Every year in Damascus, VA Trail Days happens. Every hiker, past and present, within 150 miles flock to Damascus. It is essentially a hiker festival. Carny food, music and gear vendors everywhere. Lots of free stuff everywhere. For $5 you can set up your tent for the weekend and the rest is kinda of a free for all. The town isn't all that large, maybe 1000 people. Trail Days easily triples that. The easy access to flushing toilets and free hot showers must reek havoc on the local plumbing! There was only one beer store in town that I noticed. It must have been the most popular building in town. Cases upon cases of beer found their way into the tent city those days. And made a lot of people very happy! I found some moonshine in the Riffraff camp that , luckily, didn't make me go blind. Every year there is a parade on Saturday. This year was a bad year. Before the parade really had started, an elderly man drove into the tail end of it hitting hikers and even running some over. I didn't see it happen, it was about a 100 yards away. A couple camping next to me said everyone rallied together to help the injured. A bunch of people lifted the Cadillac up to pull out a woman from under the car! Within 15-20 minutes there were four helicopters in the air. Three of them taking away seriously hurt people. There were so many police and medics around, that within minutes of it happening everyone hurt was getting help right away. No one died thankfully. Everyone left downtown and back to the camp very somber after that. There were candle vigils and what have you around bonfires all night, and then lots of drunk hikers. It made international news if you want to look it up any further. Everything I read said 50-60 were injured. Thats bullshit. Maybe 12 were hurt, but thats the press for you. I heard that all were going to make a full recovery.
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| First sign something was wrong |
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| Clearing a road to a BB diamond |
The first injured en route to the chopper
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| chopper #2 on en route to BB diamond |
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| #3 en route to BB diamond |
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| #4 |
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| Took advantage of the free haircuts. |
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| Full beers chilling in the steam! Brilliant. |
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| I waited 20 minutes for 8oz of chili. free chili. |
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| Beer pong tournament. |
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| Part of Riffraff |
Holy shit dude! So it was just some geeser mistaking the gas for the brake or something?? That's crazy!
ReplyDeleteTrail days looked like it coulda been a hoot! Any trail bunnies?
And lastly.. Diggin the do!! You look like the love child of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Mr. T! haha!!
Wish is could be there with ya, mate!
Cheers and god speed!
-Sheriff Brody