Today was deja vu all over again. We ate supper where we ate the last time in town. We ate breakfast at the same diner, we even had the same waitress. Big surprise, she didn’t remember me. We even headed to Walmart again. The big difference was the hurt hiker clinic that Marcia put on at the Barn. One by one, we lay down on a bed while she worked us over. I felt remarkably better after the adjustments yesterday and today. For the first time in months, I could walk up and down stairs without having to place both feet on the same riser each step. It’s almost like I’m no longer 80.
We made a day of hiker errands including a trip to a drug store in addition to Walmart. After spending the morning on errands and trying to repair broken hikers, we went to Mr Pizza (for the 4th time!) for lunch. I also had my 6th banana split in NH—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Marcia and Peter are staying at his sister’s house until they can move into their new place in another week. With the first phase of their move complete, Marcia has to return to work on Monday morning, so she would like to have a day to adjust in her new surroundings and develop her new rituals (it’s not that mystical, but they’d like to head home this afternoon). We broke up into a few groups on the walk back to our hostel—Bear was up front by himself, the three women were walking together, and Peter and I hung back talking. We watched everyone cross the highway in front of us and we decided to stick our heads out to see if we could cross.
Everyone was already across. We stepped off the curb to check on traffic. Immediately, a truck coming towards us stopped and a motorcycle coming behind us stopped, but we noticed traffic behind the motorcycle (another motorcycle) wasn’t slowing down. We waited until we knew we’d be safe to cross. The second motorcycle’s driver was oblivious to what was happening around her. She was looking to her right not paying attention. When she finally looked up, she gripped her brakes and veered to the right of the stopped motorcycle clipping his rear end and slamming into a parked car. I heard Marcia scream and start running toward the car. It hadn’t registered with me yet what had just happened. The motorcycle had slammed into Peter and Marcia’s parked car in front of our hostel.
We spent the next couple of hours talking to police while the fire department cleaned up the wreck, the police chief made out reports, and an ambulance to the female driver to the hospital where it was discovered she had a broken wrist. I measured the skid mark from when she slammed on her brakes—it was well over 30’ in length before she hit the motorcycle in front of her which caused her to let go of the brakes. From the damage to our friend’s car, she was still going 15-20 mph. This was not a great way to end the day for Peter and Marcia.
Once the turmoil died down, Peter and Marcia still had to drive all the way back to Portland. We all said our goodbyes and watched them drive away. Since we had an early start in the morning, the only shuttle to our trailhead was “7:10 sharp, no exceptions!”, we had to be ready to go when we would normally just be waking up. Of course, I’m not referring to when Bear wakes up, but the earliest isn’t necessarily the fastest. Tonight, to switch things up a bit, it was Sassy who kept loosing things—glasses, socks, patience. It’s normally Bear’s prerogative to misplace items—socks, underwear, top secret info.
No matter how much I eat at a meal, and no matter how many meals I overeat at in a day, I still like to have at least 3 meals in a town day. Bunny and Sassy claimed to be too full to eat anything else so it was just Bear and me for supper. I let Bear pick and he chose his all time favorite dining experience which there just happened to be an outlet here in town. Boys night out at Subway. Bear walked in and asked for his usual. They checked the board behind the counter, found his picture, and made his sandwich. Until tonight, I didn’t realize Subway had a frequent flyer program that runs nationwide. I would recommend anyone reading this blog go to your nearest Subway and order the same meal every day for a month to get your name added to that list. Bear has worked hard for his national recognition.
EFG