While at Trail Days a few Jordan stories

Since the crew is at Appalachian Trail Days and out of touch for thew weekend, I though I'd share a couple Jordan stories. But before I do, I wanted to let you know that pictures from this years event are already starting to make their way onto the Trail Days page. As they start to stream in we can play a 'Where's Waldo' gave with Backtrack, Hollywood, and Julia Childs.

And on to the stories:

When the group stop for extended breaks and meals, Back Track loves to dig himself a spot in the cool soil to lay down in. Pete found this out while on the trail the first week with them. They had stopped for a bit and Tail Wind pulled some stuff out of his pack and spread out some food to eat.
Suddenly it starts to rain dirt. Pete looks around and sees Jordan digging in. He didn't care where the dirt flew, all he knew is he wanted to get to that cool cool soil.
This became a recurring theme in Jordan and Pete's relationship. When he rejoined them on the trail for Christina's birthday, they got to a rest spot, Pete pulled out some food and suddenly, like rain from the heavens, comes the dirt. It got all over Pete's food, he looked around, and there he was, digging in again.

The second story is how Jordan's trail name has gone from Tripwire to Backtrack. While they have been hiking, as you may have read several times in the blog, Jordan got his trail name Tripwire because he was constantly running ahead, then back behind, each time trying to take Hollywood out along the way.
They have now discovered that if Christina walks a short ways ahead of Melissa, Jordan will just run up to Julia Child's back, turn around, run back to Hollywood, turn around again before getting behind her and head back up the trail toward Christina. By pacing themselves a short distance apart they have eliminated the most of Jordan's Tripwire moniker. However, since he runs up and back so much while they hike, he well deserves his updated trail name of Backtrack. When they setup camp at night, J-Dog is the first one out. He sleeps nice and sound. He will have done the trail NoBo AND SoBo by the time his human companions finish their NoBo adventure.

As a side track, Melissa's mom and I hiked Mt. Major today separately. We planned on going together. She is training to join the crew for a week when they get up here in New England somewhere. I had bowed out last night due to a bum knee, but this morning felt bad leaving her in the lurch.

So I headed up hoping I could catch her either on the way up or when she descended. I got to the parking lot, saw her car was still there so I hiked the blue trail to the top. I looked around for her, but we never saw each other. I headed back down on the orange trail. When I got to the bottom, I figured she would have long since gone because she got started earlier than I.


But her car was still in the lot. So I hung out in the parking area for a while and after a bit, here comes Liz, full pack and all out of the woods. It turns out that she got started much later than she had expected and she was literally 10-15 minutes ahead of me the the entire time. We exchanged stories about the same people we had met while hiking up and down. She had descended the much longer, but less brutal on the knees, yellow trail. That explained how I got up to the top after her but to the bottom before. The added fact that I wasn't wearing a pack didn't hurt either.

Hollywood was able to use what little signal she had today to have a nice talk to Tyler. As we have all said to her, a call to her hubby is top priority if there is limited air time or weak signal. I'm sure the three of them are whooping it up with all their new-found and trail weary friends at Appalachian Trail days as I write this. Party on you hearty thru hikers. Drink up all the calories you can because, come Monday morning, you'll work them back off real fast.