Date: 2003-04-30
From: Pine Swamp shelter

To: US7
Miles today: 0.0

What a day !!! apart from limping all the way to the road in agony I got picked up by the police for "Assault on my ankle".....My leg felt ok when I got going this morning but after I done the first few miles it started to get bad again.So I wrestled with my thoughts of what am I going to do , I had 3 options........ A. carry on hiking and risk injuring it even more or hope that it just clears up as I walk along.B. Stop at the next shelter and sit there for the next 3 days going crazy at the bugs circling round my head orC. Hitch from the next road to Danbury and catch the trains to my aunts house in Stamford C.T and relax for a few days and get rid of these pair of boots which have been a bad omen and grab a pair of sneakers to do the rest of the trail in.So I picked option C for ovious reasons.I reached the route US7 and crossed over to a garage on the other side of the road to meet the most ignorant person on the trail !!!! I had only one single polite question for the guy hanging over the car engine fixing something "excuse me could you tell me the best town to hitch into to get a bus to Danbury so I can get a train"He replied "this is the country boy we aint got no trains round here""yes sir I know thats why I am trying to get to Danbury"Again he replied "you won't get nothing like that around here I can't help ya"So I then went on to ask if I could have a look at a road map to see where I was in respect to the nearest towns for a bus and when he told me "no I can't help you we don't get trains around here and it sure is hard to understand that accent" I felt like strangling him because this was a gas station and of course he had a road map and he had no problem understanding me...or did he ??Anyway I would have been better of talking to a brick wall !!!!!! as I walked away from him cursing him into myself I started to wonder what the hell am I going to do???? when out of the blue arrives one of the boys in blue , the police officer noticed me standing scratching my head & looking at my map book like a lost tourist.So after he arrested me for assault on an ankle......only joking , I explained to the officer what I was trying to do and he told me to jump in and he would give me a ride back to Kent !!! perfect....his name was Ed Capowich and he was the local state trooper , he had hiked! the section of trail I had just walked over and was quick to agree with me about C.T not being flat at all......So Ed dropped me of in Kent and I got a hitch from a bussinessman from Long Island who was up looking at a few golf courses to play in the near future , after our conversation touching on subjects such as the 7-11 stores in Australia to Korean immigration into the mountians of North Carolina he dropped me of at the train station in Danbury to catch a train to Stamford.Sot here I was sitting at the train station in Danbury with an injury wondering how many more hold ups I will encounter , the weather is brilliant today and all I was wishing for was to be back in the place I belong ....Oh West Virginia mountain high take me back to where I belong Wes ......and so on I think "Y'all" know how the song goes.I spent the whole train journey talking to the lovely Jennifer a native of Trinidad who was giving me some education on the culture from her homeland and the Cari! bbean while I was probably boring her with stories of bears , smelly feet and frezze dried foods.This is just another test the trail is throwing at to see if I am worthy of earning the right to say I am a thru-hiker, so I must just go through the motions of getting fit again and continue on my journey because there is nothing going to halt me from my appointment with Katadhin.