Date: 2010-05-24
From: Old Orchard Shelter

To: Trimpi shelter
Miles today: 14.0
Weather: light rain

Today started out poorly. It rained heavily last night and I made the mistake of not tucking my tyvek all the way under my rain fly so the rain seeped under my tent and made a nice pool in my tent. Luckily everything stayed dry aside from the bottom of my sleep pad...and I learned a valuable lesson. The skies were clear when we woke up but as soon as we started packing up it started raining again. I took all of my gear up to the shelter since Restless was the only one there, including my tent, still set up, and tried to let my gear dry out a little. My tent got dry while I ate breakfast but my rain fly was absolutely soaked. I strapped it to the side of my pack so it wouldn't get the rest of my gear wet and got ready to hike. The rain stopped right as we started hiking, which was nice. I hiked a mile and a half and got to a road where a past hiker, The Mayor, and his mother and friend were hanging out and they offered me a beer. It was 10:30 in the morning, but I decided to go for it. Restless and Indiana got there and we ended up staying for at least an hour and a half. I had two beers and was tipsy and set out for my first experience with buzzed hiking. It ended up being a blast. I hiked the final 3.5 miles to the shelter we planned on having lunch in in an hour. I sweat out my buzz on the way there but it was fun nonetheless. We ate lunch and set back out. The plan was to hike 9 more miles to Trimpi shelter, take a break, then hike four more miles to a campsite, but when we got to Trimpi we found Ball Hawk, Aquaman and Boston George, who we've been trying to catch up with. Restless decided to stay and hang out with them and Indiana and I decided to stick with the plan and hike on, but right as we were getting ready to leave the skies opened up and it poured agan. So here we are, staying in the shelter for the night. Given my experience with the rain last night, we didn't want to have to set up in the rain at the campsite and deal with even more wet gear tomorrow. We wanted to get closer to Partnership shelter so we could have an easy hike in the morning there and get there in time for lunch because you can order pizza to the shelter. So instead we have a 10 mile hike in the morning instead of a six mile hike, but we can still make it in time for lunch. Then we'll hike seven more miles to the next shelter. I keep having to remind myself not to be unsettled when I don't end up hiking big miles every day, but there is still pressure, self imposed at this point, to hike as much as possible every day. It's something I'm working on out here- to roll with the days as they come and let go of expectations and schedules.I've had a lot of people ask what I eat out here, so I'll take a minute to explain since there's nothing else to do at the shelter. This will perhaps explain why we will hike 10 miles as fast as possble tomorrow to eat pizza. For breakfast, I usually have a power bar or granola bars with peanut butter. Occasionaly I will pack out granola with instant milk, which is good but I hate cleaning out my pot so usually the power bars win out. I bought pop tarts for the first time at the last resupply but they dont hold me very long so I probably won't do that again. I also drink instant coffee. Stabucks makes the only decent one, but in a pinch we use the folgers instant coffee that comes in a tea bag. For lunch I have torillas with cheese and some kind of protein- tuna, which I'm aready sick of, turkey pepperoni or deli meat, which I can only use for about two days. For dinner we eat a lot of pasta and rice. Ramen is pretty prevalent out here because it's super cheap and light, but we dread those days. The best thing, if we can find them, are the pasta or rice sides with dehydrated vegetables. Snacks include trail mix and the like. A lot of people eat Snickers for snacks but I have yet to buy any. There isn't much variety out here as you can tell, which is why we get psyched about getting to towns and eating anything that isn't in our food bags. Hence the excitement for tomorrow's break from the mundane. And the shelter has showers. I really hope we can get out of there tomorrow or we'll never make it to Maine.