How three-and-a-half pounds of pancake left me empty and ashamed.

DAY EIGHTY-THREE, July 31, 9.5 Miles
At mile 1665.1
Cruised my 6.5 miles of road walking to Seiad Valley. Done. 46 hours and 56 miles of nothing but Peanut MM's. And you know, I think I like them now more than I ever did before. Even after yesterday. Challenge one: SUCCESS. Challenge Two, The Seiad Valley Pancake Challenge: FAIL. Yep. Failed. Completely. But let me start near the beginning. Seiad is the nicest of the little towns in California for sure, it's also famous for it's pancake challenge. Five pancakes, five pounds, two hours, one stomach. If this sounds easy to you, go make a pancake that weighs a pound. Right now. Do it. THEY ARE HUGE. Now eat it. Now repeat. Four times. Exactly. Atlas told me about his failure the day before, Iceaxe warned me about their sheer mass, but I remained confident. Until she (I really wish I could remember her name, but she was awesome) poured out the batter on the hot-plate. At this point, all I feel is terror and a little uncomfortable. The plate they come on is huge, the stack is a good 10cm high. It's not going to happen. I'm not being pessimistic, I'm being realistic. My stomach is not that big. But I try, oh how I do try. The first one goes down well, and in twenty minutes. Two hours seemed like ample time, but I'm already eying the clock all too frequently. I learn from the first, it needs butter and syrup, lubrication, but only put where you're about to eat, otherwise the cake just absorbs it like it was never there. Number two goes down well, I still feel confident, unfortunately I also feel full. Number three takes a good half hour and is a struggle. Number four is embarrassing, I choke down two mouthfuls in the last fifteen minutes, spending most of the time staring into nothing. It doesn't help when Rick (former pancake chef and all round nice guy) comes in and scoffs the size of the pancakes. Number five remains perfect and untouched. Laughing at me from the plate. Three-and-a-half. I threw in the towel there, after my two hours. I conceded defeat. I took little comfort in the fact that it was the best effort of the year. I needed to lie down. Luckily the RV park is ultra hiker friendly and I spent a couple of hours there watching movies. Then I started to feel bad. Only one-and-a-half left I thought. I could have eaten that. Why didn't I try harder. Forced them down. I returned to take down one of the over-generous burgers to show the world I was still a man. Left town about 6:30 to hike some miles before dark. Still feels like I have unfinished business there, perhaps I'm making too much of this. Camped a couple of thousand feet above Seiad, ridiculously hot and ridiculously mosquitoey. Ate some MM's for dinner, not that hungry and I crave MM's now for some disturbing reason.

Today I consumed at least 8000 calories, perhaps as much as 10,000. Consider that the normal dietary requirement for an adult is 2000-2500. That's a good half week of food. Go me. How many billion are starving right now?

Until my own photos are put up:
http://i.abcnews.com/Business/SmallBiz/Story?id=6353125&page=4
http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Food/Food-Too-Big-to-Finish-Extreme-Eating-Feats.html

Less than 1000 miles left. Oh oh oh.