Finishing the trail, Tom Tom made the decision to ride home with me.  He had a blast running on the trails, but he wanted to be with someone hiking.  When he ran with his big pack he spent most of the day passing slower hikers and swatting bugs flying around his head.  After lightening his pack and starting over he wasn't able to make the miles that he wanted to make.  He was a little scared when he started urinating blood from being dehydrated and overly strained.  Tom Tom physically felt good, but was kind of bored spending most the the time all by himself.  It would be so much more fun having some other trail runners hiking with him.   He had run over 110 miles including his restart of the first original 30 miles.  He finished all of the Georgia mountains and run several marathons distances wearing a back pack in the mountains.  He was down to around $300.00 with still about 2,000 plus miles to go to Maine.  He still plans on running the trail in the future; when the time is right and he is better prepared.

We drove to Helen, Georgia to have a celebration pizza in the cool Swiss looking town, a place he has been to before on family trips to the mountains.

White blaze of the Appalachian Trail... AT

Self explained

Tom Tom and Fat Man Losing Weight (didn't lose an ounce)

The ride home was uneventful except for another miserable night in the car with the heat and bugs at a rest stop along the highway.  We stopped in Gainesville to visit his brother Bryan.