Trail Names: This is funny (I think). I don’t know if you know or not but hikers at least on the big trails (Appalachian, PCT, CDT etc) end up with trail names. Even though I doubt this is a tradition on transcontinental events (but what do I know, I’m a big newbie at this) but I have my own trail name. Since my major oral surgery last week, I have been living on mashed potatoes sooooo i felt it was only appropriate that my trail name should be Spud. Of course my good friend, Valerie, decided it should be either Spuds or Spudsie but you get the gist. i will answer to any of the above. And if I keep eating these things I will look like a Spud. But after I “mentioned” that I wasn’t happy that none of the providers who operated on my mouth had bothered to check on me but the receptionist called to get the money…I received a call from the tech who was there the entire time (but not from the oral surgeon or the dentist…ugh) and told me that even though she had said a “couple of days” would be all it would take to get back to “normal”, this amount of time without being able to eat and still having discomfort was not unusual given the massive amount of work they had to do and took 5 hours to do it…duh..but at least not I’m not as concerned as I was. So…..Spud out here!