Date: 2003-07-02
From: Kent, CT

To: Zero Day
Miles today: 0.0

Zero day. I had to walk long miles to get in to Kent basically two days earlier than I thought I was going to because I wanted to take a zero day off. I was getting a little tired and it had been awhile since I had taken a full zero day. I figured Kent, CT would be a good place. It really, really is not a town to take a zero day in. Kent is an upper crust town. You can tell there is money in this place. The people are very affluent and not really hiker friendly. It¢s not an unfriendly town but they¢re tolerating the hikers because they have to put up with the fact that they are dropping in. They really don¢t go out of their way to try and make you feel comfortable or to try and have a place for you. There is one hotel in town. The companion says they charge $89.00 per room but if you go to get a room there and you tell them you¢re a hiker they want to charge you a $100.00 a night. It¢s also a very artsy town. It¢s a one street town. A little bit extended but for a one street town it¢s very well maintained. Very artsy stores. Very high class place. Very much what you think New England should be like. The really amazing thing is that there are so many beautiful women in this town. A huge concentration. I mean everywhere you walk there are just really good looking women. Anyway, early this morning, I was laying on the floor of the nursery. The nursery was extremely hot at night. Probably like 90 degrees in there and all the windows were open and all the fans were on. Really not some place where you could just get into your sleeping bag. I laid out in the kitchen at the nursery school kind of away from everybody. If I can, I avoid sleeping close to people any more. I don¢t want to wake them up. I don¢t want them to wake me up. I just feel a lot more comfortable. I slept probably 100 feet away from everybody else on the kitchen floor. I laid out my therma rest and then laid out my sleeping bag on top of that. It was really very hot. I woke up about 2:00 in the morning only to find out that the temperature had plummeted. It was actually pretty darn chilly. Even worse than that was I had gotten eaten alive in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. Mosquitoes had gotten into the place and I had been fully exposed all evening in shorts and a short sleeve shirt. I woke up with bites all over me. I got up and put on my night clothes. My long johns. I got a drink of water and got into my sleeping bag. I kind of had a hard time sleeping for the rest of the evening or morning whatever it was. Mainly because I was having to scratch every couple of minutes. I had probably gotten bitten like 30 times. There were a total of 4 thru hikers staying here. People starting making noise really early in the morning. I could hear hikers, specifically Drifter, get up and start packing about a quarter to 5. He was on a mission apparently and was out by 5:30. He made a lot of noise doing it. About the same time he was leaving another hiker, Iron Mike, got up and started moving around too. Then the last guy was a guy whose trail name was Crow, he got up and starting moving around. Flatlander was laying on a bench and he laid there and laid there. He and I were the last ones to get up. We got up and got packed because the pastor told the other guys ( I hadn¢t talked to the pastor yet ) that we had to be out by 8:00 because the nursery opened up. Everyone packed up and we were all out by 7:15. Crow and Iron Mike went down to a little caf© and had coffee. Flatlander and I passed them up running over to the only place in town that served breakfast. It was named Caralee¢s. I ended up having a bacon and cheese omelet and a couple cups of coffee. Flatlander and I sat there for awhile eating breakfast and I guess he took off right after that. I walked down the street to see what else was around. I just kind of roamed around until the post office opened at 8:00. I got my mail drop and found out that Equinox, who was supposed to ship me another backpack, did not make it in time. So, I didn¢t get my replacement backpack. The backpack that I already had from them they had already replaced once and they were going to replace it again because there¢s a defective part in it that they have modified. I ended up sitting in front of the post office for about an hour selecting what food I wanted to take with me and re-packing the rest of the stuff. I hated to do it but I ended up throwing away about 12 of my mail drop food. Since I didn¢t need all the food I didn¢t want to carry it and there was no hiker box. Like I said, the town didn¢t seem to be very hiker friendly. There was no place to put anything that I didn¢t want in a box for other hikers to take. Generally, post offices along the trail have places where you can drop your stuff off and the next guy who comes along can pick and choose what he wants. I got done with that and walked over to the True Value Hardware Store to waste time more than anything. I wanted to find oddball stuff that I had been thinking about for modifications and repairs to different things. You walk for 12 hours a day and you start thinking about little things that you can change or fix or modify to make your life easier. The only thing that I walked out of there with was a red bandana. I had a bandana when I first got started on Springer and it somehow got lost along the way. So, I went ahead and got another one finally. Then I walked down to the outfitter. The place was called Back Country Outfitter. Not a really good outfitter but they had various stuff in there. I played in there for about an hour. Just shopped around and ended up getting a new hydration bag and a new pair of shorts. The shorts I had been wearing were falling off of me. I had lost so much weight that my waist was inches smaller and I couldn¢t keep my shorts on any longer. I basically looked like a clown in a balloon shorts. I looked at the shoes they had there and was tempted to buy some shoes. I¢ve been having so many fits with shoes lately that I¢ve been getting very paranoid with shoes. At that point I decided against it. I walked out with the stuff that I did finally buy and went over to the library which had free online access. I sat there for a couple of hours. I went to Trailjournals.com and read various journals from different people. I got a good idea of where everyone that I had met along the way was at in terms of mileage and location. It¢s really strange how people just start getting strung out. Some people that I had gotten to know very well and that I had hiked with for awhile were now as far as 400 or 500 trail miles behind me making their merry way. Here I was 3 or 4 states away. I also checked different types of shoes online. I¢ve got 720 miles to go and I know because of the type of shoe I¢m wearing, basically running shoes, that I¢m going to end up going through several pairs. I didn¢t want to get stuck at some point with desperately shopping for shoes wherever I had to like I had to back over at Arden, NY. I stayed at the library until a little past noon and then walked back down to the Pasta and Grill and ordered a gorgonzola 12 pound cheeseburger. A real good cheeseburger with fries and coleslaw, a pickle and a Bass Ale draft. I pigged out on that then walked back down to the outfitter again around 2:00. My position with shoes at this point had gotten the best of me and I decided to go back and try out some of the shoes that they had. I ended up selecting another pair of shoes after I had just mailed a pair home. I was once again going to be carrying 2 pairs of sneakers with me. These were a really light pair. I just started roaming around town basically. I stopped at a bakery and had some of their pastries. I walked down to a bar and had a couple of beers and was walking back toward the Episcopalian Church to kind of hang out and there sitting at one of the little sidewalk cafes was Spiderman. Jason¢¦.who I had been told that I had passed.   Another hiker a couple of hours earlier said Jason said to give me the message that I had passed him up and he was now behind me but that he was going to keep going through town and go 10 miles up to a second camp sight. But he had decided apparently to stay in town which is really cool. It¢s been a long time since I¢ve seen him. The last time was, I don¢t know, 400 or 500 miles back just before Big Island, VA. When I got back on the trail one of my goals was to catch up to him. Actually, he was kind of like a benchmark. I felt that if I could catch up to him again, ( he had been 7 days ahead of me when I got back on the trail ), that I was doing well and I was on track. He was fixing to get back on the trail but he was looking for a place to have a beer. I turned around and walked him back to the bar that I had just left. We sat there and had a couple more beers. We got up after a bit¢¦talking a long time about the philosophy of hiking and where we wanted to go with what was going on and how we were going to make it to Maine. I told him at this point that every morning I get up I want to quit. I keep asking myself what the heck I am doing here. I should just go home. At some point, around 5:00 or so, he decided to haul it and get back on the trail. He had a mail drop he wanted to catch the following day and it was a long ways away. 34 miles away. That means he had to make up some time today and walk a long day tomorrow. I walked back to the church. I stopped at the Mobile gas station first. I stocked up on cigarettes and got a half gallon of pistachio ice cream which I took back to the Episcopalian Church. I got into the church to find that four new hikers had come in. One lady that I had briefly met the day before when I was hiking into town at one of the shelters and two other guys that I had never seen before. I offered them all ice cream. We all sat around and had ice cream for awhile then I took all my stuff and headed down to the basement figuring that I could escape the mosquitoes this time. I set up down in the basement and went to sleep until about 10:00 at night. I was a little tired. It was a long day. I got up about 10:00 because I couldn¢t sleep. So, I got up and walked around town for a little while. I ended up going to the Pasta Grill and got a quick bite to eat and walked back to the hostel about 11:30 and here I am ready to go to sleep again.