Odo 4250.0 (morn)
I wake up about 7:30, but consider sleeping a bit longer until a crow
perhaps 10 feet away gives a couple of really loud caws. I had been
hearing them but usually much farther away. I took it as a strong
suggestion that I should get up - I wouldn't be able to sleep with
that racket anyway. The tent fly is totally wet inside from
condensation, and totally wet outside from dew. It is foggy. I try to
shake the water off the fly, but it just makes me wet instead - I'll
just have to put it away wet today. By the time I leave, the day is
sunny, and I'm feeling too warm. I have to take off some layers. The
temperature maxes at about 64 and sunny. LaGrange comes up about 1:30,
and I eat at a dairy queen. On the way out of town I ponder stopping
at a busy laundromat, but decide one of the little towns ahead will
have something. Of course they do, but it's not laundromats, it's
antiques and real estate stores.
On the way to round top, I encounter a guy riding the route from east
to west. He is also camping out, but he looks to be carrying about 40%
of the stuff I'm taking. He says he uses compression stuffsacks to
make everything fit. I think he carries fewer insulative clothes than
I do.
At this point I need to decide where to stay for the night. I can get
to the corps of engineers campgrounds, but they always seem to be only
primitive camping. I opt for an RV campground because they will have a
laundry, and all my clothes are dirty! About half an hour before I get
there a north wind blows up, and the temperature drops. By the time I
get to the Dixieland RV Park, the wind is blowing at about 20 mph,
with gusts to 30, and the temperature is about 39, and still dropping.
The campground host shows me the tent area, and it's really windy
there! He also shows me the laundromat. I leave to get food at the
only open place, a gas station. They turn out to have BBQ, and I get a
really nice sliced brisket sandwich and new potatoes and take it back
and eat it in the laundromat, prior to doing clothes. I begin to long
for the nice still laundromat, so I ask the host, and he readily
agrees to let me sleep there, even offering a heater, which I
mysteriously decline?!
Perhaps most memorable, although painful, was my shower. The restroom
building and it's celing are separated by about a foot of open air,
and the wind is shaking the roof like it's going to blow off, and the
curtains are blowing around in the 30 degree wind like banchees. I
can't believe I'm going to do it. I turn on the shower's hot water -
and it gets hot! It's ok in the hot shower, but I know when I step
out into that swirling wind it will be bad. And it is. What I remember
is shivering hard enough to start breathing like a steam engine. The
clothing fights to cling to my damp feet defying all efforts to pull
it on quickly. I have to slow down and deliberately put the tights on,
then the insulated pants. Half dressed, it seems almost wonderful to
be only freezing half to death!
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