beautiful. A light mist hung over the water, its dimpled surface reflecting the indigo glow, speckled with flecks of red and gold, of the setting sun.

We stopped just after the bridge to eat dinner. Whatever we ate wasn't very satisfying or particularly nourishing, but at least it was better than Waffle House. Sated, we steeled ourselves for a long night hike.

My first walking stick, Dino II, had broken coming down off of Tray Mountain in Georgia. My second walking stick, Dino III, had been carelessly used as firewood by an inconsiderate Boy Scout somewhere in North Carolina. Dino IV may or may not have been smashed against a rock or a tree in a moment of acute frustration. Dino V was now tucked into the compression straps on my backpack, mostly because I needed the hand free for my trusty MagLite.

Unfortunately, Dino V stuck up over my head rather a lot, and had the tendency to snag on every branch of every tree we walked under. Bandito, hiking behind me, found himself constantly bombarded by leaves, spider webs, and other miscellaneous debris. Which he found intensely aggravating.

"M.C.," laughed Bandito, choking on a leaf, "Your hiking stick is really annoying!"

"So grab it and throw it in the bushes," I taunted, never thinking he would do exactly that.

"Hey, look over there!" Bandito shouted suddenly, "Trail magic!"

"What?" I gasped, looking around frantically. I heard a scuffle behind me, then something crash in the woods to my left. And my backpack was suddenly lighter.

"What have you done?" I bellowed, aghast.

"You told me too!" screamed Bandito.

"Yeah, but I was only half-joking!" I managed to protest before breaking down into incoherent sobs.

"You're such a baby!" scolded Bandito, incredulous.

"Be quiet!" I retorted. "You'll wake the neighbors."

"We're in the middle of the woods!"

"Don't remind me. I want to go home. I want my mommy."

"I want your mommy, too," said Harvey, the invisible bunny.

"Shut up," I said, fed up.

It was getting to be that sort of night.

After passing a side trail to Dismal Creek Falls, the landmarks go as follows: at mile marker 608.2, a stream crosses the A.T.; a tenth of a mile further, another stream; a tenth of a mile past that, another dirt road; 0.4 miles beyond that, two streams; point two beyond that, another dirt road; then in the next point eight miles, a stream, a pond, another stream, and finally the shelter. That's a lot of streams, and at least one too many dirt roads. It being dark out, and our brains being fried, Bandito and I had no idea how far we had gone, how many streams or roads we'd actually crossed, and were constantly worried that we'd somehow missed the shelter.

Oh, all of which was exacerbated by the fact that the Wapiti Shelter is the most haunted shelter on the trail. Two hikers were infamously murdered there in 1981. So what if it was decades ago, and that the killer was now dead? It was unnerving. Being unable to find the place was unnerving. Harvey the invisible rabbit was unnerving. Everything was unnerving.

It took us nearly an hour of constant second guessing and, in my case, emergency cathole digging to hike the last mile. When we finally found the shelter, it was approaching midnight. Or maybe one o'clock. I still didn't have a watch. Anyway, I was in some depraved, demented mood when we arrived, and had half a mind to sneak up on the shelter cackling softly like a homicidal maniac and making knife-drawing sound effects to freak people out. But I didn't. And I'm glad I didn't. It was only Nature, Lil Dipper, Redwing, Braids, and some other girl I didn't know in the shelter, and my little prank would have been more likely to get me killed than amuse any of them. Bandito and I barely had enough energy as it was just to pitch our tents before going to sleep.

The lesson being, of course, never eat at Waffle House.

Chapter 49: Virginia is for Nazis

Someone had written in the shelter log at Chestnut Knob about a church group in Bland, Virginia that picked up hikers from a nearby road crossing, took them into town, and treated them to a lavish breakfast party. But it only happened once a week. Probably on Saturdays.

"What day is it today?" asked P-Nut, intrigued.

"Friday," said Caveman. "I think."

They shared a look. They were going. The lure of free food on the trail can often overpower all other considerations, like common sense, camaraderie, or even survival.

"I don't care if it puts us behind schedule, if we never see you guys again, or if I get molested by a bunch of horny church grannies," said P-Nut. "Heck, I don't mind. I'll show those girls a good time! I'm going."

Unfortunately, the rest of us could not afford to be so lazy. Bandito was headed towards US21, some 22 miles away, where his grandparents were picking him up to take him into Bland for the night. Lil Dipper and Redwing were headed to the Helveys Mill Shelter, which was about 2 miles past US21, because, well, for some inexplicable reason. I still needed to do big miles in order to see Megan, so naturally I was going into town with Bandito. Meanwhile, I had no idea where Nature or Hobbes were going.

We started out and blah, blah, blah, whatever, it was boring.

When Bandito and I reached VA615, we saw two notices nailed to a tree: one was informing us of a trail detour due to a bridge being out because of flooding, the other was regarding the aforementioned trail magic. The church group was real, the grand hiker breakfast was happening the next day, and it was going to be legendary. I was happy for P-Nut and Caveman, but otherwise felt sorry for them. They would have to camp nearby in order to make the pickup in the morning, and there was such a heavy and overpowering stench of death in the air, you could practically see it all around you. It was like a sinister green mist of fetid, rotting bile. Imagine the most abysmal, pungent putrescence you can, and then give up, because you can't even imagine how bad this was.

Stupidly, we looked around for the source of the offensive aroma, and were dismayed to find it. A mangled, partially eaten deer carcass lay amongst the rocks at the bottom of a ditch next to the road. Right in the middle of Laurel Creek. And there may have been several more of them scattered about, in various stages of decomposition. It was nauseating to look at, and even worse to smell.

We didn't stay there for much longer, and we most certainly did not pump water from the stream. Instead, we hiked up the road, disturbed as much by what we had seen as by the unnerving thought of what wild beast, or human being, could have done tha-- There was a Jeep Cherokee parked in the road up ahead. An old man was unloading something from the back. And it wasn't a corpse. Corpses aren't usually transported in styrofoam coolers. Well, I guess they could be, but it would be rather impractical. You'd have to cut-- Anyway, my heart was racing a million miles a minute. Could it be? Trail magic on consecutive days?

Yes! It was a man from the church group, unloading ice-cold Propel Waters into a barrel just off the trail. We chatted with the man for a minute and then sat down at a nearby picnic table to enjoy the spread.

Redwing and Lil Dipper arrived shortly, and I repeated my earlier gesture of walking down to them with drinks. And it's not like I was trying to take credit for the it, or that I was insidiously trying to use Pavlovian conditioning to make them associate trail magic with my personal benevolence. I just liked seeing the looks of insane, unadulterated joy on their faces.

Caveman wasn't there to stop me, so I gleefully sampled every single flavor of Propel Water before I left. And then filled up my canteen with more Propel Water, because the stream was clearly contaminated and I didn't want to die. It was the only responsible thing to do.

Unfortunately, our luxurious break lasted a little while longer than perhaps I originally intended. Redwing and Lil Dipper left before us, and I grew increasingly concerned with how far ahead of us they might be getting. It would be a gross insult to my personal pride, and to America, for us hearty Yanks to fall so behind the wayward, hapless, hopelessly inept British. This was our country! I couldn't let them reach the road first.

Bandito trailed behind by a few yards as we ran down Redwing and Lil Dipper. I sang patriotic songs to annoy them, then realized they were out of earshot, and had to move on my less jingoistic repertoire. I had sung every song I knew the words to, and some that I didn't, by the time we caught up. I breathlessly laughed at them, and wheezed an inarticulate excoriation, denouncing their slowness, and inaudibly reasserted the supremacy of America, and heroically managed not to pass out. Our great national crisis was over.

We were approaching USFS Road 282 when I saw it. No, not the gallon jugs of stale tap water left by the side of the trail. Worst trail magic ever. There was a giant swastika spray-painted onto a tree, surrounded by cigarette butts, broken beer bottles, a ragtag gang of primitively armed neo-Nazi skinheads, and assorted other trash. Virginia. Charming.

Emerging onto the forest service road, we found ourselves momentarily adrift. There weren't any visible blazes around, nor were there any other indications of where to go. The lurking skinhead gang wasn't particularly helpful either. Bandito eventually found cellphone service and called his grandparents. They were waiting for us up ahead. All we had to do is follow the forest service road underneath some power lines, turn a corner, and we'd be there.

Bandito's grandparents were as delightful as the rest of his family, just older, fussier, and maybe a little dotty. They had been there for a while, and had already shuttled another couple of hikers to the grocery store and back. We left a bottle of Snapple by the road for Redwing and Lil Dipper, and piled into the back of their pickup truck for the ride into town.