"It's not too late to...ask yourself if you really are the person you want to be, and if not, who you do want to be."
- Morrie Schwartz
Start: Dalton, MA
Finish: Cheshire, MA
Today: 8.8 mi
Total: 388.2 mi
We got to walk along a road for the first mile of the day before things turned upwards. Its amazing how much faster we can walk on pavement, even with a 35 pound pack. Unfortunately, after a while the trail always goes up, picking the most uneven path more often than not. Another hiker we know, EMT, caught up to us an hour into the day. A little while later we made it to the view, 6.2 miles into our hike. EMT showed us his medical kit (the only thing that was missing was a full stretcher). His food bag's weight was heavy too, rivaling Heather's food bag. To be fair, Heather doesn't eat much of the food in her food bag, I think she just likes to carry it from state to state. EMT was also carrying such a huge camp knife that I suggested his new trail name be Crocodile Dundee. I did feel bad about his pack weight though, which came in at over 40 pounds
We continued on the trail, Heather in front followed by EMT, No Whistle and me in the back. As everyone was talking and walking I began hearing the cracking of a tree. It seemed that either the vibrations of our steps or the volume of our voices was too much for an old, dead tree. I screamed ahead to Heather to get out of the way. EMT stepped backwards and Heather shot forwards as the tree smashed down between them. Heather stood there in shock, three feet away from either being dead or 6 inches shorter. I was comforted by the fact that if Heather was hurt, EMT could probably reattach her head and even make some improvements with his fancy med kit. She'd be like the bionic woman - better, stronger, faster... I walked over to the tree trunk and as I poked it with my foot, it practically disintegrated beneath the pressure. I don't know how this tree stood up as long as it had.
After that near death experience we were all pretty hungry so when we made it into Cheshire, we headed for the Bar and Grill. Hikers can eat a lot of food whether its pizza, wings, mozzarella sticks, subs, burgers, soup, fruit, chips, etc. There is the dozen (12). Then there's the baker's dozen (13) because after baking they want to sample what they bake. Finally there's the hiker's dozen (24) because we eat a lot of what we eat! The food took so long that Heather didn't want to get to the top of Mt Greylock in the dark so we hitched up to North Adams. The guy who picked us up was really nice and told us that he "won't pick up hitchhikers...but will pick up hikers who hitch." We've had a lot of people tell us that!
~DADDY LONG LEGS
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