Date: 2015-02-01
From: Moonachie, NJ

To: Moonachie, NJ
Miles today: 0.0

Wow it's 2015 already, April 1, 2012 was my last journal entry and believe me a lot as happened in my life since then. Back in April 2012 when I was doing warm-up hikes so I could return to thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, I had no way of knowing my life was about to take a dramatic turn. But back then, I had plenty of time for trail work and hiking. Life was great and I was looking forward to returning to the trail. In March, I helped my youngest sister move in with our mother and her companion Rus, as a live-in aide. At that time in her life our mother, who was 91, didn't drive, couldn't cook and had severe dementia.  Her companion Rus, at 89 had several recent heart attacks and was dealing with his own version of dementia. Their life took a dramatic turn when Rus lost his driving priviledges due to his failing health. Now stuck at home Rus became meaner. He seemed to relish in picking on Ceal for just about everything, even blamed her for over reacting to her illness, she wasn¢t over reacting Ceal had stage 4 ovarian cancer and was fighting her own battles to survive.  By May it became clear to me that mom and Rus were making life too stressful for Ceal, so I hired some home health aides to take care of them and helped Ceal move into an apartment of her own. Now it's the end of June and I was getting ready to drive down and pick up mom & Rus and bring them up to the lake house for a much needed vacation. After their vacation I was going back to my thru-hike. On the morning I was to drive down and pick them up, Ceal called and told me mom was in the emergency room at the local hospital. It seems mom¢s stomach cramps had gotten too painful for her to travel.  So I threw a bag of clothes in the car and headed down to the hospital, about 2 hours away. My plan was to check in on mom and then go to my grand-daughters dance recital, then return back to the house and take mom and Rus to the lake.  When I got to the hospital mom seemed okay and was waiting for a few test results to see what was wrong. So I rushed over to the dance recital. Returning to the hospital 5 hours later, I was informed that the test results still didn't point to what was wrong so the hospital admitted her. To make a long story short, over the next 30+ days I was by her side 24/7 while mom and I went in and out of five different hospitals trying to get a correct diagnosis of her problem and save her life. In the end mom never returned back home and died of ovarian cancer July 28, 2012. The stress on Ceal while at mom¢s house and mom¢s passing was just too much for her to bear and she died September 22, 2012, she was 55 years old and the youngest of my 3 sisters. It was a very sad time for me. While all this was going on I developed a breast tumor and had to deal with that surgery. It was benign but boy that was a lot of stress I could have done without. Back to mom, Rus went to live with his family, I was the executor of mom¢s will so it was my responsibility to handle all her finances and get her house ready for sale and sold.  Gerrie was instrumental in getting the house cleared out by donating all of the clothes and furniture to charitable organizations. The house was completely painted and all new carpeting. All that work took until the end of October. Finally, things were calming down so Gerrie and a few friends went on a relaxing all girls weekend vacation to Deleware. Gabby & Lucy, our 2 dogs and I stayed at mom¢s house and listed it for sale.A big storm developed so the girls vacation was cut short. Gerrie and the girls decided to return home to Moonachie and weather the storm there. Having just listed mom¢s home for sale, I decided to keep the dogs with me and stay there during the storm, just in case there was any storm damage. Little did I know that Super Storm Sandy was going to destroy much of the Jersey shoreline and for the first time in history, the storm devastated the entire town of Moonachie NJ. My home and all of my neighbors homes were completely flooded. In fact the whole town was covered by about 3 feet of brackish water. No one was prepared, the town was never flooded before, never! Mom¢s house - Zero damage. In Moonachie, Gerrie was safe but our house took a heavy hit. We live in a very low lying area, about 5¢ above sea level and our house is quite old, probably built around nineteen twenty. Because of the high water table in the area, our basement only goes down about 1 foot and the rest sticks up out of the ground. This is a good thing because that meant that the damage was limited to items in the basement, garage and tool shed and no damage at all to the main living areas. Many of the newer homes in my area are built on slabs so their main living area was totally destroyed. For the next 7 months Gerrie and I worked tirelessly to clean and rebuild. Yes we lost our boiler, hot water heater, washer, dryer, air compressor, lawn mower, wood chipper, snow blower, leaf blower, all of my electric hand tools, several computers, and on and on it¢s a long list. Another real sad time in my life.By the spring of 2013, I was ready to get back to the trail and I did but only as a trail maintainer and builder. No long distance hiking yet. That summer in addition to many weekend trail crew work trips, I went on 3, week-long trail building work trips where we would hike into the back country, setup camp and do our trail building work from there. Trail building by day, sleeping in our tents at night. In November of 2013, Gerrie and I started getting the lake house ready for sale and by June 2014 we were ready to list it. We built that house in 1990 and were very sad to say good bye, but we will always have many fond memories to cherish. We were very fortunate and it sold quickly and we were out of there by the end of July. There was a lot of stuff to move to NJ and we just put the boxes in piles everywhere. We are still emptying boxes. In 2014 I went on another week long work trip and continued to do a lot of trail work. Slowly I began to think about returning to long distance hiking. I have been a hiker for many years but never gave it a thought as to who builds and maintains all these hiking trails. It wasn¢t until I met several trail crews on my 2011 north bound thru-hike attempt that I saw a need I could fill. Since then I have become an active member of the NYNJTC Long Distance Trails Crew. I have made many trail work videos (www.pikere.com) and photo albums (http://nynjtc-ldtc.org). I am healthy, feel great and currently plan to hike the rest of the AT in New York and Connecticut in the spring of 2015, then go back to Waynesboro, Va. in June to hike north along the Appalachian Trail to Port Clinton PA. and beyond maybe even make it to Maine.So that¢s what I¢ve been up to.Stay tuned¢¦There will be more hiking journals coming your way.Nite AllPita