Cold + Rain = ?

BAD!  IT EQUALS BAD!

Hey guys.  I'm still alive and doing just fine.  I am in the super sweet deluxe "Grand Prix Motel" run by some super christian dude.  I am typing this right now while they have one of those christian motivational speaker dudes on DVD...its rather creepy in my opinion.  BUT I DIGRESS

Everything is still going well with me.  I definitely have the "hikers stomach"  now.  I eat everything, all the time.  I eat a full meal, and then about 15 minutes later I am still like "I could totally eat a candy bar", so I do.  And I lose weight.  BE JEALOUS LADIES!

This is definitely a huge lifestyle change.  There are no "monday - fridays".  There are just "good days" and "bad days".  (Please imagine me doing the quotation movement with my fingers).  Good days are days where it is warm, birds are chirping, im listening to my mp3 player, and I am eating well.  Bad days are COLD AND RAINY DAYS.  they really suck.  like hard.  I have a feeling a lot of people don't really understand....if you were a kid back in the day, you could go out in the cold rain and freeze your ass off for like 3-4 hours, and then eventually you would go inside, get warm change ur clothes, and then you would make campbells chicken noodle soup cuz its the bomb.  ON THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL, YOU DON'T GET THAT. 

Everything you are wearing gets soaked, you get really cold, and then your fingers are super hard to move.  Then you get to camp, get even colder (because you aren't moving), attempt to change ur clothes, and then u gotta eat a meal.  Then just go hibernate in your sleeping bag.  It really sucks.  And then the next day there is no guarantee it will be sunny out, so you could just put on all of those wet clothes, and DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN.  It sucks, but its all part of the experience.  As one of my fellow hikers said to me when I said that...."Whenever you have to say 'its all part of the experience', its always about something really shitty".  Laugh. Out. Loud.  True that my fellow hiker, true dat.

But it really does make you appreciate how effing awesome heat and shelter are.  I'm in jubilee right now that I am staying at a motel where I can TAKE SHOWER, and TURN ON LIGHT, and WATCH TV (that part was said in a caveman voice).  Cool stuff right there.

I kinda feel like the Appalachian trail is like a really really lax bootcamp.  You will do some real hard stuff, but you can quit whenever you want.  You gotta wear a 35 lb pack up and down mountains for 6 months. No one is breathing down your neck telling you that you need to pick up the pace, so you can take the hard parts real easy (it will just take you forever though).

I have been playing guitar still on the trail, its still fun.  Its cool to bring it out at a campsite every time and someone will clap or compliment me.  yay for positive energy.

I have met two real old dudes, Hell Izzy (he is so slow that ppl go "where the hell is he") and Turtle.  Turtle was a badass old 70 year old.  He was a badass photographer who at 17 got hired by a camera company to take pictures of all the landmarks across the united states.  He worked as a still photographer working in NYC on tv shows.  He worked on sesame street, how cool!  He had a lot of cool interesting stories about his life.  He actually just walked into the motel, NEAT! 

I can't upload any pics on these computers because they are owned by the hotels, and they are incredibly slow.  Like wow.  I bet there is so much porn on these computers...that stuff will make ur computer hella slow.  I wish I could upload some pics because it is freaking awesome beautiful out here.  I will def not get tired of the scenes on the AT.  I think I can buy another device to hopefully make this "uploading pictures" process a whole lot easier, so hopefully you guys will see some cool pics soon.  I got some gee-tar videos I did in some scenery so that would be a cool video I can upload.

Ok people there are way too many people in this little motel room, so I am gonna go now.  Looks like the next 3-4 days here are rain...Shit.  But hey, I'll survive!  The good and the bad, the ying and the yang, blah blah blah.

PEACE,

Joe "Lighthouse" Moyer

OH yeah I will mention how I got my trail name "Lighthouse".  I busted out my guitar on like the 3rd day when I got to camp early.  I was playing for a while and then 2 ladies came into camp while I was playing.  They knew they were close to the campsite because they could hear my playing from on top of the mountain. So they were like "you were like a lighthouse that guided the way for us, you should be lighthouse!"  Which I was like "yep, sure sounds good."  Which if you think about it, aren't lighthouses there to guide you away from the rocky parts that jut out to sea?  NOT SURE IM NOT A NAUTICAL MAN, but lighthouse sounds kinda cool and mysterious at the same time, SO ILL TAKE IT!

later!