Date: 2004-08-09
From: Happy Hill Shelter

To: Velvet Rocks Shelter
Miles today: 7.3
Weather: scattered clouds

Hanover LolligagMileage Countdown: -440.4Today's weather is absolutely perfect for hiking, but it is also pretty good for just hanging out around the Dartmouth Green in Hanover, NH. I walked into town before 9:30 and immediately had my first of 2 town meals of the day, at Lou's, a downtown Hanover institution since the 1950s. The place was full when I came in, with a line for booths. I usually don't like to sit at the counter, since I prize my solitude. But I was hungry and took the only open place at the counter. I was immediately engaged in conversation with a man on my left who was driving a meandering course with his son from Bar Harbor back to Chicago, and a woman who had reversed my direction and had just moved from NH to MA, but was back in town for a week. Sometimes the two conversations merged, sometimes they were separate. It felt like the first time I was in a chat room on Yahoo, but generally I enjoyed both. By the time I had finished though, I had my solitude, since I was the only one left at the counter.Then I hung around the Dartmouth Outing Club, journalling, emailing, and making arrangements for returning home in Merrimack, NH, tomorrow night. I also met both Hobbit and Mouse, also meandering around town. Then I had lunch at 5 Old Nugget, and hung out some more. My hardest decision of the day was whether or not to have a third town meal. I hung around til 4, and finally determined I would need to wait a couple more hours to get empty enough to make a town meal worth it. So I came on up to this shelter, barely a mile out of town.Milestones: Today I entered my 13th state on the Trail, NH. Only one more state to get to, ME. I was surprised as I approached the bridge over the Connecticut River (quite an attractive bridge) to feel tears welling up. I don't know if it was because I was entering the state where I live, or if it was because of the emotion left over from a phone conversation I had just finished with a friend who is having a particularly difficult time just now, or if it was feeling the halfway point mentioned below, or if it was a combinaion of all of them. But I found that crossing one of the most emotional moments on the Trail so far.This morning's crossing over the Connecticut was my last bridge over a major river, and I also had my last wide Interstate highway crossing. The caveats are necessary as follows. Considering a major river as one well over 100 miles long, I still have one to cross, the Kennebec in ME. But the Kennebec has no bridge near where the AT crosses it, so the official AT crossing of the Kennebec is by canoe. This was necessitated by the irregular flow of the river which caused a thru-hiker drowning about 20 years ago. There is also one more Interstate to cross, I-93. But the AT crosses I-93 at one of the rare stretches of interstate where there are only two travel lanes, as the roadway squeezes in to pass through Franconia Notch.Finally, Hanover is the last halfway point on the Trail, as captured in the saying "When you reach Hanover you have covered 80% of the distance, but done only 50% of the work.". I used to think that saying was just effete northeastern snobbery (I can say that because I am a bonded and certified northeastern snob.) But I have recently heard that saying attributed to Wingfoot (Dan "Wingfoot" Bruce, publisher of The Thru-Hiker's Handbook, my authority for distances and other data in this journal). I have seen no evidence that Wingfoot is a northeastern snob. I don't have the appropriate portion of Wingfoot with me, but I hear he uses the physicists' precise definition of work, corresponding exactly to total, absolute, elevation change.I still don't believe the saying, but with that definition it is subject to verification. Unfortunately, since the elevation of the Trail is fractal in character (like most other things in nature), the amount of work needed to cover a mile of the Trail would depend on the scale at which the elevation changes are measured. My hunch is at the sub-millimeter scale, the work per mile would be approximately the same everywhere along the Trail. The proper scale to give Wingfoot's saying meaning would be the length of the average hiker's stride. Unfortunately we don't have data at that scale. But we do have data readily available at 2 larger scales: the elevation profiles at a scale of scores of meters, and Wingfoot's mileage/elevation data at the scale of a large fraction of a mile.My guess is that even at the Wingfoot scale there is no more than 35% of the total work in NH and ME combined (Maybe there is a clever person on Wingfoot's QA team reading this who has access to the data and can settle this question immediately. If so, please raise your hand!). If not, my guess is that at the profile scale the percentage is no higher than 35%. I intend to look into this after finishing the Trail, and will publish my results in a post-hike entry. In any case, nearly everyone whom I have met in the last few days who has walked NH and ME, tells me that these next two states are the best part of the Trail. Imagine what that's doing to my expectations!Tonight at the shelter with me are Slow and Steady, and Trek, who has just finished a NoBo thru-hike (I met him the day I went into Atkins), and is working his way over to the VT/Canada border to hike the Long Trail. [Added in editing: when I woke up in the morning there was a tent that had been set up during the night, but I left before the occupant got up. That evening while passing thru Hanover back to home, I met NoBo Smack, who was in fact the occupant.]Tomorrow will be my last day on the Trail for a few days, as I go back to Merrimack to help my son move out of our condo.