Day Twenty-Seven

Thursday I drove up to Annapolis to meet my high school buddy Justin North who is a marine studying at the Naval Academy. He showed me around campus and introduced me to his friends and we even went and watched Midshipmen football practice. Practice and visiting the athletic facilities was quite the thrill as I was recruited by the Naval Academy to play football, but did not have the SAT scores, nor the desire to have the next ten years of my life booked solid. The current head coach was the guy that pulled me out of class in high school to talk Navy in ’03, an assistant coach at the time. I reintroduced myself and he remembered his visit to Arcadia. It was pretty neat to hang out in the locker room and Justin seemed to know a lot of the players.

After a dinner of hot wings at Chili’s with Justin and some good catching up, I headed back to my campsite about 60 miles South. I found my tent to be nearly 95 degrees and the lack of airflow made it quite the sweaty experience. I slept on top of my bag in my new and very short Marine issue PT shorts (thank you Chris and Jens). The night was full of interesting sounds so I slept with my running shoes and headlamp on, with my knife in hand. I couldn’t think of any harmless animals that made sounds like what I was hearing, so I decided that if one wanted to nuzzle with me I was going to run.


Me and Justin at Chili's


Navy Midshipmen locker room.


Navy practice.