Date: 2017-08-21
From: Rock n Sole hostel

To: Highway 501
Miles today: 23.8

Today was a green tunnel day of the kind we'd been warned about for the middle part of the AT but haven't yet experienced. But that was ok, because it made today a day to clock miles rather than marvel at the views. Since I didn't start until a leisurely 9am and with the longest day in recent weeks ahead of me, this was a good thing.As had been the case for most of the past few weeks, the trail followed a long, flat and most featureless ridge. After a few views as I climbed up out of Port Clinton and then again at a lookout in the first half hour, there was nothing to see other than the trees either side.It was so flat that in the absence of anything elevated to send the trail over unnecessarily -- one of the AT's classic PUDs (pointless ups and downs) -- the trail had to resort to a PDU (pointless down and up) to inflict unnecessary exertion into the process.Even with that, I don't think there was a climb of more than a couple of hundred feet. Even better, there seemed to be some hikers directly in front of me because I wasn't dining on the usual spider smorgasbord.Today was also the eclipse day. I'd had mixed luck with eclipses in the past. I traveled to one in China in 2010 but it rained all day. An ocular eclipse in Tanzania last year was also cloudy. I'd thought about travelling into the zone of totality this year but didn't want to jinx everyone else's experience. Instead I had another partial eclipse experience, like the one of had in Nepal in 1995, which was akin to wearing a pair of sunglasses.I had two deadlines. One was dusk, which in these increasingly equinoxial days was close to 7.30pm, and the other was to get back in time to ensure I didn't miss out on the latest round of Jodi's exceptional home-cooked meals. Since I was slackpacking and had had a fairly easy day yesterday, I hoped to be done in time for the nominal 6pm dinner time, but I was also carrying my headlamp in case the terrain proved harder than expected.But with little to distract me from cruising the miles and with northbounders being increasingly few in number, I managed to knock off nearly 24 miles in a little under nine hours.For the final two hours of this, the few other people on the trail told me that I was only a few minutes behind Dirt, Sriracha and Sweetblood. Even going at about three and a half miles an hour, I couldn't quite catch them.Instead I found myself racing against the rumbles of an approaching thunderstorm, and arrived at highway 501 as the skies looked truly threatening.I sent a quick text to Craig, telling him of my arrival and hoping that he got to the pass before the storm did.The storm arrived first, but only in the form of a short sharp shower that lasted barely a minute. Craig arrived soon after and we had the chance to chat some more about his state trooper days, which included him telling me how he once broke up an Amish prostitution ring."Really?" I replied, in unveiled surprise."Yep," he replied with a straight face. "This woman was having up to six Mennonite..."I am happy to say that the quality of Jodi's cooking was in reverse proportion to the quality of her husband's jokes!Life is good.AT fact of the day: When I passed a campsite early on today, I encountered Trouble. He was yet another repeat hiker of the AT, having thru-hiked a few years ago and then having done a yoyo. But like the others -- Grandpa, Mooseburger etc -- they hadn't experienced the other trails before returning once more to the AT. As Trouble explained it, no two hikes were the same and he gave the famous epigram not being able to step in the same river twice. For me it was like going to an amazing restaurant and ordering the same thing every time. Your macaroni cheese might not be exactly like last night's, but it's going to be pretty damn close!