Date: 2003-06-27
From: Unionville, NJ

To: South Fields, NY
Miles today: 39.0

A total of 39 miles. From Unionville, New York at Lott Road to South Fields, New York at New York 17, I believe. I got up about 6:00 and packed up about 6:30 and walked down to the grocery store to get a cup of coffee. The grocery store was also a deli. I asked the gentleman that ran the place if he could make me a roast beef sub and he said it would be awhile because he was checking in a bunch of stuff. I waited about 20 minutes and drank my coffee. Then he got the sandwich made for me. I packed it up and got on the trail. I was walking by about 7 o¢clock. The past couple of days I¢ve been feeling really good. Up in spirits. Up in energy. My feet have been feeling well up until I hit about 10 miles and then something has been happening with my feet where the blisters had started hurting and opening up. My toes have started getting cramped up. Now I noticed that the nails are falling off. I¢ve had two nails fall off the left foot. I have two nails that are about to fall off the right foot. They are both black. The blisters on the heels of both feet are wide open. The blister on the left foot, on the pinkie toe, is no longer even a blister. It¢s worn away to the point where it is now just this oozing mess of stuff. It covers my sock with blood and I have to take my sock off in the middle of the day sometimes and wash it out because it starts caking up in there. What I was to find out on the following day, Saturday, when I got to the shoe store was (what I didn¢t know) that long distance hikers feet grow. Sometimes one or two sizes. Mine had gone from 9 12, which is what I normally wear at home (boots for work and sneakers), to a full size 11. I¢ve been wearing size 10 shoes. I ordered a half size bigger for the hike.   When I start out in the morning my feet feel fairly comfortable. A little snug in the shoe because they¢re very close to the size of the shoe. By 10 o¢clock with all the hiking they¢ve swollen and are just too small for the shoe. They are just beating themselves to death inside the shoes. So, for three days straight I¢ve been having major problems with my feet. Today, by the time I had hiked 10 miles I was basically crippled. I had a real hard time walking on flat ground and had just a terrible, horrible time walking over rocks. I had to actually pick over them and was actually wincing every time I had to step over one. Even if I was stepping on a flat one. Regardless, I had made the decision early on in the day that I was not going to want to stay in Arden, NY for 2 days to hang out and wait for my mail drop. I have spent a lot of time trying to catch up and make extra days up to just be screwed over because I was missing a mail drop or I was not early enough. I determined that whatever it took I was going to hike all day and all night, if that¢s what it took, to make sure that I got to my mail drop before 12 o¢clock on Saturday. Anyway, I was on the trail early at 7:00. I was off and running and felt really well and sure enough about 11:00 or so I had hit 10 miles. It was 10:30 maybe. I was really hauling it. My feet were really starting to hurt. I stopped for a minute and looked at my shoes and my sock was covered in blood again. I haven¢t been able to keep moleskins on the blisters because they¢ve been oozing. I have not been able to clean them to the point where the moleskin would stay on there. This section started off pretty nicely to begin with. It was a dream. Then we got into rocks and more rocks and ups and downs. I just kept on going. I popped out about 1:00 on to a road. I had done somewhere around 18 miles by 1:00 or 1:30. I popped out on the road and there was a fruit stand or a farmers market. Whatever you call it. It sold gardening tools and a variety of things. I walked over there and got a soda and an ice cream and then another soda. I asked the lady if there was a shoe store where I could possible get some sneakers or something to try and get some relief for my feet. She told me that there was nowhere close. The closest place would be 45 minutes by car. I finished my coke and got back down to the trail and started hiking again. I hiked onto the late afternoon somewhere around 4:00 or 4:30. Something like that. I came across this older man sitting on this log and he had a white t-shirt in his hand that he had taken off himself. He was thrashing it around himself trying to keep the mosquitoes off of him. The mosquitoes have been overwhelming. You cannot stop anywhere on the trail because they will just form a cloud around you. I pretty well determined that if you walk less than 3 miles an hour they¢re going to get on you and bite the heck out of you. He got up and started walking with me after I talked with him for a few minutes. We walked on further. I kind of slowed down anyway. I was hurting pretty badly. We chatted for awhile. I found out his name was Herman. He was a German man. He was 81 years old and retired from Mercedes Benz. He was out hiking to try and keep his health up. He told me what the road was that was coming up and I looked at my map and I determined that hitting that road would make about 27 miles for the day that I would be walking. He also told me that there was a ranger station up at the road that I could ask questions there. I left him and hiked on up to the rangers station and asked for some information. I found out that I was about 12 miles short on the trail from getting to Arden, NY. By that time it was 5:00 in the afternoon and I was thinking that there was no way that I was going to be able to walk tonight or possibly even walk tomorrow. I was basically crippled. The ranger gave me a map showing me where I was and where Arden, NY was. I did not have any maps or the trail companion sheets or anything to tell me where I was. What happened is I had over run my previous mail drop which had all that stuff in it. So, I was basically flying blind. I didn¢t know where I was going. I walked outside to where my backpack was and Herman had caught up. He was sitting and cooling down on a bench. I walked over and talked to him for a bit. I told him what my problem was¢¦.that I needed to get to my mail drop by 12:00 on Saturday which would be tomorrow and that my feet were messed up. I didn¢t know what I was going to do. He offered to give me a ride to Arden. There¢s a little problem with that as far as hiking the Appalachian Trail goes. If you speak to a purest¢¦a purest is a person who is hiking the trail who considers that you have not hiked the trail unless you have walked every single foot of the trail. Unless you¢ve taken all of the approximately 5 million steps that it takes to get from Springer Mountain, GA to Katahdin in Maine. That is not the view that I took. Early on when I began in Georgia I spoke to a four time thru hiker. His name was Spot. What he told me was the Appalachian Trail Conference takes the honest effort that you make to stay on the trail as you having done the Appalachian Trail and if you have a compelling, physical and real reason to skip part of the trail to take a shortcut¢¦if there is a reason that is sufficient enough¢¦then that doesn¢t count against you. At this point I was feeling that I had compelling and sufficient reason and I took him up on his offer. So, the 39 miles that I have listed as having done today¢¦I did 27 of them and I rode in the car for the other 12. I¢m gonna take credit for all 39. Here¢s the reason why: the reason is because you don¢t take credit for the dozens of times that you have to walk off the trail 6/10¢s of a mile or 8/10¢s of a mile to get to a shelter and back or get to a water source and back. They never count to your mileage. Or the dozens of times that you have to walk to a town and back to get re-supplied. Or the 75 miles or so that I¢ve done because the trail is not marked well enough and it¢s confusing and you end up walking hours in the wrong direction only to find out later that you have to turn around and head back in the other direction. I figure that accounts for a couple hundred miles by the time that all is done and said. You¢ve done extra on top of the trail. So, if a purest wants to complain about 12 miles that I¢ve missed that¢s his problem. He needs to mind his own business, hike his own hike and not worry about what I do. Anyway, Herman gave me a ride. He¢s a really nice guy. One of the few people that I found along the way that was helping without any consideration whatsoever. He gave me a ride and was willing to take me all the way to Arden but I had him drop me off in South Fields, NY which is about 3 miles south of Arden, NY. The reason being is that there was a deli there and there¢s also a motel close by which I was thinking that I might want to stay at. I had him drop me off at the deli. I went into the deli and ordered a hot sausage and pepper hoagie, a Pepsi and a beer and sat outside and ate and drank all that. I sat and enjoyed the last of the day for a few minutes. Then I walked down to the motel to see what kind of rates they had. I found out to my dismay that the driveway to the motel was a real, nice steep hike up. All was well and good. I got up there and talked to the gentleman and he had a vacancy. The rate was excellent. It was $39.00 for the night for a single yet he still put me in a double bedroom. I went into the room and unpacked my stuff and sorted through it. I took my socks off and washed the blood out of the socks. I washed my feet off.   I got some Coleman fuel and washed the sores off to try and get them to dry out. Then I went to the front desk to ask the manager if there was a laundry in the hotel which they did not have but he told me just to throw everything in a bag, give it to him and he would have the maid do it. I could just leave a tip for her on the table in the morning. I left her 5 bucks for that. I went back to my room and took a real nice, hot shower and got dressed up again. I walked down to the Red Apple Restaurant to find out what the bus schedule was. The manager had told me there was a bus schedule that will take me to Harriman in the morning if I want to or Arden and I wouldn¢t have to walk. So, I went down to the Red Apple Restaurant to check that out and walked back to the deli/convenience store/bakery. I bought some snacks and a couple of Fosters. I walked back to the hotel room and got into bed. I laid there and watched the TV. I watched CNN to find out what the news was. I turned on the weather channel and fell asleep.