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Tool Man
01-09-2010, 22:04
When in town and doing a resupply, do most grocery stores permit you to shop with your backpack on?:D

Blissful
01-09-2010, 22:40
Depends. In larger stores you can put it in your shopping cart. Some clerks will tell you where you can put it. I've also had someone watch it for me.

Anumber1
01-10-2010, 00:15
Depends. In larger stores you can put it in your shopping cart. Some clerks will tell you where you can put it. I've also had someone watch it for me.

Yea, theres your answer pretty much.

Tinker
01-10-2010, 00:43
Ask an employee near the door if you can put your pack in the bottom of a carriage (grocery cart) while you shop. If not, ask them if you can leave it behind the customer service counter. Generally, though, try to shop with other hikers and trade off watching the packs outside the store.

Bronk
01-10-2010, 06:12
I never liked to leave my pack unattended while in town...there's just something very stupid about leaving a bag with about $1000 worth of equipment in it where anybody walking by could walk off with it...though sometimes you have to in order to get things you want. I wore my pack in Kroger's and Walmart and Winn Dixie. In most situations you will find yourself not really worrying about it. There will be other hikers around that you have been hiking with for at least a week or so, and everybody looks out for each other...in 4 months on the trail I never heard of anybody having anything stolen by another thru-hiker.

Datto
01-10-2010, 11:45
I carried a four ounce chain with a combination lock on it -- whenever I happened upon a place that wouldn't let me take my backpack inside, I tried to chain up my backpack in view of where I'd be sitting inside.

The bigger waysides in Shennendoah wouldn't let me take my backpack inside so I chained it up against a fence outside. Same thing at the bagel shop behind the drugstore in Salisbury, CT -- chained it to a fence just outside when they wouldn't let me bring my backpack inside.

Datto

Datto
01-10-2010, 11:52
Just a quick note on backpack stealing -- there were several instances of backpacks being stolen during Year 2000. In once instance the stealers were waiting at a known place where hikers hid their backpacks before hitching into town (so the hiker didn't have to carry their backpack). The stealers just waited until the hiker left, then waltzed over to take the backpacks. One hiker had forgotten something in his backpack and had the hitch stop so he could go back -- when he walked back he saw the stealers come out of the woodwork and were making off with the backpacks.

Another instance happened when the stealers were in a pickup truck and just drove by threw the backpacks into the back of the pickup truck and were off before anyone knew what had happened.

Then at Trail Days -- several backpacks were stolen out of tents. Police said it was an event where druggies would come to steal and would be paid in drugs for backpacks. I actually met one of these jerks at Thomas Knob shelter just after Trail Days. He was trying to impress a girl in the middle of the night by telling her how he'd stolen a backpack and gotten drugs for it back in Damascus. Heard the whole story through my earplugs.

You should take something with you on your hike to deter backpack stealing.

Datto