Date: 2020-09-21
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

One year ago, I hobbled down the Appalachian Trail with sores on my feet to Mad Tom Notch near Manchester Center, VT and abandoned my thru-hike attempt. I had hiked 1258.8 miles over the course of 127 days. Yeah, I know that I said that my last entry was going to be the last one for this journal, but that was before COVID-19 turned everything upside down. I have spent the last 127 days posting each day¢s Trail Journal entry from the year before on Twitter (@hikewithspike). It has been great to relive that the time on the trail and now I think it is time that I reflect a little given that I was not able to get back on trail this year to finish up those last 933.2 miles.Some updates: Sidewinder did end up finishing the trail sometime during the winter. He then started going north again, and last I heard, he had switched over to the Continental Divide Trail.I saw the couple who was shuttling themselves along the trail using two cars again just after I got off the trail. They were staying at the same hotel we were staying at in Manchester Center. They were doing a complicated flip-flop and they completed the trail in November.Spike¢s Cousin turned 18, got her driver¢s license, finished high school, and recently got married.  I was able to go out a few months ago and see her for a few hours. I¢m still waiting for her to figure out a way to share her pictures with me.I recently got an email from the sobo I met at the hostel in Norwich, VT. He told me he finally finished around the end of June. In the email he said something about hoping my feet got better. So apparently I was having feet issues at least a week before I got off trail.  I had so many different ailments that came and went while I was hiking, I didn¢t really keep track.My feet are now healed. They peeled for about a month and after about 4 months feeling was restored to all of my toes.I have gained back most of the weight I lost on trail, but I am happy that it came back more slowly than it came off and that I am still 5 pounds less than I was before I started the trail.  I have a lot of aches and pains, but that¢s probably just getting old.I have been wondering, if you had told me a year ago, ¢Oh, by the way, there¢s going to be a pandemic next year and you won¢t be able to finish,¢ what would I have done? Would I have tried to push on? Would that have just made things worse? Could I have taken a few days off while Spike¢s Dad was visiting VT to stay off my feet and then gone back and tried to take my time, taking off my shoes and putting my feet up when I could? I talked to SD about this the other day and he looked at me like I had two heads. ¢Are you kidding? You could barely walk. Your feet looked horrible.¢  Even with that I still have my doubts and wonder if maybe I¢m just a wimp.Looking back, I do think that the flip-flop we did was accidentally a good one. We were able to start the trail with a bubble and meet a lot of cool people. We ended up being in Maine at the height of blueberry season and right at the end of mosquito season. We got to see a bunch of people again who we had met earlier in our hike. We completed Maine and the White Mountains, two of the most beautiful (and difficult) sections of trail.I had been overly optimistic about how many miles I could do and about my ability to develop trail legs. It looks like if I had wanted to go north, summit Katahdin in late September (my original goal), and then flip south, I should have started at the south end of Shenandoah National Park rather than 400 miles further south in Damascus. However, like I said, I¢m glad we did what we did.If I were to have the opportunity to do the entire trail and start any time I liked, I would want to approach Katahdin from the south, but I don¢t know that I would start in Georgia. Starting at Springer in the cold of March with a bazillion other people all giving each other Norovirus does not sound appealing to me.  I think my preference would be to start around Harper¢s Ferry in late April or early May and head north. Once I completed Katahdin, then I would go south from Harper¢s. Maybe that will be my plan for 2029¢¦