Date: 2008-08-03
From: cloud pond shelter

To: cloud pond shelter
Miles today: 0.0

oops. an unintended zero day. gobbles chafed really, really bad yesterday. it was/is ugly. he really didn't want to hike 23 miles or 17 miles even with that kind of pain.also working against our desire to leave, is the fact that today's weather was/is CRAP. we woke up at midnight to a blast of lightning and thunder that was so close that it shook the shelter. it woke all of us up. it continued to pour for a couple of hours, and then just tapered off to a steady, light, soaking kind of rain for the rest of the night and into the morning. it's hard to leave when it's wet and cold outside the shelter, and you are warm and dry inside the shelter. we are all sick of hiking in the rain. so given the yucky weather, and gobbles's chafing misery, we decided to zero, so that gobble could heal up.my sister keeps asking me if i am excited that i am almost done. all i can say is - YES. almost done...almost done... excited... yes... excited...i haven't done anything today, except chat with the guys, look at the maps, talk to my wife for a few minutes, and nap. i tried to see if we could still get to katahdin on the 7th, but that isn't going to happen, unless we all somehow develop the ability to do 3 thirty mile days in a row. ha ha ha ha ha. while some people can do that (thud, trust-me), i am not one of them. i still have to do the chairback mountains and go up and over whitecap, and that will be far enough for tomorrow.morale is low... we all just want to be done, and this last 100 miles seems pointless. actually, we all think the a.t. should have ended at pinkham notch in the whites, and finished on a high note, rather than send us through maine, which for us, has been horrible. plus, we lost snake-eyes and knuckles and bleach.so anyway, we can't get to katahdin fast enough. a lot of our discussion is focusing on going home, or the drive home, and the other guys re-start at harper's ferry. i can't wait to go home to see my wife, and my dog, and my family and friends. but first, i just want to get over whitecap, so that i will be done with the wet rock scrambles until katahdin. i will deal with the mud and wet boots, because i don't think that will neccesarily kill, main, or somehow else injure me.oh yeah, so i broke another bootlace. left boot again. this time, it broke in two places. this was the bootlace i bought back in andover. how many days did it last? hope this one holds for at least a week. i will need to start tucking them into my boot, now that i lost my gaitor. they were catching on the underbrush yesterday a lot, so that may have been a contributing factor.oh yeah, so bring a machete when you hike in maine, because they don't trim back the plant life adjacent to the trail up here. everyone's shins are all scratched up. i would use my poles to push the branches out of the way of my shins, but they are busy pushing them out of the way of my face.we have one new person come in to the shelter, so there is still one spot open for another hiker. i feel guilty hogging the shelter like this, but i'm not leaving.okay, time for some more napping, then eating dinner and going to bed. i will try to get up early to get out asap, so i can get to our target shelter before it gets dark.zzzzzzzzzz.....