I woke up late on Thursday, knowing that the bike shop wouldn't open too early, then took my wheel off and headed into town. I was hoping to get the wheel fixed pretty quickly, but it turned out that the shop's mechanic wasn't there that day, so I ended up spending a day cooling my jets in Damascus, missing any chance I had to get closer to Asheville. Not that big of a deal, but it meant that Allie would have to drive to Damascus to pick me up.
I spent a lazy afternoon catching up on email at a local store, then hit Quincey's again. Thursday is happy hour at Quincey's and hikers came from miles around. It wasn't the scene I was looking for, so I headed off and ended up at Dot's, a more local-oriented dive with cheap burgers and beer. Tracy and Ross had come looking for me, and we sat in a booth for about an hour, talking about the relative benefits of biking rather than hiking (flexibility, daily sense of accomplishment, change of scenery, etc).
I spent the rest of the night back at my tent, trying to sleep through the onslaught of drunken hikers, who staggered back from happy hour in steady waves.