Date: 2017-09-22
To: Home
Miles today: 0.0

My transition to post-hike life has had a complication: I have a broken right foot.  I¢ve gone from walking all day to walking only short distances with crutches and not driving at all.  This is not how I hoped things would be when I got home; however, it gives me an excuse to do some intense resting.   And I am very tired.  After our final group dinner, Bill, Arlene, Lizzie, and I got a hotel room in Millinocket.  In the morning we stopped for coffee at Dunkin Donuts before getting on the road.  There Lizzie looked under the van and discovered that the muffler wasn¢t connected to the exhaust system.  Several days earlier it had come loose, and Warren had wired it up with a coat hanger.  Apparently he just wired it up so that it wouldn¢t fall off but didn¢t reconnect it to the exhaust system.  We headed out with all the windows rolled down so as to avoid gassing ourselves with carbon monoxide.   The first sizable town we came to was Dover-Foxcroft, the town where I lived from ages 5 to 13.  We tried several places to get the muffler repaired, but it was Saturday morning and places were about to close for the weekend.  Finally we stopped at an auto parts store.  We bought some pipe and clamps, and Bill used them to reconnect the muffler to the exhaust pipe.  The auto parts store folks were very helpful and lent him all the tools he needed.  (One had grown up near where I live in West Virginia and moved to Dover, while I started out in Dover and ended up near where he lived in West Virginia.)  While Bill was working, Lizzie and I walked toward downtown.  It felt very strange to be in my old hometown without having human connections there.  We didn¢t walk far because my foot hurt too much to do much walking.  We bought sandwiches and chips at the grocery store so we wouldn¢t have to stop for lunch.  By the time we were back on the road it was already noon. It was a sunny, beautiful day, and we enjoyed the ride across Maine.  The maples were turning red, but most of the other color changes had not yet begun.  We were to meet Lizzie¢s dad in Gorham, New Hampshire, and we got there right on time at 3:30.  We¢d been fantasizing about having ice cream at the little ice cream stand beside the moose statue, but it was closed.  So we went to a convenience store and got ice cream there.  It was an odd experience going into a convenience store and not being obligated to buy high-calorie snacks.  I realized I was now free to just buy a cup of coffee and leave.  My first step into post-hike eating - no more force feeding myself.  (At the breakfast in the hotel that morning I realized that I now can go back to picking one thing to eat instead of taking one of everything.)We loaded all of Lizzie¢s and Arlene¢s bins and gear into Lizzie¢s dad¢s car and said goodbye.  I cried saying goodbye to Arlene.  Lizzie will likely end up in Asheville, NC, which is within easy driving distance, but Arlene is headed home to southern California, a long way from my home.  She¢s facing some difficult problems, and I feel bad that I won¢t be there to provide moral support.  Bill and I continued on, making a short stop in Hanover, New Hampshire.  We had planned to get to Waterford, Connecticut that night to visit some friends of his, but we only made it as far as Brattleboro, Vermont.  The next day, we arrived in Waterford at 11:00 AM, planning to leave at 2:00.  We went out for lunch, and Bill¢s friends took us on a driving tour of Waterford¢s downtown and waterfront on the Thames River.  It was 2:00 when we got back to their house. Bill wanted to spend more time with his friends.  I was overtaken by a strong need to sleep.  I laid down and napped, and we didn¢t get on the road till 5:00.  Several hours into the drive, in New York, the transmission started slipping (which it¢s been doing all summer).  Then we heard a screeching noise and smelled something burning.  We pulled into a rest area for Bill to look under the hood.  When he was done, the van wouldn¢t start.  We called AAA and Warren and decided to sleep in the van for the night.  When I got back from brushing my teeth, the van was running.  We went to the next exit and got a hotel room for the night.  In the morning Warren came and traded vehicles with us.  He had been hiking in New York and was not far away.  Bill and I headed out in the red van.  We got to Abingdon, Virginia a bit before 11:00 PM, where Bill¢s girlfriend was waiting for him.  In the morning we delivered the red van to Warren¢s house and headed home.  Bill and Jan live in Portsmouth, Ohio, so it was only about half an hour out of their way to travel by way of West Virginia.  They dropped me off at my house around 3:30.  The next day, Wednesday, I went to Med Express to get my foot x-rayed.  It was still very swollen and sore.  The x-rays showed a physeal (growth plate) fracture of the third metatarsal of the right foot.  That¢s the long bone that connects the hind bones of the foot to the phalanges of the toes.  The doctor put a splint on it, gave me crutches, told me not to drive, and referred me to an orthopedist.  Looking back, I can see that this injury was in the works for a while.  For probably the last month of the hike I occasionally had a breathtakingly sharp pain when my foot twisted a certain way on rocks.  The pain was bad, but it usually went away after a minute or two.  And it was infrequent, maybe twice a week.  Occasionally I had a similarly excruciating pain in that toe in bed.  Coming down Katahdin after finishing the hike, we came down a large, steep boulder field.  On one rock that was high, I had to let myself jump two or three feet after letting myself down with my arms as far as I could reach.  I landed quite hard on both feet.  I now think this is what finally pushed the injury over the edge into a full-blown fracture.  I¢ll see an orthopedist either today or Monday and will know more then.  My sister Diane and her husband Dave are coming to visit today and will stay for a week.  The plan was for us to hang out and them to pamper me.  The pampering will be a lot heavier duty now that I can¢t drive.  My friend Morph advised me to do nothing but rest for two weeks.  It looks like I have no other option.