Date: 2016-07-10
From: Rt 9 Bennington, VT

To: Tent by Goddard Shelter
Miles today: 10.1

This morning I met Vic, my latest shuttle guy, at the trailhead near Manchster Center, VT. I left my car there and he drove me South to begin hiking again from Rt 9 near Bennington where I left off yesterday. It was forcast to rain today and I considered taking the day off but wanted to keep movin Northward, besides, it's warm enough right now that the rain isn't much of a problem. I'm going to try hiking without my raincoat. The reasoning behind this is that with a raincoat you'll end up wet anyway from sweating.While driving with Vic I discovered that he stays in shape by trail running. I'd estimate that he's in his 60's and he's still in good shape. He told me that he's training for something called the Escarpment Race. I recommended that he watch "The Barkley Marathons" on Netflix. It's about a gruesomely hard trail running race that almost no one finishes. The great news today is that my leg is feeling SO MUCH better. Walking in the pool yesterday seems to have really helped. I'm also going to keep my milage down to about 10 miles a day or less for awhile to see if this can help to keep my foot and leg from bothering me too much. I had a reader send me a comment by using my guest book on the left hand side and he was kind enough to provide some much needed encouragement to keep me going. You may have noticed that I've been feeling a little worn out lately. It was in responding to this comment that I realized what I've been doing wrong lately. I'm now close enough to Mt Katahdin that I've been thinking "I'm almost there, just 500 some more miles to go" rather than my usual focus of just getting to the next town. This is a fine way to think in the morning, after a day of rest, while I'm still fresh and strong prior to hiking up and over a few mountains in the heat of the summer. It's later in the day when I'm worn out that I start to think, "What... 500 more miles... what the heck am I doing... my legs hurt, and so on." So the secret is to NOT think about Mt Katahdin. Yea, it's only 500 some miles, but that's enough to overload my little brains mental circuits when it's taxed out trying to propel me up a hill late in the day. Right now, today, my focus is on getting to Manchester Center which is 40 miles from here. Once I get there I'll pick a new target. Rutland, VT. It's just another 50 miles - I know I can do that. This may seem simple, and it is. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The bigger insight is in how much the mental aspect of things has been affecting my journey. So I had just walked up to bridge you see in today's photo when it started to sprinkle a bit. The bridge sagged on one side and I thought about maybe trying to sneak across it before my better judgement kicked in. I headed upstream and found a wider spot where I could make it most of the way across the stream without having to hop on rocks. I was figuring out how to stretch across the last 3 or 4 feet where the water was faster and deeper when the sky opened up and the rain came dumping down. I was getting wet from the top and the bottom at the same time. I found a root that was sticking out that I could jump onto and safely made it over to the other side of the brook. This was the first stream that I needed to ford on the AT. It rained for about 3 hours however by the time I made it to the shelter I was mostly dried out. There's about 15 other people here and the shelter is full. I sat down to eat dinner and talk with the other hikers before finding a place up on the hill to put up my tent. I changed into the dry clothes in my pack and am safe, dry and warm inside my tent.