Date: 2004-03-25
From: Newfound gap

To: Gatlinburg
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: broken clouds

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart"We had bought a strip map of the Appalachian Trail yesterday at the Visitors Centre so Jim and Karen could follow our progress. When we got back to the house, it was unrolled so we could see how far we had come. Well, it was only the distance of a little pinkie finger - we still have about a 'leg' worth of distance to go.I have a tan line across the back of my hand - what we colloquially refer to as a 'Leki-tan'. Leki's are a brand of hiking stick that are very popular on the trail. The tan is from the strap that you loop over your hand. Some don't like it. I, being a night shift worker who didn't get to see the sun much, am loving it.Some truly disgusting parts of Trail life to tell you about (the squeamish should skip the next 4 paragraphs!): Nasal clearing: Now, toilet paper/tissues are like gold out here, so you don't want to be wasting it on something silly like blowing your nose. Enter the Snot Rocket. Now this is a skill that needs to be developed and nurtured, or it can end up being messy. You lean over (away from clothing and shoes), block off one nostril with your finger, then blow as hard as you can to clear the other nostril. Repeat for the other nostril. Charming huh?Then there is the whole eating with dirty fingers/hands. Keeping clean is so difficult out here. It is amazing to see how dirty your hands do get when you have the opportunity to wash them.Not changing your underwear for days at a time is something that can be hard to get used to. Of course, you wash everyday, but putting the same revolting clothes back on day after day wears a bit thin after a while. I treasure the times I can go into town and shower, then put on clean underwear. Heaven.I have come up with a new way to treat my blisters. While some may disagree, I have found this to work quite well so far. I have only tried this on raised blisters (in particular, the one that was filmed the other night). I am a big fan of treating injuries with Hydrogen Peroxide. So, I drain the blister, creating a small-ish hole, into which I drip some Hydrogen Peroxide. This dries out the inside of the blister, yet keeping the outer skin intact, thus fairly free from infection (which if it does occur, the HP will fix anyway). It also reduces the the pain caused by the blister. Repeat as necessary. Score!Some more excellent news: Jim and Karen have scales here at the house. Arwen came down and said he had lost 10 lbs since he had been hiking. I went upstairs and weighed myself, came back down and said "I will see your 10 lbs loss and raise you another 5 lbs." Yes, 15 lbs dropped in a little over 3 weeks. Yeah baby!I have finally had a chance to get to a library to check out my Guestbook on this site. Mum has been telling me for ages that I need to as the support that I have is amazing. She is not kidding. Thank you all so much for all your thoughts and well wishes, it all means so much to me.To clear up a few things: I am using a Pocketmail device to send my journal entries to my Mum, who then transcribes them for me onto my trailjournals site. I cannot send them in real time, but am able to send them whenever I can get to a phone.The quotes I did a bit of collecting for in the months before I left. Mum is in charge of choosing the particular quote to go with each journal entry. Sometimes they fit the entry, other times they are just there.Again, a big thanks to everyone for your support. It will definitely keep me going. Mentally, I feel so much better about the whole hiking thing now than I have during the whole trip.