Date: 2008-12-22
To: Snow!!
Miles today: 0.0

Check Six¢s Thoughts ¢ As I look out the window and see a lot of snow on the ground (about two feet) and watch more snow falling (mostly sideways!), I find it hard to believe we¢ll be on the Trail in just over two and a half months. Before Old Goat and I did our shake down hike in August in Vermont, I had started to read ¢A Walk In The Woods¢ because I¢d heard it¢s funny. Unfortunately, I found myself in a panic as I read it instead of finding it funny. When he wrote about a lot of snow, I got scared and realized I cannot read that book right now. I expect I¢ll be able to see the humor in the book after we finish the AT. One of my biggest fears about the AT is not being able to go into a warm building if I get cold. I know we will have cold days/nights in the beginning since we¢re starting in March and will be in mountains for a while. For those of you who have offered suggestions for keeping warm, THANK YOU!! I sincerely appreciate the suggestions and will try any/all of them. We have purchased a lot of the disposable hand/foot warmers, and we did some camping in November (with Old Goat¢s Boy Scout Troop) that helped ease my fear. (Our photo for this journal was taken by our grandson that weekend...lots of snow and temperatures in the teens all weekend!) We were in a cabin that weekend, but the only heat source was a wood burning stove. It was bitter cold when we arrived Friday evening, and the cabin stayed very cold all night. The stove made the cabin relatively comfortable Saturday, but Friday evening and night were cold enough to help me feel more secure in the plans we have to keep warm. Another thing I¢m doing is trying to become more comfortable with a colder environment. I¢ve always been prone to being cold. (Ask my kids ¢ I thought they needed sweaters/coats because I was cold! Poor kids, they¢d be very comfortable and I¢d make them put on a coat because I was cold. Sorry guys!) What I¢m doing may sound silly, but it¢s important to me and it¢s helping. I used to wear pantyhose under my pants during the winter as another layer to help stay warm ¢ I am not doing that this year. And our house is three degrees cooler than we used to keep it during the winter. These are big changes for me, and they are working. They are helping me be more comfortable with feeling cold.Old Goat is extremely thorough in his planning and preparation. We have a lot of food in our basement (dehydrated and other), ready for us to break it down into meals and put in mail drop boxes for our daughter to mail to us along the way. He¢s been bringing boxes home from work each day, so the room downstairs is quite cluttered right now. It will be very organized before we leave.   I¢ve been searching for my headlamp. I took it out in preparation for our November camping, but for the life of me I don¢t know where I put it! I knew we would arrive at the cabin in the dark so I would need it right away. I recall thinking I need to have it handy, so I had put it somewhere where I¢d be able to grab it to have when we got there. You know how you put things in a ¢safe¢ place, and then can¢t find them? Argh¢¦¢¦I still haven¢t found the headlamp! I couldn¢t find it when I finished packing for the weekend, so I didn¢t even have it with me at all and had to use an annoying hand-held flashlight. We¢ve search high and low in our camping stuff and it¢s just not there. I know it¢s in the house. I just don¢t know where! If I give up and buy another, I¢ll make sure I keep the receipt because the headlamp will show up as soon as we get home from buying a new one. Always the way it goes, huh?Well, time to go shovel the driveway so Old Goat can park the car when he gets home from work. There¢s quite a snowdrift out there (and it¢s still snowing¢¦sideways). In spite of my concerns about being cold, I'm excited about our hike and very much looking forward to it!!!!