Zero in Waynesville: obstruction, blog, agitation

May 3, 2026

With six straight days of backpacking completed and 11 straight days planned next, it was definitely time for a zero. I clog my arteries with unhealthy foods, read blog posts, and sit impatiently during an exciting Miami Grand Prix.

hot breakfast

Yo I arrived at Ingles in Waynesville shortly before 9:00 a.m. After walking around the store to evaluate my options, I ended up at the deli counter. I ordered what I thought would be a seven dollar plate of scrambled eggs, cheese and ham with a side of sausage and bacon. A little artery-clogging, but I was looking for the calories. The clerk handed me the plate with a sticker showing a price of only three dollars, a total bargain! I inhaled the food and quickly repeated the order. Somehow, this identical order was now $0.50 cheaper. A great coffee followed and I sat in the coffee shop, getting to work on publishing my blog posts.

cold WiFi

In the cafeteria I immediately realized that the Internet speed in this English was catastrophically slow. Loading photos was taking a long time, even though I didn’t have that many to process. I had no luck streaming Formula One coverage on my phone. It wasn’t much better on my laptop. After an hour, I still hadn’t been able to publish a single post, although I was able to add my gear list to my profile on The Trek.

I tried my best to keep going, but the speeds were so slow that the websites couldn’t function properly. My head was getting hot and I decided I should treat myself to a smoothie that was conveniently kept just a few feet away from me. I thought I at least needed the calories. The smoothie helped me feel better despite the slow internet connection. But at noon I decided to see if there was a better place nearby to stream the Miami Grand Prix.

Full throttle

I struck gold, there was a Starbucks less than a minute away. I ordered a breakfast burrito, the highest-calorie item on the menu, and returned to my laptop. The connection here was incredibly fast. I settled into a comfortable couch and sat impatiently as I watched the race unfold.

As is often the case, total chaos reigned in the first round. The cars try to overtake their rivals, brake too late and miss corners. A driver misjudged a turn by a fraction of an inch and crashed into the wall. Another driver had a technical problem that left him with reduced braking force at the worst possible time. He collided with another car which overturned and slid into the barrier. No drivers were injured, which is not surprising given the incredible safety measures implemented in Formula One cars and tracks.

Post-race posts

After the race, I was able to be much more productive and finally caught up on blog posts. I’m quite proud of the work I’ve put into this blog, as well as the increase in quality after my first round of posts. I think the blog looks pretty professional and it was great to finally announce it to my friends and family.

More learnings from the blog

I like that each post now starts with a short teaser. However, I’ve also been grouping my start and end points at the top of each post. This doesn’t seem quite right to me and has the potential to spoil part of the following story. There are other issues:

• When I hike there and back, the mileage between points is half of what I actually walked.
• When I hike in two different phases, the clarity that my true starting point was between the two points listed is lost.
• When I hike one way, the direction must be inferred from the order of the points listed.

A separate issue also caught my attention as I begin to explore other bloggers’ posts on The Trek. Their posts, for those who post daily, include something like «day five» in the title. While a post might go live on, say, April 15, day five was probably about a week earlier. This gives them time to write the post and schedule it for future publication. This means that when you look at recent posts on The Trek home page, you’ll see a new post every morning.

Instead, I’ve been lining up the publication date of each post with the actual date of those events. Even if I completed my article and published it the day of, my post would only be on the front page until the next morning. At that point, the other blogger’s posts that were scheduled to go live would go live, canceling my post.

Modifying the formula

I feel like my efforts are now producing posts of enough quality that I’d like to see them on The Trek homepage. To be clear, I’m not trying to compete or divert attention from anyone else’s posts. Rather, I’m simply tweaking the formula to make sure I’m not inadvertently preventing my own posts from appearing a little more. This is what will change:

• Start/end points and miles that appear at the top of blog posts will be removed.
• The date will appear at the top of blog posts; this date will be approximately one week behind the publication date.
• At the bottom of each post there will be a section with a breakdown of the hike into sections.
• One leg will be a simple point-to-point walk.
• The outward walks will be a single section.
• The round trip walks will have two sections.
• These will be used in combination as needed.
• Each stage will have the following according to the FarOut app; start and end points with mile markers and location name (when available), mileage, ascent, descent and trail direction, e.g. NOBO/SOBO
• This section will include total mileage based on the FarOut app and daily steps based on the Health app on my iPhone.
• I may include campsites at my discretion.
• I may obtain other details, such as Slack-Pack miles, at my discretion.

This should resolve the few annoying elements that I think are preventing the blog from being as good as I can make it at the moment.

Goodbye to English?

It was already 7:00 pm and I needed a big dinner to make sure I hit the trail with a full tank of energy tomorrow. Ingles had proven to be a provider capable of offering hot meals at affordable prices. For $10 I got a 12-inch sandwich of freshly made toasted turkey and Swiss cheese, loaded with mayonnaise, olive oil, and just about every vegetable available. It was glorious.

Ingles is a regional grocer operating primarily in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. I had never heard of them until I went hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Since then, I’ve visited their stores a dozen times and have become a fan of their fair prices, hot food, and at least one store had a great Wi-Fi connection that allowed me to blog quickly. I scanned the trail ahead and was a little disappointed not to see many Englishmen near the trail in Virginia. I seem to be stuck with more national supermarket chains that I fear won’t have the same warm, local feel that I had in Ingles.

Back to the smoked ones

I left Waynesville with a full stomach and drove 45 minutes on Interstate 40 along the Pigeon River. A spacious parking lot near the Appalachian Trail would be my home for the night.

-See you tomorrow

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