Boner:  “Mike Brown was hiking home on Saturday morning, but he turned around and came back to camp for another brownie.  Then he called later in the day and said he loved John’s new girlfriend Steve.”

Shoes:  “He made a great first impression. My kinda guy!”

Gump’s take:

Friday

Not realizing how close the location was from Conshohocken, Steve W. (apparently my new boyfriend) I left about 1:00.  While driving up to the location, I learned that Steve has many dark secrets and would fit just fine into Team Hike’s group of derelicts.  After meeting up with Gramps and Sterni in the deep woods, we set off to locate the start of our weekend hike.  About 6 arguments, 10 phones calls, and doubling back 8 times to keep our cell signal we parked in the lot Spugs provided….from there it was only 1 mile to the start of the trail (everyone else found this out the easy way…from us).  Shoes joined us and the hike began.  Oh yea, how could I forget Hummer and Alex calling 27 times for the same directions and managing to finally make their way off of Gun Club Road (where they never should have been to being with) to hike in shortly behind us.

Friday night

After finding our site for the night, rounding up enough wood to burn down Giants stadium, setting up our tents, and ignoring Hummer as much as possible, we toasted the first chalice <blum, blum, blum, blum…) named Johnny Walker Black (supplied by Alex).  Spugs showed up shortly after the Black got started.  Boner and the Man with Two Red sneakers (aka South, Young Carlo) finally showed up ¾ of the way into our drunken state.  I can not speak about much more of the night due to my black outs and fear one of us still may have a chance in becoming President some day, but I will give an honorable mention the tasty brownies that were supplied by one of our newest hiking members.  Between the tasty brownies, the 20 swigs of JWB, and the incredible consumption of other alcohol & beer, I believe we may have set a record somewhere for most body abuse one day before a 8 mile hike.  I am not sure when I went to bed but it was after Gramps and well before the 6AM contingent.

Saturday morning /Saturday night

“Oh my head!!  God please do not tell me we need to hike.  Who dropped the brick on my face and head?”   Steve (my new boyfriend) thought I may be overstating the pain until he took one look at me as we all rolled out of our tents (separate tents!) around 10:30 a.m..  Shoes packed up, started walking out and immediately returned when offered the last brownie…later he professed his love for the brownie supplier via text message.  The 8 mile hike was very different than described by Spugs and Gramps.  The first 1.5 miles (1650 ft incline) was less grueling than I anticipated but the following 6.5 was ankle busting, up and down, ball crushing fun?  We immediately discovered that Alex may never been seen on a team hike ever again.  His Friday night dance boots, hooded sweatshirt and 2 – 2 liters of soda (and whatever else he had in that bag) may have had something to do with him being 1 mile behind the pack at all times.  We stopped for lunch about 1ish at Dan’s Pulpit.  The view was pretty awesome.  My opinion, no view was better than being first in line on the trail and seeing the last orange, yellow leaves and green leaves scattered throughout almost leafless trees…like poetry (I know, but who are you to judge!).  Later in the hike, one large cranium angel (Chet) and his devilish looking brother (Lt. Dan) met us on the trail.  While Sterni, Gramps and I became excited by believing our destination was near,  the devilish looking fellow informed us we were only about 2.5+ miles away from the sleeping quarters and another 2 from the cars (where dinner and the remaining beer resided), hence devilish!  The shelter was incredible…like nothing we have ever seen…2 bunks and enough room to sleep 6-8 people and no appearance of mountain mice or bears (except for the near by tree with claw marks and no bark left on it).  Not wasting any time Sterni, Spugs, Gramps, Chet and I set off to grab the beer and food before dark…another 2 miles out & back in and we were ready to finish ourselves off.  A calm crowd with a relentlessly eye *ucking fire, the first man down by 9:00 (Alex of course), Gramps and Chet providing stage performances by 10:30, funny text messages to Hicks, one bottle of grape vodka, a couple cases or so of beer, great food and everyone in bed by 11:30!  The team seemed beaten by the day…or the individual weight gained over the past few years took its toll (excepted for Sterni…he looked smaller for some reason?).One note: Shouting “Ten Rabbits” into the fire to make the smoke go away does not work.

Sunday

Day light savings and a good night sleep had everyone awake and ready to go by 7:30 a.m..  A couple of good laughs and another weekend done on the trail.  I hope to remember not to drink myself near death on the Friday before such a big hike. Thanks Spugs!!