Laundry Stories

From Helen via phone conversation with Sarah and Jay:

Jay's shirt here is much cleaner than when it arrived
in the mail.This was from near Buena Vista, VA.

After posting about the dirty laundry sent to me by mail, I have to follow it up with these funny adventures Jay and Sarah mentioned to me... They were in a town and Jay encountered a hiker he hadn't seen in weeks. Understand that several weeks makes a big difference in the appearance of hikers sometimes: grime, hard hiking, and tough living can change a fresh well-groomed hiker into a besmudged and tousled veteran. The hiker stopped and stared at Jay for just a second before saying, "Jaybird! I'd know you anywhere! You're the only hiker out here stupid enough to wear a white shirt!" He was teasing, of course, but Jay had been wearing the same long-sleeve thick t-shirt since the beginning of the hike. (It was one of the items we got to launder.)


Jay also said that on one particularly rainy day, when the rain was still coming down in sheets as they got ready for bed, there was no place to hang wet clothes. He decided to put his sopping wet shirt under his therma-rest pad on the floor of the tent in the hope that body heat would dry it a little. In the morning the tent was filled with a strange smell... like ammonia. Somehow the dirt and sweat in the shirt had combined with the moisture from the tent and the ground underneath to produce a strong foul odor that Jay said even prevented HIM from wearing the shirt after that!