April 19, 2012

Well I've been home for a week now, and am making plans to get back on the trail.  My left knee, which I injured some 40 years ago, has some arthritis in it.   But my family practitioner has cleared me to head back to the trail and give it another shot.

Cheryl has graciously volunteered to drive me out to Erwin, TN on Friday April 27.  There I'll meet up with Halfspeed, the 71 y/o gentleman I'd been hiking with for about 10 days, and we'll resume our northbound trek.

In the meantime, I've been doing some bicycling on the local rails-to-trails to try to keep my aerobic conditioning up, and puttering around in the yard and garden.

The swelling in my knee is mostly gone, and it's not causing me any particular discomfort.

I am taking advantage of my home stay, to try to reduce my pack weight further.  I'm about to switch-out a long sleeve shirt that I only wore a few times in town, for a second synthetic short sleeved shirt (5 oz reduction), plan on purchasing a lighter and cheaper sleeping mat (15 oz less), and will be leaving my plastic bear-proof container at home and converting to a stuff sack to hang (2 lb 5 oz less).    I spent the day going through my entire pack and weighing each item individually - something  I probably should have done earlier -- and then checking my options at REI.com for lighter weight alternatives.  About the only  other thing that would really make a huge difference would be leaving my tent at home and sleeping in a bivy sac anytime a shelter wasn't available, but just looking at them made me slightly claustrophobic -- still with about a 4 lb reduction in pack weight it's tempting.

I'm looking forward to getting back on the trail and seeing if I can complete more of the trail without aggravating my knee.

Jerome = AYATORI