After taking a muscle relaxer “happy pill,” N was out like a light last night and not heard from again until this morning. We ate at the hotel in Abingdon, got our laundry done, took two long hot baths, and generally felt cleaner than we have in days. We rested until check-out, and then changed our base of operations to the Victorian Inn B&B in Damascus, where N immediately took a two-hour nap, while X went off to check out outfitters and make plans for tomorrow.

About 2:00 p.m., a revived N joined X at Subway where he devoured a sandwich with true thru-hiker relish. Next door at Sundog Outfitters, Alex took N’s backpack apart and did all kinds of adjustments to find him the perfect fit to end his back pain. At the end, the weight seemed to be riding much higher and better balanced, both of which N concluded were very good things.

As luck would have it, at that moment, Allyn Morton, the Granite Gear field rep, walked in the door, after just arriving early for “Trail Days.” He had already sent a replacement upper pocket (which we call “the brain” in backpack terminology) for X’s pack Shock, and talked how disappointed the company had been with the Japanese zippers they used making this pack, zippers which were extremely waterproof, but after six months or so had demonstrated an extremely high failure rate. When Allyn found out Shock also had broken zipper teeth on the pack itself, he immediately called the home office and set it up for us to trade out poor ole broken tooth Shock for a newer model from Sundog’s inventory, a pack with a more durable zipper (who for now we are calling Shock Too). All this at no charge to us. Talk about “legendary service”! We are now Granite Gear customers for life! (We should mention Allyn’s daughter had looked after us so well way back at Mountain Crossings…)

We ran into any number of trail friends as we headed out to find dinner. Most concerned were the Canadian contingent (AKA “Team Chick-fil-A”), who were baffled when they never passed us yesterday afternoon (as they always do) and had wondered if we had disappeared off the face of the Earth. We explained, yes, in a way we had, but 24 hours later we were doing much better.

We hope our thru hike has received redemption in Damascus, and that we can start getting back on schedule tomorrow…