“Short Notes from a Long Day”

AT Day 102; LT Day 15

Miles Today: 18.23

LT Mile: 225.9

(Round Top Shelter)

You’ll be tired of reading my woes about not having a keyboard by the time I get back to Rutland to replace it, but that’s where my mind is again this evening. I’m limited to a point of frustration that I have so much I want to write about but know I can’t get it on the page before falling asleep.

What I’ll have to do once I get my keyboard back is write a review of the whole Long Trail and tell the stories that I haven’t had time to elaborate on a daily basis lately.

Losing my keyboard has led me to an interesting observation, although I think I already sort of knew this so perhaps observation isn’t the right word–reminder maybe. It’s that I literally think differently when I’m writing with a keyboard versus when I’m doing it with my thumbs. My thoughts flow so much better with the keyboard and I find my writing to be clunky without it. I wonder if some readers might smugly be observing that my writing is clunky no matter what.

But I digress…

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Stayed with Plinko’s Friend, Alaska last night and watched Dumb & Dumber in the background while I packed my food for this section and tried to write my daily trail journal.

Slept adequately, and wanted to get to trail early, but I needed to get propane before we left town. That ended up being a monumentally difficult prospect, as everywhere that claimed to have “small canisters of propane” in fact only carried big Colman style canisters.

It was a long hunt. But we found them eventually.

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The trail today was wildly steep climbs and descents. Two peaks.

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I need to tell the story of Plinko’s acid… no way to tell it tonight. But I’ll leave that there as a reminder to myself.

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I’m staying in a shelter tonight but it’s mosquito infested and I may regret my decision.

Plinko is tenting.

We have the place to ourselves.

Beautiful sunset while I ate macaroni.

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Long day ahead.

Two full days and then a half day to Canada.

We’re getting close.

Wormwood.