Date: 2005-04-21
From: Rockfish Gap

To: Calf Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 6.7
Weather: scattered clouds

Today's update on my recuperation: I had my one-week check up following last Thursday's knee surgery, and everything seems to be going well. The good news is that I've got reasonably good movement in the knee and it's healing well. The bad news is that both the femur and the tibia showed evidence of arthritis, with places where the outer covering of the bone has been worn away, thus causing me pain when the bone sort of grates on its opposite number instead of moving smoothly and flawlessly in place. The good doctor was able to smooth out the rough spots, but frankly it looks like it is only a matter of time before I will need a joint replacement. The relevant question, of course, is whether or not I will be able to complete my through-hike before that becomes necessary! So I'm looking at basically two scenarios: (a) get back to the trail and finish the hike this year; or (b) restart my hike, and go as far as I can on what's left of my current joint, and then do the joint replacement, and finish up next year. I am encouraged by the knowledge that one of my hiker buddies, Nu-B, had his knee replaced last year, and is out there this year as one of the leaders of "M Company". He hikes slowly, and got an early start each day to cover the number of miles needed, but other than that his knee was not a problem. I also happened to get one of those information bulletins in the mail this week from my local hospital which cited all kinds of recent additions to their facility, one of which was a brand new, 11 bed joint replacement center. I wonder if someone is trying to tell me something....In any event, I have been moving about this afternoon with my best knee brace (thanks again, Phoenix!) and without using even one of my crutches. I'm going to be taking it easy still for awhile, but I will definitely begin now to start my rehabilitation process and see what I can do. I will keep you all posted via journal entries, so, like - stay tuned!Ok, now back to my previous hiking - starting with the first day of my summer of 2003 hike of the Shenandoah National Park.I had done the planning for this venture as carefully as I could, using what I'd learned from my shakedown cruise from Harpers Ferry to Snickers Gap. While I was on vacation for the whole month of August, my hiking buddy (Spook) only had a week for the hike so we planned to do the 104 miles in 8 days -- Saturday through Saturday, allowing for one extra day if needed. Knowing that we'd need to drop my car at the north end of the park and then drive all the way to the other end to start our hike north, I allowed for a late start and a relatively modest first day - only about 7 miles from the park entrance to the first shelter - Calf Mountain.Everything went essentially as planned, and we began our hike on Saturday, August 9 at about 11 am. We took the obligatory photos in front of the SNP park sign, said goodbye to Spooks wife and son, and set off up the trail. It was pretty much what we expected, but I'm afraid I had a slight advantage over my hiking partner, not only because of my 20 mile hike a couple of weeks earlier, but also because I'd just come off my family's "beach week" at Rehobath, during which I had been running 8-10 miles a day, and thus was in pretty good shape. Still, given the heat and humidity of a typical August day, with much of the trail uphill during the five hours it took us to get to the shelter, we were both pretty much whupped by the time we arrived. And, just to make things even more interesting, it clouded up as the day wore on so we arrived just in advance of a thunder storm. When we got to the Calf Mountain Shelter I thought at first that it was unoccupied, but then became aware of someone sleeping on the "upper shelf" of the sleeping area. He woke up as we were off-loading our packs and changing into camp shoes, and turned out to be one of the wierdest characters I have met in my 360 miles of hiking the AT. Frankly, we were never sure how much it was his obviously inebriated condition, and how much he was simply a crazy old coot, but one could pretty much hear the old duling banjo's playing in the background.... It probably didn't help that this is one of the older shelters on the trail, rather dark and dank in the best of conditions, and even spookier with all of the thunder and with the rain beating down on the old tin roof. He told us he was from the south, Louisiana if memory serves, and had a really pronounced southern drawl which, together with slurring his words, made it pretty of hard for us to understand what he was saying. Which didn't seem to matter much to him, in part because it was never very clear whether he was talking to us or to himself or to someone else that we just couldn't see. He told us he'd been there for several days, and complained bitterly about having gone into town and then not having been able to get a ride back to the trailhead. He must have carried quite a bit of booze with him, however, as he still had several mason jars of a clear liquid lined up against one side of the shelter, and it was not H2O. Why no one would give him a ride was beyond us.....Two things stuck in our minds about this guy, so much so that, even today, all either Spook or I have to say to the other is one or two words, and it puts us both right back into that shelter scenario in a heart beat. The first was his preoccupation with whether or not various people -- mostly famous people, but he inquired about us as well -- had been bottle-fed or breast-fed as infants. I had to confess that I could not recall, but I'm not sure he heard me as he went on to rant about various national politicians, most of whom he was quite sure had been deprived of their mother's own milk and that this was the chief reason they were so obviously screwed up. The other was the way he pronounced his most favorite word, making what I had always thought was one sylable come out like three: Die-aaaaaa-yaaaaaam. Did I mention he was really weird?Afterwards, Spook and I agreed that if either of us had been hiking alone, we'd have moved on rather than spend the night in the shelter with such a weird guy. We just would not have felt safe. As it was, both of us slept with kind of one ear open, and thus did not get as good a nights sleep as we might have liked. Overall, however, it was not a bad first day on the trail, and we had stuck with our plan so far, even if it was only the first of eight days. The most notable thing to me was how much water I had taken on that day - both my 100 ounce camelback bladder AND my 32 ounce Nalgene jar in only 7 miles. (On my first hike, I'd done more than 10 miles with just my camelback.) It had been hot and humid, however, and mostly uphill, and I just tend to sweat like crazy under those conditions. Fortunately, I'd managed to keep a reasonable balance in water in and water out, so I wasn't in too bad a shape. My main problem was my feet, which had developed a couple of small blisters. I patched them up as best I could, filtered water, cooked dinner, and set up my tent. Since there were just the three of us in the shelter, and Spook and I had the lower shelf all to ourselves, and given the fact that it was still raining, we set up our tents in the shelter. As soon as it was dark, I heard the shelter mice drop down from their hiding places and scurry about looking for food, but I soon fell asleep, safe inside my tent. I was already looking forward to what the next day might bring. Stay tuned,Longhaul