Date: 2003-07-27
From: Hikers Welcome Hostel

To: New York City
Miles today: 0.0

I limped out of bed early this morning and went and had breakfast with everybody that was hiking out. Then I sat around for a few hours to try and figure out what I was going to do and try and make plans. Pack Rat had several shuttles this morning. I didn¢t want to interfere with that or bother him so I waited until about 10 o¢clock when he got back and finished and I told him that I was going to go ahead and get off the Trail and that I thought it was in my best interest and the most logical thing to do and that I would need a ride to a bus station somewhere so I could find a way home. He expressed to me once again that I did not have to leave. I could stay as long as I wanted to and that in fact if I wanted to I could stay there and help him run the hostel while I was recovering. I took all that into consideration and I told him that I thought the important thing was to get home and recover. I need to possibly see a doctor and possibly get my knee MRI¢d to see what kind of damage I had done. I told him to take his time but in the next couple of days I¢d like to get a shuttle, a ride from him, to get a bus to go home. In the meantime I had also called Mike and Estee that morning and talked to them. I told them if I could arrange it that I would come into Staten Island and stay with them for a couple of days if they could get me to a train station and put me on a train back home or whatever. I asked Estee to look into airfares for me just in case there was something cheap. By 11:00 or 11:30 Pack Rat came back in and told me that I was in luck if I wanted to leave today¢¦I could leave today. Somebody had called from Hanover and wanted a ride back to the hostel. He said he would provide a ride for free to Hanover if I wanted to. The only thing was we had to be in Hanover by 12:30 to catch the bus that I needed to take. That would be it for the day. So I very, very quickly got 2 cardboard boxes from him and dumped all my gear except for my jacket and my waddles (?) and some candy bars and put it all in the 2 boxes. I threw all the other stuff into the 2 boxes and I asked him to mail it for me back to Florida. I gave him extra money for that. I settled up with him on the cash sheet. He was charging a ridiculously low amount so I gave him some extra to make sure everything was covered and in a space of 40 minutes I had taken care of everything and gotten dressed and we were in the car hauling ass to Hanover. In Hanover he dropped me off at the bus station ,on the bus bench, where the buses came through. I picked up a bus there from the Vermont line. It took me about a 40 minute ride to White Junction, Vermont where there was a real bus station. I went in and purchased a ticket to get to Port Authority on Staten Island. The bus was going to be leaving in about an hour and 15 minutes so I went over to the AYCE Chinese restaurant and ordered a Long Trail beer and hit the AYCE Chinese food and waited for the bus to get in. The bus ride itself was pretty much uneventful. We made numerous stops. From White Junction, Vermont we stopped at a couple of towns in Massachusetts to pick up other people and Hartford, CT. The whole trip took a little over 8 hours. That 8 hours was really hell on me. It was really hard to sit down. The knees were just killin me. It was one of those things where it hurt more to sit down than it did to walk. Got in to the Port Authority and called Mike. This was about 9:00 at night. He told me to walk out of the station and I did ¢¦onto 9th street. I walked down to 40th and he picked me up there with Ariel (Estee¢s daughter). Then we headed back to Staten Island. We stopped at Taco Bell and grabbed some food then headed back. Then we sat around and talked until late in the night.