Hey all! Just checking in from Damascus, VA! I have less than 500 miles left to walk!!
Apparently there's a big AT festival here every May called 'Trail Days' that sounds like a lot of fun. But that particular weekend of this coming May, I have something much more important to see to: my friend Ben's wedding! So no trail days for me.
Lately I've been travelling with two guys I met named Snowman (age: 25), and Riverdawg (22). This morning we woke up to snow flurries (!) and pushed to Damascus to get a package from my sister that I bounced from Atkins, VA, but it's not here yet :( Time to find a place to sleep... (Though all the hostels are closed for the off-season).
I could tent with the local homeless folks...
Which brings me to the latest debate in my mind: getting rid of the tent.
As I've mentioned before, the AT is very user-friendly. The prevalence of shelters along the trail has made me question (to the point of neurosis) my 3.5 lb tent.
At this point, I still don't know whether I'll finish this winter, spring, or at all. But every mile I carry that weight, I resent the wear and tear on my body. The flip side is that some of the best nights I've spent on the trail have been in that tent. But I can camp any time, right? And the lightweight pack beckons... like a siren in the night.
So whenever these packages show up (My friend Sharkey is sending me something as well) I'll be off again, sans tent. Past the Greyson Highlands, with their wild ponies, and on to the smokeys, with their snow, probably.
Wish me warmth :)
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
75% Done!
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Spoiled :)
Well, I had stopped at a free hostel called Four Pines, which is really just the three car garage of a good-ole-boy type who is kind enough to let weary hikers sleep there on old cots, couches, or a twin bed in the corner.
But it's hunting season, so he had three gory, gutted deer hanging in the garage when I got there. 'No big deal' I thought, figuring I could still take advantage of a free place to rest my body for a day. After the previous 6 days of hiking 20+ miles/day, I had some sort of a stitch in my right calf, and I figured I was being cautious by resting up.
Bad idea.
After I left, the first symptom I noticed was feeling abnormally exhausted. Normally, other than acute feet, I feel great after 15 miles, but here I was, 2 miles in, and I felt like my boots were made of cement.
Lyme disease? I wondered, in a 'here comes the show stopper' sort of way. So many people have to quit this journey for injury or sickness, that I figured it was my turn :(
But the next day it was hard to force food down my throat and I had pretty horrible diarrhea, plus a pain in my gut that was seriously distracting. So when I hitched into a post office to mail Lysandra a b-day card, I just kept hitching... to another hostel (not free: a good way to avoid sleeping in a petri dish) that I had read about and was looking forward to (free yoga?! Oh yeah!)
And I took another zero.
... in paradise.
This place is called Woods Hole, and is a log cabin that's as close to 'self sustaining' as a place can get while still having all the amenities to help a sick hiker recover while he poops his brains out.
Three hitches later, I arrived and was told by Neville that she and her husband, who run/own this little slice of heaven were going into Blacksburg, VA for a rare town run. They'd leave in the morning, would be running errands all day, and were taking he opportunity to see live music, so if I wanted to see live music, I was invited to buy a $12 ticket online now and I could go with them.
The band was called Rising Appalachia and, I was told, are popular in Asheville and I'd love 'em.
One day, one amazing small-venue concert, and 3 home grown and home cooked meals later, and I feel like a million bucks! This place could easily be a rustic-fancy $200/night B&B, but for hiker-hostel rates I got garden fresh food, got to play a hand-made early-sixties Martin guitar, got a free ride to a totally eccentric spin on Old Time Appalachian music (right up my alley), got to feed baby cows, goats, and chickens, and got an hour long massage (okay, that was extra).
Wow.
Guess it's time to go hiking :)
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Testing, testing...
...1, 2, 3.
Here's a random photo b/c I'm testing the Blogger app on my phone that hadn't been working for so long.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Virginia is for hikers...
Wow.
So I got back on the trail after the Mega Storm That Shook The World (but not the apartment I was in ;)) and hiked for six days on my own. I knew I didn't want to be totally solo (even skipped farther ahead so I could be... in the general area where I, kinda thought people I kinda-know, might... be? Well, hopefully you get the point: It's a guessing game.
But I was on my own for those six days and (I'm guessing that my state of mind had something to do with it, but) they felt like the least eventful days on the trail to date. I usually didn't get going until 8 or 9, hiked until 5 or so, set up camp, read a bit and snoozed. Bumped into a few Weekend Warriors. One couple of guys, when asked what they did for a living said, "We work for the government," in a suspiciously monotone, sparse-on-the-details way...
...and I scooted my sleeping bag a bit farther away in the shelter...
kidding, kidding. No, living in the woods requires a bit of trust in your fellow man, and the creepy way that guy answered the question didn't even phase me. But I was gone the next morning before they woke up. Not on purpose, of course, but I woke up at 5:30 and immediately turned on my phone because I had to see if we had a new president (yup, it was THAT day)... then I couldn't get back to sleep so, you know: those miles aren't gonna hike themselves.
Every day I was pushing myself. Hard. I was trying to catch up to a familiar face, sure, but also trying to push my limits a bit more. I was getting 18-20 miles/day. I was walking up on deer that would sometimes start and run, lifting their tails and waving their white 'flag' of surrender as they go bounding over brush and into the forest. But sometimes they'd just freeze, as close as 15 feet from me, while I walked by. The days were tough, but (nothing like NH and ME, so) though I was tired at the end of the day, I could usually still do some sit ups, read, and make myself some hot chocolate before I passed out.
Those days are long gone.
Things changed when I walked into Harpers Ferry ('HF'), WV.
HF is the town in WV where the ATC headquarters is located. I'd been hearing about it since Maine. About how they'd take your picture, ever to be immortalized in the stacks of photos of other former through hikers! (This is the place where the curmudgeon through-hiker I'll Try who hated hiking had been volunteering FULL TIME for 5 years!) And it's supposed to have this great little hostel called the Teahorse, where, for a nominal fee, I can prop my feet up and take a zero for a day :)
It was a ghost town.
The Teahorse was closed and the book told me that the B&B in town was $120/night! The town bar was even closed and it was only 5pm! But as always, things have a way of working out. Two other guys I had met showed up, one with a broken toe, so we decided to split the cost of a room in the B&B. So I zeroed in Harpers Ferry with two guys (The Principal and Blueberry) who aren't stopping in Georgia, they're hiking to Key West! The Principal was... you guessed it, a school principal for over a decade, had never been camping before his Trip on the A.T. / Mid LifeCrisis Re-Evaluation, and is now hiking to Key West. Blueberry is about a decade younger, and is hiking to raise money for a rare blood disease called Fanconi Anemia (he's got pamphlets, so I guess he's legit).
So the three of us are showered and groaning with every painful step on our tired feet as we shuffle downstairs for dinner in B&B bathrobes (no clean clothes). The proprietor of the B&B pops her head in just long enough to proselytize a bit, and to tell us about the two drink MAXimum in her restaurant (digressing to tell us that she has no problem with beer, or alcohol, but that getting drunk is a sin). The Principal immediately rushes back upstairs, puts on dirty clothes, and heads out the door with no explanation. About 15 minutes later he returns with his jacket in his hands (freezing outside, by the way) bundled in a suspiciously square sort of way... and heads straight upstairs.
...and that's how I end up drinking Yuengling in a very secretive dorm-esque setting while listening to a 40 yr old graying principal tell me about how much he loves his guns... and how F'd up it was that he got fired... and that although he's never quite been able to trust Obama (upon questioning he elaborated: {shrug} "Never trusted him," and "just don't trust the guy") and voted for the lesser of two evils: Romney. But the guy he really liked, the guy he identified with was.... Herman Cain!
AAAWWWE SHUCKY-DUCKY, NOW!
Wow.
A couple more people rolled into town over the next 24 hours: Sharkey and Ulysses. Ulysses was finishing his through hike here in Harpers Ferry, and gave me some treats he had left over (candy and 400mg ibuprofen gels). Sharkey is finishing up his Yo-Yo of the appalachian trail. He hiked from Georgia to Maine, turned around and is now headed back to Georgia. He's 51 years old, loves life, and is very vocal about his love for hiking the AT. He's a motivational sort of guy to be around, so I hiked out of town with him.
That was about a week ago. Since then, I've been waking up at the crack of dawn and hiking 'till dusk. There are no sit-ups. There is no reading. We average 23 miles a day (two days in a row, I got 24!) partly because it's getting really cold! I woke up one morning with the drinking water I had set next to me frozen solid!
Sharkey got off the trail some days ago because he lives in Waynesboro, VA and was taking some time off. He's very into the idea of hiking every single mile of the trail as it exists today, so he rationalizes his choice by pointing out that he's already hiked about 80 miles around where he lives, so he's not going to hike it again this year, but still count it as part of his through hike. I, having skipped some 200 miles, couldn't care less what a guy who's already hiked 3,500 miles this year skips or doesn't skip.
The day Sharkey got off the trail I hiked 27 miles with a 37lb pack to catch up with some friends I had made in Maine: Mandela and Terra Nauta. (I'm proud of my "big miles" that day, but it probably won't happen again... this winter :)) Mandela is 25 or so and got his trail name b/c his last name is Nelson, though I prefer to introduce him as heavily involved in South African apartheid reform. Terra Nauta, (Mandela's girlfriend) chose her own trail name from the latin words Terra (earth) and Nauta (sailer).
The next day we made it into Waynsboro, VA, where I typed the first half of this post.
We ate an all we could eat buffet at Ming's Garden, an asian-themed american buffet created by american-themed asian people.
NOW I'm sitting just about a mile from the A.T. at Sharkey's house, where I've been holed up for the past couple of days zeroing out, stretching out, zoning out, laying out, pigging out, and generally being out of it. I'm a bit in awe of Sharkey's setup here. He's got 11 acres or so in a beautiful valley of land that's under conservation easement (so, no development in this lifetime) and is lined by a ridge of national parkland known as The Appalachian Trail.
It's pretty freakin' beautiful here, folks.
And Here I sit. Fully refreshed and ready to hike out tomorrow morning.
I have 837 miles to go until Springer Mtn, Georgia, but I can't say I'm entirely attached to the outcome of me standing on that particular mountain. There have been twists and turns along the way, but at the end of the 'day' (read: at the end of the six months) I will have traveled for six months (mostly backpacking), seen the Appalachian Mountains, dosed myself with some healthy disillusionment (You mean all that I have control over is what I think about, say, and do? Oh yeah!), experienced a different sub-culture (and a whole new way of existence! Some people are homeless by choice, and living a totally respectable life! Pro-Tip: they're not the ones begging you for beer money), and walked some 2,000 miles!
...and that's exactly how I'll rationalize stopping wherever I stand in mid January.
...okay that and I'll be out of money.
Up Next: Graduate School!?! *cue doom/gloom music*
I'm into science, and finding the extent of human potential, so lately I've been thinking about Bio-Mechanical Engineering: I may help humanity with the transition to 'Borg after all! {so scary!... so exciting!}
So I got back on the trail after the Mega Storm That Shook The World (but not the apartment I was in ;)) and hiked for six days on my own. I knew I didn't want to be totally solo (even skipped farther ahead so I could be... in the general area where I, kinda thought people I kinda-know, might... be? Well, hopefully you get the point: It's a guessing game.
But I was on my own for those six days and (I'm guessing that my state of mind had something to do with it, but) they felt like the least eventful days on the trail to date. I usually didn't get going until 8 or 9, hiked until 5 or so, set up camp, read a bit and snoozed. Bumped into a few Weekend Warriors. One couple of guys, when asked what they did for a living said, "We work for the government," in a suspiciously monotone, sparse-on-the-details way...
...and I scooted my sleeping bag a bit farther away in the shelter...
kidding, kidding. No, living in the woods requires a bit of trust in your fellow man, and the creepy way that guy answered the question didn't even phase me. But I was gone the next morning before they woke up. Not on purpose, of course, but I woke up at 5:30 and immediately turned on my phone because I had to see if we had a new president (yup, it was THAT day)... then I couldn't get back to sleep so, you know: those miles aren't gonna hike themselves.
Every day I was pushing myself. Hard. I was trying to catch up to a familiar face, sure, but also trying to push my limits a bit more. I was getting 18-20 miles/day. I was walking up on deer that would sometimes start and run, lifting their tails and waving their white 'flag' of surrender as they go bounding over brush and into the forest. But sometimes they'd just freeze, as close as 15 feet from me, while I walked by. The days were tough, but (nothing like NH and ME, so) though I was tired at the end of the day, I could usually still do some sit ups, read, and make myself some hot chocolate before I passed out.
Those days are long gone.
Things changed when I walked into Harpers Ferry ('HF'), WV.
HF is the town in WV where the ATC headquarters is located. I'd been hearing about it since Maine. About how they'd take your picture, ever to be immortalized in the stacks of photos of other former through hikers! (This is the place where the curmudgeon through-hiker I'll Try who hated hiking had been volunteering FULL TIME for 5 years!) And it's supposed to have this great little hostel called the Teahorse, where, for a nominal fee, I can prop my feet up and take a zero for a day :)
It was a ghost town.
The Teahorse was closed and the book told me that the B&B in town was $120/night! The town bar was even closed and it was only 5pm! But as always, things have a way of working out. Two other guys I had met showed up, one with a broken toe, so we decided to split the cost of a room in the B&B. So I zeroed in Harpers Ferry with two guys (The Principal and Blueberry) who aren't stopping in Georgia, they're hiking to Key West! The Principal was... you guessed it, a school principal for over a decade, had never been camping before his Trip on the A.T. / Mid Life
So the three of us are showered and groaning with every painful step on our tired feet as we shuffle downstairs for dinner in B&B bathrobes (no clean clothes). The proprietor of the B&B pops her head in just long enough to proselytize a bit, and to tell us about the two drink MAXimum in her restaurant (digressing to tell us that she has no problem with beer, or alcohol, but that getting drunk is a sin). The Principal immediately rushes back upstairs, puts on dirty clothes, and heads out the door with no explanation. About 15 minutes later he returns with his jacket in his hands (freezing outside, by the way) bundled in a suspiciously square sort of way... and heads straight upstairs.
...and that's how I end up drinking Yuengling in a very secretive dorm-esque setting while listening to a 40 yr old graying principal tell me about how much he loves his guns... and how F'd up it was that he got fired... and that although he's never quite been able to trust Obama (upon questioning he elaborated: {shrug} "Never trusted him," and "just don't trust the guy") and voted for the lesser of two evils: Romney. But the guy he really liked, the guy he identified with was.... Herman Cain!
AAAWWWE SHUCKY-DUCKY, NOW!
Wow.
A couple more people rolled into town over the next 24 hours: Sharkey and Ulysses. Ulysses was finishing his through hike here in Harpers Ferry, and gave me some treats he had left over (candy and 400mg ibuprofen gels). Sharkey is finishing up his Yo-Yo of the appalachian trail. He hiked from Georgia to Maine, turned around and is now headed back to Georgia. He's 51 years old, loves life, and is very vocal about his love for hiking the AT. He's a motivational sort of guy to be around, so I hiked out of town with him.
That was about a week ago. Since then, I've been waking up at the crack of dawn and hiking 'till dusk. There are no sit-ups. There is no reading. We average 23 miles a day (two days in a row, I got 24!) partly because it's getting really cold! I woke up one morning with the drinking water I had set next to me frozen solid!
Sharkey got off the trail some days ago because he lives in Waynesboro, VA and was taking some time off. He's very into the idea of hiking every single mile of the trail as it exists today, so he rationalizes his choice by pointing out that he's already hiked about 80 miles around where he lives, so he's not going to hike it again this year, but still count it as part of his through hike. I, having skipped some 200 miles, couldn't care less what a guy who's already hiked 3,500 miles this year skips or doesn't skip.
The day Sharkey got off the trail I hiked 27 miles with a 37lb pack to catch up with some friends I had made in Maine: Mandela and Terra Nauta. (I'm proud of my "big miles" that day, but it probably won't happen again... this winter :)) Mandela is 25 or so and got his trail name b/c his last name is Nelson, though I prefer to introduce him as heavily involved in South African apartheid reform. Terra Nauta, (Mandela's girlfriend) chose her own trail name from the latin words Terra (earth) and Nauta (sailer).
The next day we made it into Waynsboro, VA, where I typed the first half of this post.
We ate an all we could eat buffet at Ming's Garden, an asian-themed american buffet created by american-themed asian people.
NOW I'm sitting just about a mile from the A.T. at Sharkey's house, where I've been holed up for the past couple of days zeroing out, stretching out, zoning out, laying out, pigging out, and generally being out of it. I'm a bit in awe of Sharkey's setup here. He's got 11 acres or so in a beautiful valley of land that's under conservation easement (so, no development in this lifetime) and is lined by a ridge of national parkland known as The Appalachian Trail.
It's pretty freakin' beautiful here, folks.
And Here I sit. Fully refreshed and ready to hike out tomorrow morning.
I have 837 miles to go until Springer Mtn, Georgia, but I can't say I'm entirely attached to the outcome of me standing on that particular mountain. There have been twists and turns along the way, but at the end of the 'day' (read: at the end of the six months) I will have traveled for six months (mostly backpacking), seen the Appalachian Mountains, dosed myself with some healthy disillusionment (You mean all that I have control over is what I think about, say, and do? Oh yeah!), experienced a different sub-culture (and a whole new way of existence! Some people are homeless by choice, and living a totally respectable life! Pro-Tip: they're not the ones begging you for beer money), and walked some 2,000 miles!
...and that's exactly how I'll rationalize stopping wherever I stand in mid January.
...okay that and I'll be out of money.
Up Next: Graduate School!?! *cue doom/gloom music*
I'm into science, and finding the extent of human potential, so lately I've been thinking about Bio-Mechanical Engineering: I may help humanity with the transition to 'Borg after all! {so scary!... so exciting!}
Friday, November 2, 2012
Decisions
Sometime is not about making a decision, but realizing that the decision has already been made. With a lot of crying, on Tuesday October 16th I decided to get off the Appalachain Trail. Several reasons come to mind, the biggest being the constant foot pain I continued to have. I had good and bad days, but overall my feet still hurt at least half the day. Along with the days getting shorter, the constant cold wet weather the last few weeks, and the knowledge that to finish by January we need to walk 20 miles every day, I decided that finishing this trail was not going to be fun, and I was not going to walk 2000 miles just to say I did. Perhaps that makes me weak, I think it just makes me......me.
I love this trail and am so grateful that I walked it as much as I did. 640 miles is where I stopped, which feels like a very big and very small number. I'm proud that I did what I did, and hope this is just the start of my backpacking adventures. I also hope to take much shorter backpacking adventures next time :)
As yall know Andrew is continuing the trail without me, and understands why I am needed to stop. It has been extremely odd to go from seeing each other every day to being apart for even a week. As odd luck would have it, he hiked solo for a week and then had to come back to NYC to wait out the hurricane, so I still haven't had to say good-bye for too long. But I know it could be a month or more before I see him again, which I can't think to much about without getting seriously bummed. Perhaps it's good balance, to have this time apart, but I'm missing him and the trail a lot. I also know I needed to get off the trail and still feel that was the right decision for me.
I feel blessed to have some great friends in NYC that let me stay there for over two weeks, especially the last few days where we waited out a hurricane and I couldn't get out of the city because the airports closed. Going from hiking the trail to NYC was a real mind trip and it is equally strange to now be home in NC where I have lots of friends and family but still not a house to call my own. So now I have to find a job, place to live, get back to the "real world" which I quite enjoyed being out of.
I love this trail and am so grateful that I walked it as much as I did. 640 miles is where I stopped, which feels like a very big and very small number. I'm proud that I did what I did, and hope this is just the start of my backpacking adventures. I also hope to take much shorter backpacking adventures next time :)
As yall know Andrew is continuing the trail without me, and understands why I am needed to stop. It has been extremely odd to go from seeing each other every day to being apart for even a week. As odd luck would have it, he hiked solo for a week and then had to come back to NYC to wait out the hurricane, so I still haven't had to say good-bye for too long. But I know it could be a month or more before I see him again, which I can't think to much about without getting seriously bummed. Perhaps it's good balance, to have this time apart, but I'm missing him and the trail a lot. I also know I needed to get off the trail and still feel that was the right decision for me.
I feel blessed to have some great friends in NYC that let me stay there for over two weeks, especially the last few days where we waited out a hurricane and I couldn't get out of the city because the airports closed. Going from hiking the trail to NYC was a real mind trip and it is equally strange to now be home in NC where I have lots of friends and family but still not a house to call my own. So now I have to find a job, place to live, get back to the "real world" which I quite enjoyed being out of.
I hope that I can keep the things I learned on this trail close to my heart and mind as I figure out what is next in my life. I miss the simplicity of walking every day. Eating snacks under fall colored leaves, filling water up from crystal clear streams, and knowing everything I "needed" was on my back. It has only been three months, but it feels like I've been out of the world for much longer than that.
I cannot say how wonderful all the support has been from all my friends and family. Thank you for believing in us, encouraging us, loving us and following our journey. Now we can all follow my wonderful boyfriend, your favorite Andrew and mine, as he embarks on his solo adventure. Go Andrew Go!
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Sandy Schmandy...
When I got back on the trail it was just north of the Hudson. I got to cross the Bear Mtn Bridge and then climb Bear Mtn which is a super-touristy mountain in that it has mostly stone steps up and down each side, and also the paths on the top are such fine packed gravel that we can safely call them 'practically paved.'
From there I went Northwest. Not my decision. I just followed the 2x6 inch white 'blazes' that I have been trained to follow, and that's where the trail took me: along the NY/NJ boarder. When I cut back into NY, briefly, before I was supposed to cross NJ for reeelz, I entered Unionville, NY. Just to be clear, this is day 4 of me being out on my own and lemme tell ya... boy is it lonely to suddenly be, well... alone.
...But I digress...
As I was entering Unionville every day-hiker that I encountered, when I told 'em I was through-hiking, warned me about hurricane Sandy and said I should find a place to 'hole up' for a couple of days.
{sidenote: lots of people hiking the AT last year had to skip entire states (though usually just Vermont) 'cause hurricane Irene made so many of the trails impassable.}
So my options were to hike out of town, or find other means of transportation (even people passing me on the street, not in conversation, would see my backpack and say things like, "You don't want to be out there this weekend" or, "Best get on out of town now." --When I read it back, that one sounds more threatening than it was meant. You see, there are no places to rent a room in Unionville. The night I was there I set up my tent outside the local bar. It was kind of nice actually... no worries about driving home. No lost keys to contend with... just stumble on out to the tent and you're good: a service more bars should offer :))
So I made the decision to skip a bit of trail (Lindsay: keep your eyes peeled for a picture of me on that Segway ;)). While it's disappointing to me that my adventure has changed it's track, I'm also still totally excited that I'm getting to do this at all! Most of the other southbounders are a good 200 miles south of me already, so that's a big factor. Also I've been hiking in damp/overcast weather for four days now and am getting 'diaper rash' on the inside of my arms because my t-shirt never dries. So the idea of hiking out of Unionville in the HOPES that I stumble across a hiker-hostel soon (where I can wait out the storm) seemed like a long shot.
So I started to look into buses/trains which, apparently. If I'm trying to get 150 miles south on the AT (well into Pennsylvania) I'll have to go through New York City, where I have friends I can stay with.
... So I did.
I holed up in NYC for the duration of the hurricane, trying to fatten up while also trying to respect the generosity of my hosts and not eat them out of house and home. We were so fortunate! We never lost power, we ate well every night, and it was like an extended weekend for the people who live here (but a weekend on hurricane-watch house arrest is, I'm sure, no exciting ride for someone who LIVES in the city) so we just watched movies all day and played Bananagrams and crosses between Telephone and Pictionary. My new favorite way to make chocolate milk is half milk, half heavy cream (try it, it's lovely), and I've eaten a pint of ice cream two nights in a row (though I'm sure I'll be back to 'constantly hungry' within a few days of being on the trail). As I sit here typing it's Wednesday night. Holloween!! I got to walk around in NYC today and see a boatload of costumes. The friends who are so generously letting me occupy / stink up their space went for a walk this evening with one of their dogs dressed like a shark :)
Tomorrow morning I'll take a subway to Penn station to catch a bus at 9:00am to Philadelphia, to take another train to Harisburg, PA. Then I have to figure out how to get to Duncannon, where I'll pick up the trail. AAAND where I"ll get the package my lovely sister sent to me! I didn't get to open it (they wouldn't have let me 'bounce' it forward for free if I had opened it), and I can't wait to see what I'll be snacking on for the next few days :)
I'm distracted right now, so this is the end of this post :)
From there I went Northwest. Not my decision. I just followed the 2x6 inch white 'blazes' that I have been trained to follow, and that's where the trail took me: along the NY/NJ boarder. When I cut back into NY, briefly, before I was supposed to cross NJ for reeelz, I entered Unionville, NY. Just to be clear, this is day 4 of me being out on my own and lemme tell ya... boy is it lonely to suddenly be, well... alone.
...But I digress...
As I was entering Unionville every day-hiker that I encountered, when I told 'em I was through-hiking, warned me about hurricane Sandy and said I should find a place to 'hole up' for a couple of days.
{sidenote: lots of people hiking the AT last year had to skip entire states (though usually just Vermont) 'cause hurricane Irene made so many of the trails impassable.}
So my options were to hike out of town, or find other means of transportation (even people passing me on the street, not in conversation, would see my backpack and say things like, "You don't want to be out there this weekend" or, "Best get on out of town now." --When I read it back, that one sounds more threatening than it was meant. You see, there are no places to rent a room in Unionville. The night I was there I set up my tent outside the local bar. It was kind of nice actually... no worries about driving home. No lost keys to contend with... just stumble on out to the tent and you're good: a service more bars should offer :))
So I made the decision to skip a bit of trail (Lindsay: keep your eyes peeled for a picture of me on that Segway ;)). While it's disappointing to me that my adventure has changed it's track, I'm also still totally excited that I'm getting to do this at all! Most of the other southbounders are a good 200 miles south of me already, so that's a big factor. Also I've been hiking in damp/overcast weather for four days now and am getting 'diaper rash' on the inside of my arms because my t-shirt never dries. So the idea of hiking out of Unionville in the HOPES that I stumble across a hiker-hostel soon (where I can wait out the storm) seemed like a long shot.
So I started to look into buses/trains which, apparently. If I'm trying to get 150 miles south on the AT (well into Pennsylvania) I'll have to go through New York City, where I have friends I can stay with.
... So I did.
I holed up in NYC for the duration of the hurricane, trying to fatten up while also trying to respect the generosity of my hosts and not eat them out of house and home. We were so fortunate! We never lost power, we ate well every night, and it was like an extended weekend for the people who live here (but a weekend on hurricane-watch house arrest is, I'm sure, no exciting ride for someone who LIVES in the city) so we just watched movies all day and played Bananagrams and crosses between Telephone and Pictionary. My new favorite way to make chocolate milk is half milk, half heavy cream (try it, it's lovely), and I've eaten a pint of ice cream two nights in a row (though I'm sure I'll be back to 'constantly hungry' within a few days of being on the trail). As I sit here typing it's Wednesday night. Holloween!! I got to walk around in NYC today and see a boatload of costumes. The friends who are so generously letting me occupy / stink up their space went for a walk this evening with one of their dogs dressed like a shark :)
Tomorrow morning I'll take a subway to Penn station to catch a bus at 9:00am to Philadelphia, to take another train to Harisburg, PA. Then I have to figure out how to get to Duncannon, where I'll pick up the trail. AAAND where I"ll get the package my lovely sister sent to me! I didn't get to open it (they wouldn't have let me 'bounce' it forward for free if I had opened it), and I can't wait to see what I'll be snacking on for the next few days :)
I'm distracted right now, so this is the end of this post :)
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Andrew's "Journal": Day 82
Hey Friends and Fam!
These days I'm so exhausted at the end of each day that I've all but stopped writing in my daily journal, thus the quotations in the title. So now I'll try my best to give coherent anecdotes about the last week or two:
Almost through Vermont!! We've discovered unpasteurized apple cider during apple season in VT: Ambrosia, people, look it up. We've learned that the A.T. is MUCH easier south of New Hampshire (despite what Northbounders have told us)!! We've cranked up the mileage and learned to overeat (a staple of the N. American skill set). And we've hiked over 1/4 of the entire trail!!! Every day my list of things to be grateful for grows by at least one, so the official subtitle of this post is: Grattitude: +1
We walked into Bennington, VT shortly after my air mattress had started to come apart, ballooning up on one end. It started out like one of those floating lounge-chair things that you might use in the pool, with a nice built in pillow. But the bubble grew beyond pillow size and the whole thing became unsleepable.
So I got a new one shipped to Bennington. +1
I did this from the top of a mountain (because I have a magical box that can show pictures of bubbly mattresses to people in Seattle, send my voice along with the pictures, and find addresses in Vermont... from the top of a mtn! Some people call it a 'phone'... I call it magic to be grateful for). +1
After I had it sent, I noticed (in our little travelers' companion book) that the place I had the package shipped would accept packages 'for guests.' And the next two days were spent worrying that they would see my name on a box, check the guest register, and send it back, via FedEx, to Seattle :( BUT when we walked out of the woods and onto VT-9 (5 miles east of Bennington) hungry, cold, and tired, Lysandra's cousin picked us up in a larger magical box (+1) that held heat inside it's glass walls (+1), and carried our delicate human bodies faster than they were ever designed to travel (+1)... on a strip of oil (+1)... fueled by oil... (+1)
When we arrived at the Autumn Motel it was still morning. I was still hungry and tired, and saw three possibilities:
Moving on: There's SO MUCH TO WRITE!!!
We've had our first really long stretch of rain on the trail. After three days of hiking in the rain, you're feelin' pretty good if your boots are dry. After 7 days your boots have no chance, and dry socks (+1) lose their special something (-1). You're so excited to put them on your feet in the morning, then you stick your feet in your boots and wonder, 'What was all that warm fuzzy business, about 10 seconds ago?' You get the point.
So the weather is harsher: the last two mornings it's been raining cats and dogs (or 'frogs' if you're french) and the temperature has been close to freezing.
BUT The terrain is WONDERFUL!! (+1)
The Vermonters are GENIUS!!! ... they've done this thing (some kind of fancy new trail maintenance perhaps?) where they've taken dirt and filled in all the cracks between roots and rocks! They call it: Topsoil. If the word feels foreign on your tongue, check quick! ...odds are good you live in Maine. Some of my more geologically savvy friends and family might already know what I have only recently learned: Glaciers ripped off all the topsoil from Maine! It's true! Like a thief in the night (or maybe like an unnamed backpacker behind the front desk of a small motel in rural Vermont?) glaciers took all the dirt from Maine, straight down to the bedrock, to the coast.
These days I'm so exhausted at the end of each day that I've all but stopped writing in my daily journal, thus the quotations in the title. So now I'll try my best to give coherent anecdotes about the last week or two:
Almost through Vermont!! We've discovered unpasteurized apple cider during apple season in VT: Ambrosia, people, look it up. We've learned that the A.T. is MUCH easier south of New Hampshire (despite what Northbounders have told us)!! We've cranked up the mileage and learned to overeat (a staple of the N. American skill set). And we've hiked over 1/4 of the entire trail!!! Every day my list of things to be grateful for grows by at least one, so the official subtitle of this post is: Grattitude: +1
We walked into Bennington, VT shortly after my air mattress had started to come apart, ballooning up on one end. It started out like one of those floating lounge-chair things that you might use in the pool, with a nice built in pillow. But the bubble grew beyond pillow size and the whole thing became unsleepable.
So I got a new one shipped to Bennington. +1
I did this from the top of a mountain (because I have a magical box that can show pictures of bubbly mattresses to people in Seattle, send my voice along with the pictures, and find addresses in Vermont... from the top of a mtn! Some people call it a 'phone'... I call it magic to be grateful for). +1
After I had it sent, I noticed (in our little travelers' companion book) that the place I had the package shipped would accept packages 'for guests.' And the next two days were spent worrying that they would see my name on a box, check the guest register, and send it back, via FedEx, to Seattle :( BUT when we walked out of the woods and onto VT-9 (5 miles east of Bennington) hungry, cold, and tired, Lysandra's cousin picked us up in a larger magical box (+1) that held heat inside it's glass walls (+1), and carried our delicate human bodies faster than they were ever designed to travel (+1)... on a strip of oil (+1)... fueled by oil... (+1)
When we arrived at the Autumn Motel it was still morning. I was still hungry and tired, and saw three possibilities:
- Maybe they denied the package.
- Maybe they'll charge me a 'handling fee' of ten bucks or so.
- Maybe they'll refuse to give me the package unless I get a room for sixty bucks.
Moving on: There's SO MUCH TO WRITE!!!
We've had our first really long stretch of rain on the trail. After three days of hiking in the rain, you're feelin' pretty good if your boots are dry. After 7 days your boots have no chance, and dry socks (+1) lose their special something (-1). You're so excited to put them on your feet in the morning, then you stick your feet in your boots and wonder, 'What was all that warm fuzzy business, about 10 seconds ago?' You get the point.
So the weather is harsher: the last two mornings it's been raining cats and dogs (or 'frogs' if you're french) and the temperature has been close to freezing.
BUT The terrain is WONDERFUL!! (+1)
The Vermonters are GENIUS!!! ... they've done this thing (some kind of fancy new trail maintenance perhaps?) where they've taken dirt and filled in all the cracks between roots and rocks! They call it: Topsoil. If the word feels foreign on your tongue, check quick! ...odds are good you live in Maine. Some of my more geologically savvy friends and family might already know what I have only recently learned: Glaciers ripped off all the topsoil from Maine! It's true! Like a thief in the night (or maybe like an unnamed backpacker behind the front desk of a small motel in rural Vermont?) glaciers took all the dirt from Maine, straight down to the bedrock, to the coast.
{Sidenote: If you live in Cape Cod: The dirt you live on was stolen from Maine, please give it back.*}
So the rain is rain. And it's challenging and uncomfortable, and all that you might expect. To sweat in rain gear or walk in the rain? But Fall is absolutely gorgeous and we have things like hot chocolate, and fires, and views, and foliage to make it all worthwhile. Walking through the woods for 10 hours a day gives you so much time to think about things, and with all the distractions of life, that can be a precious thing. Time to think! Without the constant barrage of marketing, good intentioned but misled advice givers, temptations and distractions. Granted, too much time alone can result in false conclusions and unibomber-esque self editing loops. But too much time alone is hardly the rarer of the two commodities... at least in my experience of the world.
Anyway. I'm done rambling. Here are a couple cool things I found that I'm sharing:
An interactive map of the Appalachian Trail (basically this should be the 'scenic route' that comes up if you choose 'walking' as your mode of transportation between Georgia and Maine): AT interactive map
And here's a cool comic I found that probably took an astounding amount of drawing time at a computer: Click and Drag (this XKCD comic)
Anyway. I'm done rambling. Here are a couple cool things I found that I'm sharing:
An interactive map of the Appalachian Trail (basically this should be the 'scenic route' that comes up if you choose 'walking' as your mode of transportation between Georgia and Maine): AT interactive map
And here's a cool comic I found that probably took an astounding amount of drawing time at a computer: Click and Drag (this XKCD comic)
{*...unless, like a certain (still unnamed) backpacker, you feel a bit like that 'stolen' thing is yours, you know, kind of, in a way, and well, possession being 9/10 of the law and everything... let's just let bygones be bygones.}
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