Date: 2005-05-10
From: PennMar

To: Home
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

Greetings Assembled Eyes! My appologies for the long delay in updating my journal. The reasons are two-fold: first, I've been trying very hard to stay busy with productive activities (cleaning out the basement, the garage, re-landscaping the front yard, waxing and detailing my car, etc.) in order to keep my mind off of all that I am missing on the trail, and second, it has -- quite honestly -- been hard for me to approach my journal, since I will inevitably start by reading all of my friends journals, and that makes me incredibly sad. I am happy for all of them, of course, or at least the ones still out there hiking north, but it hurts a lot that I am not with them. Now for the update on my own circumstances. There is mostly good news, as my knee is finally beginning to get back its full strength. This damage to the cartilidge has been repaired, but the surgery itself represented a certain trauma to the relevant parts of my knee, and then there is the remaining problem of the arthritic condition (that's where the cartilidge is so thin that the ends of the bones begin to rub together when I walk), so I'm going to have to be continuously cautious about the pressure I put on my right knee. The bad news is that the stress fracture has taken it's own sweet time to heal, which in turn delayed my rehabing of the knee. By now I had planned to be doing three-day hikes on the AT in Pennsylvania, but that has not happened. The best I've done so far is a five mile hike on the AT from Snickers Gap to Cressent Rock and back with a day pack. That was last Saturday and it went extremely well. It turns out I haven't completely lost my hiker legs! And the real test was after I got back, and how much swelling and pain I might encounter. Both, I'm happy to say, were minimal. Today is the final test. I leave in a few minutes for a seven mile hike over a much tougher section of the trail. Snickers Gap south into the "roller coaster" and back. And with a full pack. Assuming that goes well, there is just one other check on my readiness to return to the trail and that will be this afternoon at 4:30 when I return to my Doctor's office for an X-ray of the stress fracture. It's been feeling good recently, so I'm optimistic, but I need to see the calcium build-up in the relevant location to know that it has healed properly.In my usual, optimistic fashion, I am assuming all of today will go well, so I've bought my bus ticket for Trail Days in Damascus, Virigina, and leave out Thursday morning. I can't wait to see all of my hiking friends, most of whom will be there. The festivities go on through Sunday, at which point I will be leaving to head south. My intrepid journal transcriber, the irrepressible Shelly Hale, will be giving me a ride back down to Fontana Dam where I will overnight Sunday night with my good friends Jeff and Nanch Hoch. Then, bright and early Monday morning I plan to pick up where I left off -- heading back across the Fontana Dam and up into the Smokey Mountains. The plan is to hike north, taking it slow and easy, for about six weeks until I need to get off the trail for three weeks of family fun at scout camps and the beach. I'll then get back on the trail Monday, July 18 -- probably at some point far enough north that I can make it to Mount Katahdin by about Labor Day. After that, I'll have two sections to complete: from wherever in Virginina I leave the trail for family fun, and then from the Pennsylvania state line to wherever I start up again in July. And I'll have the entire fall if needed to complete those sections, which would allow me to complete my through hike this year.That assumes, of course, that the knee holds up, and there are certainly no guarantees on that score. As "She-who-knows-me-best" is wont to say: "it is what it is, it will be what it will be." If the knee goes bad, and is just too painful to hike with, well I'll just have to drop off the trail and get it replaced with a new one. That will take several months of rehabilitation, so I'll end up having to finish the trail next year. But trust me, I don't intend to stop until I'm done!Stay tuned - I'll update tomorrow with the results of todays hike and Doctor's appointment. Oh, and please remember, I am eternally grateful to all of you who have keep me in your thoughts and prayers, ans especially those of you who have send me notes and signed my guest book. I can't tell you how important that is to my morale! Keep 'em coming! And we thank you for your interest and your support.Longhaul