This whole post is going to sound like a bunch of whining from beginning to end about getting to do something I always dreamed about. So let me preface it by saying I am very grateful for what I got to do, because not many people get afforded the same opportunity. That being said, isn’t it more fun to read about how things go wrong and the obstacles you must overcome to get them to go right? So whining, but whining with a dash of that never giving up spirit.

In 2021 we attended the Trail Days Festival in Damascus, VA. This is like the Superbowl of festivals that celebrate the Appalachian Trail. This small town of about 300 residence swells to over 10,000 people for a three day event. When we were there we stumbled across an area called the Author’s Tent. There were about 10 author’s selling and signing books they had written which were mostly AT or outdoor related. I had just published my first book, Sawyer’s Run, only a few months before. I had no idea they had a tent like this you could sign up for. I vowed that next year I would come back and be in that tent. Well, my liver (as you know) had something to say about that and I missed Trails Day the next year. After my transplant in December of 2022, I realized that my post-transplant recovery plan would align very well with a return to Trail Days and hopefully a spot in the Author’s Tent to sell my now three published books, Sawyer’s Run, The Last Hike, and Tales of the RVidiots – Year One. So, in January 2023 I put in an application for a spot.

I didn’t hear back for a while, but I went ahead and started preparing like I would get in. I ordered copies of all three books, display stands, and a Square card reader to take payments on my phone. With the help of Michelle, we made flyers and bookmarks with promotional material on them. I was all set. Then I saw an announcement on the Trail Days Facebook page with vendors and authors listed. I was not among the authors listed, so I didn’t make it in. I was a bit disappointed, but I wasn’t going to be discouraged. I had already planned on going to Trail Days anyway, so now I would just try to sell some books out of the back of my Jeep at some stealth spots, while still getting to enjoy the festival activities. I had already made reservations at an RV park in Damascus anyway.

If you can believe it, Michelle is not as into all things hiking like I am. Who is? Well, ten thousand other people at least, but I’m not married to any of them. During all this time she has been helping me during the liver saga, she hasn’t gotten to go back home to Canada in years. So, since I no longer needed her help manning a booth in the Author’s Tent, we planned an extended trip for her to Canada so she could visit with family. The day I dropped her off at the airport, I got an e-mail from a Trail Days organizer telling me a spot had opened up in the Author’s Tent if I still wanted in.

Of course I wanted in! I quickly replied in the affirmative and filled out the required paperwork. Just like that, I was in baby! But now my support staff was in The Great White North, and I would have to do this by myself, unless you counted my dog, Finn, who was no help at all! Still, I was excited and felt I could handle this on my own. I had just over a week but I already was prepared for the most part. Then things went, well, wrong.

The first thing to go wrong involved my Jeep. I was over at my friends, George and Carol’s house, borrowing a chainsaw to cut some wood planks to display my books on, and to also help George rig up a paddleboat carrier on his truck since they were going to spend a week in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. When we were done, I was getting ready to leave. They don’t have a drive way, you just park along the fence line next to the road. Their house is also situated next to a blind curve. I think you know where this is going. I pulled out and a car came rushing around the curve and we tried to occupy the same space at the same time. It didn’t go very well for either of us. She (the other driver) clipped my front left bumper, knocking my left tow hook completely off and mangling the mounting surface. Her car suffered significant damage down the whole right side. Cops were called and I spent the next two hours dealing with that.

The impact of this accident was that there was no way I was going to get the damage repaired before I had to go to Damascus. With the missing tow hook, I couldn’t tow the Jeep behind the RV and I wouldn’t have a vehicle to get around town and haul books back and forth from the festival. Luckily, George came to the rescue. He also has an RV and tows a car behind, but he uses a tow master trailer where you can put the front wheels of your vehicle up on it to tow. It was in a storage yard, and since they were leaving for the Outer Banks in the morning, he just gave me the keys and the straps that go along with it. Problem solved, right? Ha! Are you new here? I spent all day Saturday dealing with the insurance company to get paperwork and damage assessments done for the accident. On Sunday, I went to the storage unit and picked up the tow trailer and brought it back to the RV park we are staying at. I had used this type of trailer a long time ago but wanted to refamiliarize myself with its operation. You know what that means, right? Yup, I watched YouTube videos. I got it down pat and even practiced putting the straps over my tires to make sure nothing would go amiss.

Monday morning, I woke up with a sore throat and a killer headache. A cold! Just what I needed when I had to get the RV ready to roll on Thursday. As the day went on, it got worse, to the point where I just had to stay in the bed. My energy level went to less than zero. In fact, I spent the next two days in bed, only getting up to let the dog in/out and feeding him. Oh yeah, speaking of feeding, my appetite went to nothing. I barely ate a bite for the rest of the week (and the weeks to come – I was just fully diagnosed yesterday, but we’ll get to that.) On Wednesday, I had to force myself out of bed and start preparing for the trip. If you have never lived a full-time RV life, you probably don’t realize the amount of things that accumulate outside and become a part of the stationary RV. I had a dog fence attached to the rig that had to be dismantled and pulled back, along with various other stuff that needed to be cleared in order to pull out on Thursday. The inside of the rig had to be totally secured as well before getting underway.

I did as much as I could on Wednesday, thinking that I had done about half and I could get the other half Thursday morning before I pulled out. I soon discovered the next day that I wasn’t even close to half done. I wanted to be on the road by noon for the four hour drive to Damascus. I didn’t leave until around 2 PM. It took me forever in my weakened state to finish up preparations. When I was finally ready to go, I pulled the RV out of the spot and up to a level area to attach the tow trailer. I got the tow trailer attached no problem. The problem came when I got ready to put the Jeep on the trailer. The trailer has two recessed platforms that the front tires are supposed to rest in. Those platforms ride on a swivel that turns back and forth when the RV does. To load the Jeep on the trailer, that swivel had to be aligned with the ramps you drop in order to drive the vehicle up on it. The swivel was not in alignment and no matter how hard I tried to move it, including banging on it with a rubber mallet, it wouldn’t move. It was stuck. Now, here I was with the rig ready to roll, a very anxious dog inside, and no way to tow the Jeep again. If I had the time, I probably could have worked on it and fixed it, but I was already hours past when I should have left.

At this point, I just cut the trailer lose and left the Jeep behind. I didn’t know how I was going to get around town once I got there, but I had to get there. If you accepted a position in The Author’s Tent and didn’t show up there was a five year ban on you ever being invited back. No way was that going to happen! So, off Finn and I went in the RV, no vehicle in tow. The actual drive down was pleasant and the spot we got at the RV park was huge with plenty of room to maneuver. This gave me the idea just to use the RV as our mode of transportation. We have a 30 foot RV and while it’s not exactly van size, it’s also not huge either. I ended up driving it that night to do several errands, one of which was to get some cold medicine since that was still going strong.

The next day presented its own problems. You were expected to man your booth from 10-6 on Friday and Saturday, and 10-3 on Sunday. You could come earlier and stay later if you wanted. I wanted to be at my booth by 8 AM that Friday. Only problem was that I couldn’t find anywhere to park the RV at the downtown park where the festival was being held. I drove around the park about 572 times before I finally just stopped in the middle of the street, put my hazard lights on, and began unloading books. It took me three trips and I had to endure some honking and yelling, but I got my stuff placed on a table in the Author’s Tent. There were a few other authors getting set up but I didn’t even have time to say hello to any of them. I still had to find a place to park the RV. After rolling around some more, I finally found a parking lot at a baseball field that had some room. I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to park there but I had no choice at this point. I turned on the generator so Finn would have some air conditioner and I sat out on the two mile walk back to the park. With the way I was feeling, I could barely breath when I got back to the tent. By this time, the tent was full of other authors and I must have looked like some guy who walked in off the street. All of their displays looked so professional compared to mine, but I went to work setting it up anyway.

I displayed all three books on stands, put up some flyers on the front of the table, and fanned out a bunch of the promotional book marks. Then I waited for customers. When I first started setting up, I briefly said hi and introduced myself to an older gentleman to my left. He introduced himself but was also busy setting up and I didn’t quite catch his name. Once we were both all set up I asked him his name again which he said in an British accent, was Steve Adams. Pretty common name, right? Well, just minutes later I looked at all his display material in more detail and saw that this guy was in fact, Mighty Blue! That probably means nothing to non-hikers, but in our world, Mighty Blue is a bit of a celebrity with a very popular podcast where he tells of his adventures and interviews other hikers. I had listened to it many times and now I was sitting next to this guy while he sold his books and hocked his podcast while I tried to sell my little books. I didn’t feel worthy to be there. However, I have to say that Steve made me feel welcome and treated me just like a fellow author. As a matter of fact, of the ten other authors in the tent, all of them were nice and made me feel included. I would get to know a number of them pretty good, Christine Reed, Nancy East, Emily and Bruce, and Richard Antony and his wife. However, I mostly hung with Steve, swapping hiking stories and having the time of my life.

I didn’t sell a lot of books on Friday, just a handful, but a lot of people took bookmarks and promised to look at my stuff online. I was getting my name out there, which was my major objective. I was pleased to hear that Nancy had already read Sawyer’s Run and as a veterinarian and outdoor enthusiast that had written a book about her adventures, she enjoyed mine. There was also a guy that stopped by my booth and said that he had actually listened to The Last Hike on audiobook as he drove to Trail Days and liked it a lot. So, I was getting some positive feedback already. Steve told me that Friday was traditionally slow and things usually picked up on Saturday. At the end of the day, he offered to give me a ride back to the RV so I wouldn’t have to repeat the traffic stopping maneuver again to load up my books. That was a really big help! Back at the RV Park, I had intended to get cleaned up and walk back down with Finn to the park to participate in some of the night activities since I hadn’t hardly been able to leave my booth in the daytime. However, I decided to take a little nap to see if I could feel better and I didn’t end up waking up until many hour later. I decided to call it a night and try again the next day.

The next morning, I had a better idea about how to get to the tent with my books and supplies. The RV Park was only a little over a mile from the downtown park; closer than where I parked at the baseball field the day before. I took my big backpack and emptied it of everything that was inside and refilled it with my books and supplies. It was damn heavy, heavier than any backpacking trip I had ever been on, but I only had to go just over a mile and there was even a trail (The Virginia Creeper Trail) that ran right to the park. With the cold and all, I was pretty tired when I got there, but I was happy not to have to worry about moving the RV. As Steve had predicted, Saturday was a much better day and I sold almost every book I had brought to the park. I hadn’t brought the whole compliment to save on weight. I still had Sunday to go so it was a good thing I had some books left back at the RV.

That Saturday I got to meet some other people that I had only ever seen on YouTube. Each year, I follow a few people as they attempt to do a thru-hike. Sometimes we chat back and forth in the comment section. In 2021, I followed Tanya (Monarch) and her little dog Zoby. I also followed Stan The Man. These two actually became hiking partners on the trail. They were there for Trail Days and I got to hang with them some. Tanya had actually written a book about the AT from Zoby’s perspective which is kind of like what I did with Sawyer in Sawyer’s Run. She hadn’t been able to get in the tent so Steve let her use a little corner of his table while she sold a few books she had brought along. I also got to meet Try-Try, a woman I had followed a few times on previous thru-hike attempts. I admire this lady to no end because she has the worst luck when it comes to getting injured on the trail, yet she keeps trying, hence her trail name. She just had knee surgery done and is healing up from that before she gets out there and tries again. I wish her all the luck in the world! The best meeting I had was when I ran into Juggernaut and Big Cheese! If you read The Last Hike then you’ll know there is a couple of fictitious characters in the book named Juggernaut and Cheese. I met the real couple back in 2021 when I did a five day hike through Virginia’s Triple Crown on the AT. I met them up on Tinker Cliffs and probably only spent half an hour talking to them. They are a married thru-hiking couple and we really hit it off. They gave me their Instagram info and I followed them on the rest of their thru-hike which they completed. When I was writing the book, they both came to mind when I needed two characters that could swoop in and save the day from time to time. I contacted them both and they agreed to let me use their names for characters as long as I didn’t make them bad guys. Indeed I did not. We got some promotional pictures taken with them holding the book and we got to catch up before they had to take off. It was such a fun time even if I was coughing my head off and honking my nose constantly.

By the end of the day, I only had my display books left which I took as a good sign. Also, almost all the authors in the tent swapped books with one another. I have a whole stack to read and have already finished two of them. Once again, Steve offered me a ride back to the RV park which I graciously accepted. He wasn’t going to be there on Sunday because he was going on a week long hike on the AT before heading back to his home in Florida. When he dropped me off he asked me if I wanted to be a guest on his podcast. I told him I hadn’t done a thru-hike yet, only section hiking. He said he didn’t care and that he would love to have someone on that had published three books, two of them about the AT. I got a little nervous because I don’t talk well in front of people. It’s one of the reasons I write. I let him know this and he said don’t worry about it, it was his job to make me feel comfortable talking. I told him I would think about it and let him know. I’ve done some thinking about it and I think I am going to take him up on the offer. The kind of exposure I could get for my books from a large audience like his is too good a gift to pass up. It’s going to have to wait until my voice gets back to normal from this thing that I have now found out is a little more serious than a cold. We are almost to that part. I’ll reveal it here shortly.

Once again, I had all these plans for night activities. I wanted to go to tent city were all the hikers were staying to see the big bon fire they had planned down there. Also, it turned out that Tanya and Stan The Man were staying in the same RV Park as mine (Tonya is a full-timer as well) and they invited me to come down and hang by the camp fire which sounded really nice. But, that didn’t happen because I was still feeling shitty and I passed out again.

On Sunday, only about half of the other authors showed up. I had been told by the organizer that we were required to be there on Sunday too but it looked like they really didn’t enforce that since Sunday was the day most people left and was not typically a good sales day. It was certainly true that Sunday as I think I only sold three books. However, this being my first time, I wasn’t leaving until 3 PM like the organizer had said. It was a slow day, but I got to chat a lot more with some of my other fellow authors that were sticking it out and that was fun, swapping trail stories. By the time 3 PM rolled around, I was about the only one left and packed up my backpack and hiked back to the RV Park. I once again had to turn down an offer from Tonya and Stan The Man to come hang out because I could barely function at that point.

This is getting to be a long post so let me summarize the rest. I drove home the next day in a delirium. It’s amazing that I made it back without incident. When I got back, I managed to haphazardly get the RV parked back in our spot and got the minimum amount of things hooked up to maintain basic function. Two weeks later, it is still that way and I have spent most of that time in bed. Yesterday, after spending several of the previous days before that trying, and failing to see a doctor at an urgent care clinic, I went to the hospital ER. 236 tests later, they told me I tested positive for COVID. They said I am on the backside of it so they didn’t admit me. Just sent me home to quarantine for the next five days in the RV. So after scrambling to let the organizer of the festival know so she could contact anyone I was in the tent with, and to let any others I had come into contact with (not many thank goodness) know, I am here in the rig riding it out.

I made a little money on the book sell, but I wouldn’t call it a boon or anything. In terms of exposure though, I would call it a great success, especially if I end up on Mighty Blue’s podcast. That was the story of my real adventure to sell fictional ones. Take care!

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