Your Darling Cafe

You have been fairly warned not to invite vampires into your home. It’s their only way across the threshold and then you have precious few tools to fight back. A stake through the heart, garlic, some holy water. The same goes for thru hikers and your darling European style cafe. You’ve spent years perfecting the vibe. The vintage china, the comfortable chairs and the perfect playlist to accompany your fancy coffee drinks and delicate pastries. Then you make the mistake of letting thru hikers in the door. They will hang out for the good part of the day, order everything on the menu, plug in all of their devices without asking, leave mud puddles under your tables and unpack and repack their nasty gear in front of everyone. There will be gear and food exchanges, loud discussions about trail sections and all of your sugar packets will disappear. I mean ALL of them. Sugar is an unimaginable luxury on the trail and we are not going to lug around a ten pound bag of raw sugar. I sincerely apologize on behalf of all of my hiker buddies for what we do to your bathrooms. We change in them, clean our gear, wash our headbands in your sink and steal bits of toilet paper. Never the whole roll for goodness sake – just a few days worth. Do you know how much toilet paper weighs? We do! If you get within three feet of them, the stench will knock you over but they seem joyfully oblivious to it. If you ask when their last shower was they will scratch their dirty heads and think back a few days and giggle. No – washing out your socks at the gas station bathroom doesn’t count. This is the life of Hiker Trash and we wear it with honor. A stinky, dirty badge of honor. We earned this look.

We are a friendly bunch indeed but we lose all sense of decorum on the trail. I do my best to keep my hands and fingernails clean but my pack is covered in mud and my shoes are unrecognizable in all the dirt and cow manure. I gave up trying to keep those clean about a hundred miles ago. I keep a small comb in my front pocket and rake the crap out of my beard before stepping into public. It’s amazing what comes out of that thing. We do wash our clothes whenever we can but I’m not sure it really helps. We combine all of the laundry loads to save water and money. The embedded mud just gets evenly distributed in the wash and everything comes out of the drier a dingy grey – but hot and dry. We call this clean. Our shirts smell halfway decent for the first mile back on trail and then the rottenness returns in force. Or, it might be the handles on our hiking poles and the weeks of sweat embedded into our backpacks. To be fair – we think you smell too. When we pass a day hiker on the trail, the scents of deodorant, shampoo, perfume and drier sheets almost knock us over. Our noses have been accustomed to fresh air, pastures and our malodorous hiking buddies.

I am fastidious fellow – a neatnick. I keep my hair short, floss twice a day and keep my house in show-quality tidiness. I have a well loved dog-eared copy of Peggy Post’s “Modern Etiquette” on my bookshelf. This level of tightness just isn’t possible on the Trail and I kind of like that. If you pack for a three month trip and don’t include underwear to save weight, Peggy will have a few polite reminders about proper attire for sure. This forces me out of my comfort zone. One thing I do make sure of is that my pack is perfectly organized. Everything has its place and it goes in and out each day the same way. I can tell you where everything is and reach for it in the darkness. Sure, it’s not that hard when you’ve reduced your worldly possessions to a seventeen pound base weight, but that’s the point. Once you strip all that crap away that you don’t really need you feel lighter, freed from the burdens of maintaining more than one shirt in your life.

After I found myself screaming F*** You! at the trail yesterday I sat down for a second and promised myself a Zero or two. I’ve been pushing and I don’t think this trail rewards that the same way the AT does. I think the point of this one is to let the days unfold and let the adventures come to you. I slept in at Helena and Chris’ place today and had a lazy and wonderful hour-long chat with Chris about life. He made me a delicious flat white coffee and we pondered the big questions while the sun came up over the ridge. I dried and organized everything in my pack and headed down to the fancy beach town of Matakana. I wandered by the expensive cafes and slick clothing stores and then hitched a ride to the local brewery. Once again, the Kiwis came through. I’m not sure you can call it a hitch when the driver stops without your thumb out and offers a ride to wherever you want go. Five stars New Zealand!

I’m slowly backtracking a bit today to meet Thorsten and Thomas to go scuba diving tomorrow, finish “Lessons in Chemistry” and take a long nap. I’m in a good place with friendly people and seeing beautiful things. I hope you don’t take my complaining more seriously than what it is – the truth. It gets rough out there sometimes but I’m incredibly thankful for where I am and all of the people that make this possible. It’s everything that I was hoping this trip would be.