T+43 Zeroing in Dalton

T+43 (July 11, 2020)

Navigation Report:
Start Point: Home of Tom Levardi (mile 1571.9)
Destination: Home of Tom Levardi (mile 1571.9)

Travel Log:
7:10 Cumberland farms
11:00-430 Laundromat
1:30-5:30 Blogging
5:30-6:15 Getting Dinner
6:15 + Blogging

Daily Mileage = 0
Total Mileage = 422.7

Commander’s Report:
Today was my first zero of this leg of my trip. It was mainly necessary in order to coordinate my schedule with the hike I'd like to do with my friends tomorrow (Dalton to Cheshire). That said, I did laundry and took a hobo shower in the sink of the laundromat.

Tom allowed me the use of his bicycle to run to the laundromat, which was very kind of him. What wasn’t very kind of me was popping the rear tire. It wasn’t all my fault, hear me out. I was passing an area that had just had some work done on the curbing. I failed to notice that the manhole cover had been placed on in the wrong direction. The tire slipped in the hole and that’s all she wrote! I apologized profusely and threw him a bit extra upon my departure. Why do I always have to go and do goofy stuff like that?

I also got partially caught up in my blogging responsibilities. This was difficult to do during the day as Tom and I spent some time in the morning chatting and in the afternoon I spent quite a bit of time chatting with another thru-hiker, Matthew. He fell behind a group he wants to hike with, so talked Tom into giving him a ride up to VT to meet up with them. (For those in the know, he was yellow blazing in order to do some pink blazing.)

Anyway, because Tom was off driving to VT, he was unable to give me a ride until 8:30. But by that time the 24 hour store (in non-COVID times) was closed. Tom agreed to get a canister for me tomorrow while I’m hiking and give it to me when he picks us up from Cheshire.

I got 4 diary entries uploaded today and figured out how to automate the posting process. Now, all of my posts should go up around 7 AM whether I have cell service or not. I also automated the twitter notifications of said posts, so those should go up at 7:30 AM. This all adds time to the front end (and worries that I mucked up a link), but I hope this will allow me to better utilize the intermittent internet access I have out here.

[Ed. note: There's been some hiccups in the automated posting. I've mucked up URLs on two twitter notifications and had one twitter notification go out before the posts went live. It's a work in progress, but I think we can make this work for me.]

I feel like I underachieved today in only getting 4 posts up. Considering I had to draft and edit them before posting and manage the pics for all those posts (approx. 2 hours work for each post) I'd say it wasn't a complete mail-it-in job.

Still, I was 7 days behind coming into the zero day and had big hopes of getting caught back up. That'll have to wait for the future.

Funny thing about the weather, the forecast called for 80% chances of showers all day and we got a tiny little cell pass over. It rained for maybe 5 minutes, and I’m probably being generous there. Oh well, that wasn’t the main reason I was zeroing, so I may as well enjoy the sunshine while it lasts!