Date: 2015-10-21
To: Time, motivation, and allergies
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: scattered clouds

Lately I've felt a bit lost in time. I know the days are passing (my hike countdown app says I have only 131 days until my apartment lease runs out!) but i barely feel a change day-to-day. November is only a week and a half away but honestly I wouldn't bat an eye if I woke up tomorrow and my calendar assured me that it was still only July. To be fair, these weird lingering 70-degree temperatures do make it hard to believe that it's autumn already, but I think my sense of time is skewed because of more than just the weather. Everything feels like it's going so fast, but so slow at the same time. I have no idea how to explain it! I'm continually looking forward to February/March and the start of my adventure, but I'm also clinging to the remaining time I have left with friends here before I leave. I don't know where I'll be living in a year (hopefully the trail will help me decide where to go and what to do!) so it seems extra important to savor friendships and time with people now. I felt a bit like this between graduation from high school and the beginning of college - I wanted to spend every minute with my friends just enjoying New Hampshire before I left for a new state and a new college life and possibly never seeing them again. As it turns out, we all stayed great friends and I see them all the time, even ten years later and spread out across the country, but that summer in limbo felt similar to this pre-hike time. Does anyone else feel like that?To get back into active hike preparation I decided to plan a 'practice hike' during the second week of November. Because I live in a state with no mountains (well, it has hills that locals call "mountains", but this New England girl doesn't buy it for a second!) it won't be a true hike. Call it more of a... gear test? Basically, I'll go wander in the woods for a while and set up a campsite and check out sleeping bag warmth, cooking gear, pack weight, water purification, etc - all from the safety of a patch of trees near a friend's house. I hope it gets cold enough to really test my layering and gear choices. I do plan to try a few nights camping in snow cover so I know what to expect in terms of preventing damp gear and staying warm through below-freezing nights, but there won't be snow in my area until late December at the earliest.In other news, I have allergies. Every morning I wake up to plugged nostrils and annoying sniffling. I take the equivalent of Zyrtec when it gets too bad but it doesn't seem to be helping much lately. I wouldn't make a big deal about it except that I worry a bit about allergy attacks while out on the trail. It's easy enough to just blow my nose when I'm at home but there's no way that I want to be wasting precious toilet paper on boogers. Maybe i'll carry a bandanna specifically for clearing my nose and haul around allergy pills for when it's bad. The weird thing is, I don't tend to sneeze when I'm outside - only inside - so maybe it'll be a moot point. I suppose I could just be allergic to dust or perfumes that people use (I know I'm sensitive to scented stuff like detergent and candles). That would be the best case! No fancy air fresheners on the trail!