(Daily Mi: 0.0) Feeling especially grim about my Hike at the moment. Made a round of calls to folks and was stunned to hear myself saying I would be out here for another 3 weeks at least. Still got most of ME left and what I have seen so far is just as grim as promised.

Some folks took off this AM on slack hikes and will be back this afternoon. Most of them are moving on.

I registered for another night at the Andover Guesthouse.

The Guesthouse is run by a re-transplanted local known with metonymical accuracy as Peg Leg

The first floor of his operation is giant lounge with a couple of dining tables and a set of leather couches gathered around a television, vcr and about 150 movie options. The second floor is private rooms. The third floor is a bunk room (sleeping about 20) with a group shower and bathroom.

There is a restaurant next door and two package stores across the street.

Peg Leg doesn't allow boots, packs or hiking clothes inside the house.

Guests are issued freshly laundered shorts and t-shirts from the house collection upon arrival and instructed to change before sitting or lying down anywhere inside. Packs are left on the second floor porch.

With three guest houses, the AT hostel business in Andover is fiercely competitive, and in addition to bunk space, Peg Leg sweetens the deal with free hiker shuttles and slack pack services.

Hiker shuttles means that Peg Leg drives hikers the 14 miles back to the Trail in his Escort wagon at the end of their stay

Slack pack services are more elaborate. For a slack pack, Peg Leg takes the hiker out to a roadhead with a day pack in the morning. He then drives north that afternoon to meet him or her at the next roadhead some ten or fifteen trail miles further on to bring them back to the hostel for the night.

Andover is ideally sited for this undertaking at a mid-point between two AT roadheads, and close enough to a third to make it possible to repeat the trick at least twice.

This generally assures that most hikers will spend at least two and possibly three nights in town, and the other two hostel owners offer more or less the same bundle of hiker encticements making Andover one the most notorious hiker blackholes on the AT.

And me, I spent the afternoon watching vcr movies with a section hiker, Mars Rover, who is an engineer with JPL.

Later in the afternoon a thru hiker named Crusader, a recently retired Army Lt. Col. and former special forces officer, comes in. We have dinner, and despite my prior suspicion of the practice I agree to slack pack with him tomorrow and try to get back on my feet.