Date: 2023-06-19
From: Roanoke

To: Black Horse Gap
Miles today: 13.6

I ended up zeroing for 5 days, which was an amazing reset for my knees but my god I was antsy. I was ready to go back on trail, as the knee pain dropped down from hobbling with sharp pains all the time to sporadically being 3/10 and being more sore than anything else. And sore is better than sharp pain! As I privately feared, the cousin didn¢t show up to hike (or even text SP to confirm he was bailing which was a shitty move in my opinion but it is what it is), so that 25 mile day was for naught!! Whatever, it was a learning lesson and now I won¢t be rushed by others¢ timelines especially with unconfirmed plans and I am so thankful I am able to go back on trail. Unfortunately this string of medical zeros was during a BEAUTIFUL weather window, and now a tropical depression had moved in with 10 days of rain and storms forecasted. How cruel the trail can be¢¦.The day dawns for me to get back, and it¢s yet another hot and humid day. I was so glad to rejoin the stream of the AT and be hiking, but I felt like a poser instead of a ¢proper hiker¢ because I hadn¢t yet done the 41 miles and was skipping up a bit (I will do it, I swear it! - read that in a dramatic fantasy hero voice) but that¢s silly because I still have done almost 700 miles which is insane. I need to give myself credit and remember that everyone¢s timeline is different, especially with thruhiking. Today today we passed the 1/3 there mark, which yikes - we gotta hustle a bit to make it to Katahdin before 10/15. It got cooler as I approached the lunch shelter, which I appreciated but also it was ominous as it foretold the impending rain. I noticed my hiker hunger went away during my recovery break, as I was barely able to down a snackbar the first 5 miles and couldn¢t finish another snackbar the rest of the day (granted it was the Gatorade bars which are trash but still). Despite the heat, thankfully the lunch shelter had some water left in its cistern, but the water was yellowy even with filtering which was not the most appetizing thing. We wanted to try hiking to the next shelter before the rain but then it started raining while we were getting ready to go, so LOL to that. The rain itself wasn¢t too bad, and would be very tolerable if this was the amount of rain that would fall every day. We made better timing than I expected (I wanted to ease back in after 5 days off) and got to the shelter at 5, and I made a delicious dinner of green hatch chile mac and cheese + dark chocolate cheesecake pudding for dessert to celebrate my 9th remission anniversary!!! I was thinking of staying there for the night to avoid getting wet and solving my overpacking food issue, but SP wanted to press further so we had less to hike tomorrow. Before leaving we chatted with Rabbit about the new Spider-Man movie we had all seen, and then hiked out. Of course the rain picked up and I couldn¢t see through my glasses, so I put them away and hiked near-sighted. We decided to break 1.5 miles earlier than hoped at the next stealth site, and I waffled what to do with the excess food until I decided to put them in my sleeping bag stuff sack and hope for the best. Now I¢m laying in my tent sighing for having listened to SP instead of being in the shelter lol. What happened to the whole ¢don¢t hike on other people¢s timeline¢ thing? At least physically I felt good today :)