Date: 2008-06-21
From: Brooklyn, NY

To: Manchester Center, VT
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: few clouds

We have made it to bustling New York City. Or "Outer Slope, Brooklyn" as Nina calls it. There has been no shortage of trail excitement the last week so here goes! We finished up our slack-pack marathon from Tupperware's parents' house in Stroudsburg and got dropped off in lovely Milford, Pennsylvania for a quick detour before setting back out on the trail. Those of you familiar with Milford (that would be none of you)know that it's claim to fame is Grey Towers National Historic Landmark, aka the ancestral home of Gifford Pinchot. Brent and I can't pass up a good ol' ancestral home, ya know? Actually...we went back with the hopes of seeing some of my former co-workers from the summer that I worked at Grey Towers. We showed up pretty late though and couldn't track anyone down, so we did what any smart hiker would do - we stealthed. Stealthing in trail-speak is the act of putting up a tent somewhere where you're not supposed to, like private property, or in our case, federal property. We didn't set up camp until after dark, and we broke it all down by early morning, so all was well and we set off to have breakfast with the aforementioned former co-workers who we eventually got in touch with. My old boss, Beth, gave us a ride back to the trail and we went on our merry way, with a firm plan on how to get to Brooklyn by Friday. As with all trail plans, it didn't take long for the trail gods to throw a wrench in the works. This wrench came in the form of a guy named Butch who we ran across at a road crossing in New Jersey. He actually flagged us down and asked if we were planning to go into his lovely hometown of Unionville, NY. "Why no," we replied, "we're on a strict schedule to get to Brooklyn by Friday so we can visit with my dear brother and his lovely wife," or something to that effect. "Are you sure? I can take you to the mayor's house where there's FREE FOOD," he responded with a twinkle in his eyes. "Well, if there's going to be food...maybe we can stop for just a little while." So we climbed into Butch's car and arrived at the mayor of Unionville's house where, not only was there food, there was free laundry, a shower and a bunk room. We were entertained by the mayor and his entourage over a hot breakfast and then kindly given a slack-pack 12 miles up the trail. Which is about ten miles short of what we needed to do that day to get to Brooklyn. Anywho, the bunk room was full by the time we got back from our hike and we got to run back into Twiggy, Spoc, Hearts, Loafy, Root and Cricket. All was well and we set back out the next day with a new, more aggressive, plan to get to Brooklyn. We managed to get in two more good days of hiking before the trail gods threw us another curve ball. This one in the form of the scariest thunder and lightning storm I've ever witnessed. Probably because a smart person would stay inside. So we ended up trying to wait it out at a shelter only to end up staying the night because the rain would not let up. Unfortunately, the shelter was 12 miles short of where we needed to get that day. We were starting to run out of options, so we were forced to do something I never thought we would do, a 28 mile day! We did it though, and felt like total trail studs, that is except for a pain in my right butt cheek that had been nagging me for a few days. I thought I would have no problem falling asleep after such a huge day of hiking, but my bum wasn't going to give up that easy. The pain became more and more intense as the night wore on and I started to feel feverish. When the sun finally came up the next morning, we rushed to get out of there and called ahead to Tucker and Nina to see about getting a doctor's appointment in the city. We managed to get here by early afternoon and went to the emergency room. It didn't take the ER doctor two seconds to look at my butt and say "Spider bites. Infected." By this point, I am sobbing uncontrollably from the pain and pretty much begging them to amputate my butt cheek. No such luck though, the infection is still too deep for them to cut out so they gave me a couple of antibiotics, and some Vicodin. (Tucker was shocked to hear that I was prescribed Vicodin. Apparently ER docs in NY do not prescribe narcotics regularly because so many drug addicts are always trying to come in and complain of pain just to get a fix. I think they just wanted to get the crazy crying girl out of their hair.) So here we are, holed up in Outer Slope, waiting out the butt infection that will hopefully clear up soon. So if you see a spider around, kill it - kill it for me.