Date: 2017-08-18
To: Troy, NY
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

TopBunk and I woke up this morning, had a delicious breakfast of eggs, bacon, pancakes, and pie, and then hit the road by 8am. We drove over towards Gorham, NH, passing the large windfarm that I had seen in the distance from several mountain tops along the trail and the sky opened up on us, sheets of rain pounding the windshield and turning the road into a river. I know that driving amplifies how intense rain seems, but this would still be pretty gnarly to be out hiking in, although as long as there weren't any large mountains in my path for the day I'd have already accepted the fact that I was as wet as I could possibly be, that the rain couldn't do anything more to me, moved on, and probably still had a pretty good day hiking.We stopped at a small cafe in Gorham so that I could catch up on my journaling but the wifi didn't actually work so we ended up piling back into the car heading west. We did make a quick stop at mcdonalds (a hiking habit that I'm going to have to work on breaking) for lunch in town and then headed out, passing just north of the White mountains. I'm sure the Whites would be quite an adventure on a day like today... shrouded in swirling clouds whipping past in the wind, perhaps like the morning of the day that I summited Washington. From my vantage point I could see the clouds flowing around and between the mountains, their whispy tendrils emphasizing the contours of the land.We got rained on many more times on the way over into VT but thankfully the weather cleared as we got to the Ben and Jerry's factory. We pulled up into a much large parking lot than I had anticipated, walked up to the factory, and were greeted by a veritable zoo of people milling about, an insane line of people waiting to get ice cream, a shorter line of people waiting to get tickets for a tour, and many more wandering around somewhere in between those activities. The TV behind the desk announced that the next tour with spots available was for an hour and a half from now...And we turned around and left. Call it culture shock, but there were just too many people around for me to spend an hour and a half waiting for a tour, which in and of itself was much too long to spend in my opinion anyways. So we hopped back in the car and headed for Rutland, VT, getting rained on several more times along the way. At the state park in Killington I caught sight of a white blaze on the side of the road as we drove past and soon enough we passed the Long Trail Inn (the old AT/LT crossing) and then shortly after the new AT/LT crossing as we headed down to town. I was originally planning on spending the night at the yellow deli, but was talked out of it/decided it was a bad idea. Its hard to tell how much of the good time I had there was due to the people that I was with and how much was the place itself. More than likely I'd look for something similar to my last experience here and be disappointed when the good time I had this time didn't quite measure up to last time. I also didn't quite know how I felt about using a hiker amenity. For the past 4.5months I've identified as a hiker... a thru hiker, and that title and that identity gave me leave to do things that fit in the with hiker culture... grow my beard out, stay at hiker hostels, be dirty and not shower. But right now, though I still know all the slang and have had all the same experiences and feel like I still fit it, mentally I'm not a hiker. I finished my hike. I made it. Like it or not I'm back in the real world and have to adjust to that. And I'm not really sure what identity takes the place of hiker right now. At some point, presumably I'll go back to what I used to be... engineer, dancer, outdoorsman, but right now I'm neither there nor a hiker. It's a weird identity limbo that I didn't anticipate and kinda bummed me out most of the day.Anyways, we made it over to Troy, NY, stopped in at the cookie factory (a local bakery) to pick up some treats and then headed downtown and got dinner at Dinosaur BBQ. TopBunk and I split some poutine and a pulled pork platter and then headed over to a cheap hotel we had found to veg for the rest of the night.So that's that, the first zero of the rest of my life.