Rainy Sunday

I did the hike yesterday morning, just like I'd planned. I got up, drank a bunch of coffee, got dressed and went hiking. I was home by noon. I did forget a few things in my desire to get going early. I forgot my hiking poles since I keep them in the truck so I won't, ummm, forget them. Unfortunately I driving the car right now... I could have used some gloves, and a stocking cap rather than the ball cap I wore that didn't cover my ears. It was a bit nippy when I started out. Some kleenex or a hankie would have been good. I thought of all this within 5 minutes of hitting the trail.

I got home around noon. I had a list of things to do the rest of the day, notably to change the tire on the truck so I can start driving it again. The jack in the truck was locked up when I tried to change the tire on Tuesday. I now own a nice, new 2T hydraulic jack. I waited for yesterday so that I could change the tire in the daylight and not while I'm on my way to work. Also, I discovered that I have a trunk full of stuff in the Stanza from moving day that I forgot was there. I was going to unload all of that. What happened instead was that I crawled into the bed to warm up since on the way home I got chilled. When I woke up 4 hours later I was still chilled and didn't feel all that well. I figured that the chilling was mostly about not enough food, so I fixed some dinner. It made me not feel well, but about an hour later I felt a lot better and was warm. Unfortunately it was dark. And, today it is raining. Hard. So, looks like I'll be driving the car again next week.

I have been making plans with Stumpknocker to go hiking on the approach trail to the AT sometime at the end of February. He has hiked the entire AT several times. I posted to his guest book after following his journal of his hike this year, and when he emailed me to thank me for signing we started an on-going (so far) exchange. Actually, I keep pestering him. The approach trail is 8 miles and goes from the lodge (I'll look up the name since there is no way I can spell any of these places correctly without it right in front of me) to the top of Springer Mt in GA where the AT begins if you hike from south to north. It seems rather daunting to me to have to hike 8 miles just to get to the trail. Then again, the AT is 2,189 miles long, so 8 shouldn't be a big deal. The idea of hiking with a 'real' hiker is a bit daunting, and one reason why I was diligent about getting on the trail yesterday to train. After collapsing from hiking less than 6 miles with I'm sure much less elevation change I'm feeling even less ready. However, I have a month to work on being in shape and eating enough to not collapse.

I happened on some more self-sufficient sites. One says that the place to start is in the kitchen, learning to cook from scratch. It reminded me that I need to pull out my bread machine and make some bread. Mom used to get bread for me. Actually, I wanted to make my own bread, and was doing so, but Mom would bring me a couple of loaves of multi-grain bread whenever I saw her. I couldn't let that bread go to waste. Now her source has gone away so I can make my own again. I have 20 lbs or so of flour and all the other ingredients. It's a step. I was thinking I would unpack my loaf pans and make normal looking bread for my dinner in a few weeks. I then realized, yet again, I have no oven. Just like when I was going to make muffins, my loaf pans won't fit into my toaster oven any better than the muffin tin did. Who knew I would need an oven so often? I look at my empty kitchen with the horrible dark maroon walls, look at my office which is my current work in progress, and sigh. I may need to get a larger sized toaster oven. I had one once and they are ok if you don't have a real oven. I hate to buy yet another appliance, but it will be awhile before I either have the kitchen remodeled or have the money to buy a real stove. If it's not one thing, it's another (tipping my keyboard to Gilda Radner)