Whirlwind…can you say it? Can you spell it? Ever hear of it? Okay, now add to it a few tons of drama, a smattering of illness, a truckload of insanity, and a pinch of hiking; toss it all together and sprinkle it in front of a high powered industrial fan…voila! You’ve got a whirlwind. I’ve been trapped within its conical forces…and NO, I did not mean “comical,” for months. So forceful are its winds that I’ve been carried away by them, dragged across a highway of emotions, all different colors and brands and dosages. I’m not sure of who I am right now…enough belly-aching I guess. On a brighter note, I just returned from a pack shakedown hike on the Foothills Trail, a 77 mile trail which meanders between N.C. and S.C. It was a gorgeous hike, but my pack absolutely sucked. It was new and this was its inaugural hike. The lumbar support on the pack pummeled my back to the point where I could barely walk. I traded that pack in for another manufactured by Osprey, and took a simple ten mile overnight hike. What a difference the new pack made!!! It felt wonderful all the way around.
The best part of this story is that I was invited to hike a section of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), followed by the entire John Muir Trail (JMT)!!! It’s about 350 miles or so, and includes climbing Mount Whitney, the highest point on the JMT at 14,505 ft. YIKES! Holy lack of oxygen, Batman!! I hope to post some blogs while I’m away. And I hope to share Three-Quarters Dead with everyone I meet. So keep your eyes peeled and check in every now and then. Happy Trails!