Date: 2007-06-29
To: Counting down
Miles today: 0.0

This morning we seam-sealed all our new stuff sacks using silicone mixed with a bit of white spirits. I think a small tube of silicone will be traveling with us for the occasional repair. The main use for it will, however, be for foot management. We both tend to get pain just behind the second toe at the metatarsal joint, apparently due to both of us having the second toe longer than the big toe. I have been experimenting with squirting a silicone circle just in the right spot on the underside of my gel footbeds. It sticks tenaciously but is easy to cut off if you want to shift it or remove it. My experiment so far works very well, I can't feel the silicone at all and it completely removes the pressure on that metatarsal joint. The big test is, of course, yet to come, so watch this space. I am always looking for foot management ideas. The most important one is to have big enough boots. Us women don't like to think of our feet as large and most of us have spent many years with our feet squeezed into shoes that are far too small. It is the first lesson you learn when taking up hiking but some of us are slow learners. It took some years and boot-failures for me to learn the size of boot my feet need. I've gone up 3 sizes over the years but I don't think my feet have actually got bigger! I wonder what connection western fashion shoes have with foot-binding in China! I just rang the supermarket in Millinocket to find out if they sell the things we are going to be looking for when we arrive - dry food of various kinds, nuts, dried fruit, particularly flaked potato and if lucky, coconut milk powder (I forgot to ask about that). The person on the phone thought they had it all. In fact he said they have a wide range for people going into the outdoors. I hope this includes people actually carrying what they buy, not stocking up their Personal Off-Road Vehicles. I have lucked onto a great new (for me) telephone service based in NZ called EasyCall. Check it out! It cost 7 cents/minute to make my US calls, not bad. No hidden charges. I looked at my account right after I made the call and there it was. I can use it in the US to call home (14c/min). This is much better than my original plan which was to use my Clear calling card or a Telecom Yabba card - they are both about twice as much per minute and there are surcharges and other nasties. I have yet to find a pitfall with EasyCall. Usually we use Skype to ring overseas but lately the call quality has been patchy. EasyCall says it does not use the internet (true as far as I can make out) so the quality is not affected by internet traffic volumes or meddling by telecoms companies. We are waiting for my sister-in-law to arrive. They were supposed to be here yesterday, but didn't show up. They live in Oman, so we only see them once a year when they come out to see their 3 kids, all of whom now live in NZ. They will be freezing, as winter has finally arrived here and it is raining outside and quite miserable, though not too cold. In Millinocket it is 80oF right now, so we will get a big fright when we arrive there. I've just had my hair cut so am chilly around the ears and neck. Well, enough rambling on here. I am going to make a bread bag for all the loaves of bread I plan to make while on the trail.