Date: 2017-10-27
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Miles today: 0.0

In six months, my husband Tom will drop me off at Burlington International Airport in time for a 6AM flight to Washington National Airport, known by some as Reagan Airport. I would rather take Amtrak, but American Airlines offers incredibly inexpensive nonstop flights to National. My cousin Debbie will fly in from Albany, New York about the same time, and we¢ll spend the day visiting museums in Washington and the new REI close to Union Station to purchase things not allowed on planes. Things like fuel canisters are not allowed on Amtrak either, but I¢ve never had my pack inspected on Amtrak. In the late afternoon, we will take the Capital Limited from Union Station to Harpers Ferry, spend the next day at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy¢s Annual Flip Flop Festival, and on Sunday morning after a send-off pancake breakfast, we¢ll start our hike. The actual hike doesn¢t cause me too much worry or excitement. I¢ve hiked all of the Appalachian Trail before, everything south of New Hampshire at least twice and some states, notably West Virginia, Virginia, Vermont and Georgia, multiple times. There are some sections that I do not relish hiking again, but I¢ll be getting Pennsylvania from Duncannon to Delaware Water Gap out of the way relatively early in my hike. So what has me concerned as I look ahead?Tom and I have been together 41 years and married for three. Pretty much our only separations longer than a week have been when I¢ve attended professional conferences or gone on my annual hikes. It¢s easy for me. I¢m off either being bored out of mind (tax conferences) or doing something I love (hiking), but I worry about Tom being home alone. Tom enjoys walking, even in the woods if the trail is maintained to a high standard, meaning little in the way of rocks, roots or mud, thus eliminating most of the Appalachian Trail. Tenting in the woods, sleeping side-by-side with strangers in a shelter, or in a bunk room of a hostel would not give him pleasure. He is very supportive, and I¢m grateful for that. There¢s nobody I would rather be with, so it will be difficult being away for so long. Do you mind another story?In 2001, when I hiked Maine to finish my end-to-end series of section hikes, I encountered a camp group at one of the shelters. Most long-distance hikers dislike being around camp groups or scouts, but I¢ve usually found them enjoyable and entertaining. Invariably, they cook too much food, and that is a welcome opportunity. Have you noticed my obsession with food yet? My technique is simple. I sit on the outskirts of the group, not too far from the inevitable outcast of the group, the one who doesn¢t quite fit in for whatever reason and would have been me at that age. If I just sit quietly looking grandfatherish, pretty soon the child will start talking. In this case, the boy was younger than the others, maybe 10 years old. His parents owned the camp in Maine where he had spent every summer of his life, but this was his first time on an ¢away trip,¢ as he put it.  At one point, he whimpered, ¢I know it¢s called being homesick, but I never knew it really hurt!¢  Just saying it seemed to help him, and soon enough, I was chowing down on an excellent burrito. I don¢t know if my wet eyes were from empathy or gratitude.  I don¢t think I¢ll be whimpering from homesickness, but I am planning on getting home twice during my northbound section and spending a couple of weeks there before starting my southbound section. Some hikers decry the advent of cell phones and personal electronic devices. I welcome the opportunity to connect with Tom by phone or text, and on most days, I can get a signal.  It helps a lot, almost as much as a big juicy burrito. Nonetheless, homesickness is one of my worries six months out.My other big worry is my knees. I was first diagnosed with osteoarthritis of the knees in 1997, when they swelled up like grapefruits and I hobbled into Bland, Virginia, truly an aptly named community. Prednisone, industrial-strength naproxen, and codeine for sleep got me through the hike. I ignored the diagnosis until 2002, when I had to bail from a southbound hike on the Long Trail, which I completed the following year. My family doctor referred me to a rheumatologist who after eight hours of examination and testing eliminated all other inflammatory processes. Those doctors along with an orthopedist staged a mini-intervention late that day to encourage me to stop running, to save my knees for hiking. That¢s when I first heard the dreaded words, ¢Progressive and degenerative. You¢ll eventually need knee replacements.¢ I tried every remedy available from denial, to glucosamine, to proteolytic enzymes, to various straps and braces without success. The episodes came more frequently and as often as not, my hikes had to be terminated early. In 2010, I consented to an arthroscopic procedure to release my patellae by lengthening the quadriceps tendons. Following therapy, I was pain free and even able to run some again. Hiking was good.  So in 2013, I attempted a traditional northbound AT thru-hike. It was probably a doomed hike from the get-go. My knees hurt from the first step at Amicalola Falls State Park, the start of the approach trail to Springer Mountain, but it was the 3,000 foot descent to the Nantahala River that did them in. I could smell the heavenly scent of bacon wafting up from the restaurant far below and moved much too quickly and carelessly. I was crippled and flew home from Asheville the next day. There was a sign in the airport advertising the services of the University of North Carolina Orthopedic Services, showing a photo of a hiker who looked a lot like me. The tagline was, ¢Joints are replaceable; hiking is not.¢  I was also under a diagnosis of prostate cancer at the time, at a stage when treatment was advisable.  I had read a strong study indicating that delaying treatment for up to nine months after diagnosis had no effect on outcomes. I mentioned that to my urologist, who reminded me that statistically that was true for a population of patients but that I was a population of one. I accepted the risk, but I¢m sure it was preying on my mind during my hike. So when I got home from the aborted thru-hike, I dealt with that. You don¢t need the details, but I was fortunate in choosing an excellent surgeon and had minimal side effects. Four-and-a-half years later, I can consider myself cured.  After dealing with that, I sought out another orthopedic surgeon. We got as far as selecting the artificial joints and discussing anesthesia, but first he had to attend an international conference. He came back convinced that within five years, stem cell regenerative therapy would be the standard treatment and that he would be regarded as a barbarian for having done replacement surgery. He was determined to hold me together until then with cortisone injections and custom off-loading braces. If you are wondering, viscosupplemention is not of proven benefit for my particular condition. I didn¢t like walking and hiking in the braces, but they worked, awkward as they were.We fully retired in 2016 and moved to Burlington, Vermont from Sarasota, Florida, a move we both feel was one of our better decisions. We love it here. Vermont is the 49th state in population, with only Wyoming having fewer residents, and the population is stable. This is so radically different from Florida. When we left there were over a dozen construction cranes marring the skyline of Sarasota. Burlington has a population of 43,000, making it the least populous city in the United States to be the most populous city in a state. The downtown is set on a hillside, with Lake Champlain at the bottom (obviously) and the University of Vermont on a plateau at the top. After renting for several months, we purchased a condominium that abuts UVM near the top of the hill. Our unit overlooks the city and the lake, with panoramic views of the Adirondacks across the lake. We can see into the High Peaks and on the clearest days, see the summit of Mt. Marcy through a gap north of Giant Mountain. The downtown is compact, and as you would expect in a college town, highly walkable. Virtually every place we go is within a 1.2 mile radius, and unless we leave town, we walk further in a week than we drive.I did a short hike on the Appalachian Trail in Vermont in 2016, made even shorter by the failure of the braces. I sought out the orthopedic services at the University of Vermont Medical Center. By then I was duck-walking, stairs and standing were painful, and walking more than a hundred feet hurt. After confirming the diagnosis, they required a physical therapy evaluation, something that none of my previous doctors had suggested. I was quite skeptical and just wanted to proceed with the replacement surgery, but they gave me no choice. I had four sessions with a physical therapist learning various warm-up stretches and exercises.  The knees improved remarkably to the point that I wouldn¢t even consider replacement surgery at this time. By the way, a standard protocol for stem cell regenerative therapy remains at least five year out, and there are substantial doubts if the regrown cartilage is equivalent to the factory original. I did a test hike this summer, heading south from Harpers Ferry, including a 13.5 mile section in Northern Virginia known as the ¢Roller Coaster.¢ Because of a very narrow right-of-way, the trail is forced to follow the razorback ridge line, with ten ascents and descents. Steep trail inevitably erodes, so the tread way is rocky and uneven, and hell on the knees. I was tentative at first and held my distances down, but my knees performed well.  Since returning, I¢ve intensified my weight-training and aerobic workouts, adding the physical therapy exercises to my almost daily routine. I¢m able to walk long distances, up and down the hills of Burlington and nearby state parks, without any discomfort. At this point, only genuflecting is out of the question and there isn¢t much call for that on the Appalachian Trail. So I¢m optimistic that I¢ll be able to complete a thru-hike. Even so, I¢m planning to limit my daily mileage and to take days off when needed. Still, it¢s a worry six-months out.Very little of my gear will be new for this hike, and I¢m asking Santa for very little this year. I started carrying a bear canister this summer and found that my ultra-lightweight backpack did not handle it well. A pack I used previously does, but is worn out. So I¢ll be replacing it before starting my thru-hike. I¢ve had Lyme Disease once, so I will be purchasing clothing made of pyrethrin-treated fibers and sending my hiking socks off for treatment. I don¢t mind dousing myself with DEET on a short hike, but six-months of exposure can¢t be a good thing.  About the only other purchase I¢ll make is a 2018 edition of the Appalachian Trail Data Book published by the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. It¢s a compact light-weight listing of shelters, road crossings, water sources and the like. Mostly, I¢ll be relying on a PDF of ATC¢s Thru-Hikers¢ Companion for detailed information and an app on my iPhone called Guthook¢s AT Guide, but I want to have something in paper in case I either lose or break my iPhone.  It¢s been an unusually warm fall here in Burlington, but winter will be here soon enough. Come April, I¢ll be chomping at the bit to fly south to warmer climes and the start of my thru-hike!