Made 14 miles to VA 60 by around two in the afternoon. From there flagged down a Nam vet for a hitch into town. Guess the people who are most likely to help you out are the ones who’ve been in your shoes. He probably saw the mud-stained duo walking on the roadside and recognized we were coming from some mean bush too.
The man didn’t talk much or ask questions, but it didn’t take words for him to know we wanted food. Next thing Cosmo and I knew we were sitting down in the Front Royal Family Diner flipping through a menu that just kept unfolding, like an old roadmap you’d find stuffed in the glove compartment of grandma’s Volkswagen.
Those things always got me more lost than found and this menu was no different. I eventually restricted myself to the first page only, which made things a bit easier, but not much.

Had some friendly conversation with a woman at the next table throughout the meal, and when she discovered our intentions to thru hike her eyes got all big. “That’s a LONG way!” Cosmo and I smiled and nodded, used to this response by now. “Well, meet me in New Hampshire when you make it that far.” Another nod from us. She left soon after, Cosmo and I oblivious at that moment that she had paid our bill.
After lunch we were shuttled to our hostel for the night by a guy named Mike. The hostel was his house outside town. He called it Terrapin Station after a Grateful Dead song. On trail he had been known as the grateful Greenpeace guy and with his long, white, unkempt hair I could imagine why.
Mike was not a stellar driver. He had a terrifying habit of weaving across the double yellow, the whole time surfing his left hand in the wind outside the driver-side window. When I was learning to drive, my dad used to suck air through clenched teeth when I made him nervous. Sitting next to Mike, I quickly discovered dad had passed his habit on to me.
We made it, anyhow. Unbroken and in one piece. Then I had a shower and a nap in Mike’s cold, but comfortable basement bunk bed accommodation.

 Later that night we boarded the roller coaster shuttle for another wild ride into town, met the trail family for Mexican, and then, after Pak picked up the tab with discrete class (you never know who you’re hiking with or their means), we got a ride from someone else back to the hostel.
While Mike was out for trivia and drinks, I explored the house. He may have been an odd one, but next to the stack of Grateful Dead records and just behind the broken record player the dude had an admirable collection of books. There were classic pieces like The Iliad and Odyssey, a spattering of Herman Hesse, and enough Kurt Vonnegut to keep me entertained for days.
I refrained from mentioning this earlier, but our host had a few ball bearings loose. Mike told us early on that his psyche was on the fritz, accentuating the fact by jerking a thumb at a license plate mounted to the wall. It read “MAN1K,” and he joked that he saw it on the road and couldn’t pass it up. Despite the road rage, it seemed that he had his thoughts under control, which was something I knew wasn’t easy.
Looking at the books he read though, I finally got a feel for how he was moderating his “insanity.” He had the great Greek classics to remind him of the importance of human values in a world run by gods, whipped about by forces out of our control. He had Herman Hesse, spiritual teacher and the mind behind stories like Siddhartha, to help him learn a thing or two about his own soul. And he had Vonnegut. Nobody, and I mean nobody, writes better stories about people than Kurt Vonnegut. Courageously simple stories that cut to the quick of human nature, that follow people as they live, learn, and make mistakes in this complex, too-big world.
It’s fitting coincidence that these are the books I treasure too, and ones that I often find myself going back to. For therapy. For reassurance. Because, just like Mike, I and others too I’m sure, have difficulty coming to grips with this insane world. Our world. Where most work 9-5 doing things they don’t want to do and then spend their paycheck on vacations, trying to buy back the time they misused. Where normal means sacrificing bodily health for a night of drug-and-alcohol fueled fun that will be forgotten by morning. Where it’s common belief that earthly life is just a test-run, and the real fun starts after we die in some place called heaven. Here people willingly turn a blind eye to the consequences of what they like to do. Living here has taught me this one thing: sanity can be a sickness when you live in the midst of an insane culture and world.
We’re not all meant to think and feel and say the same things. Individuality encourages growth. And everybody is different. But even knowing this, most of us still label the person who acts outside the norm as the one who’s insane.
It was easy to look at Mike and see just another crazy guy scraping by on pharmaceuticals, but after looking a little closer I saw a reflection of myself.
Thinking dangerous thoughts – Nomad