500 miles!

Woooow, can't believe I haven't updated since Gorham! Have since knocked off New Hampshire and its range of Whites/Presidentials... and only have 87 miles of Vermont and the Greens before hitting Mass!!

[ Can I say CRAP here... had a nice long post goin' and the library's 30 min limitation booted me off, losing the entire thing. Ugggh! ]

Let's try this again..

The Whites were awesome! B E A utiful views... the 2-3 days that we had clear skies. The rest of the time we were in the clouds as usual. But fighting very high winds; 30-55mph sustained, gusts of up to 66mph I believe (as measured at the weather station atop Mt. Washington - the home of the highest wind speed ever recorded by man, 232mph I believe). Fun challenge to hike and stay on the trail through all that though - shoves you all over the place! Found that walking sideways facing into the winds worked best. And of course aside from the winds and driving rain/mist, there was the big lack of visibility. Nevermind not having views, we really couldn't see too much around us. Which reminds me of an AT tradition that we upheld while hiking up Washington. Apparently, mooning the old cog railway (oldest in the world?) is something thru-hikers passing through routinely do. And actually I was more than happy to do so because seeing it spout out the nasty black smoke from its burning coal engine on the clear day when we had a view was just sad. But anyway when we were hiking up, the visibility was maybe.. 10yds?? Seemed like to see the track we could almost reach out and touch it. And waiting for the train to emerge from the fog was about as dramatic as you can imagine. Nevermind the fact that the thing moves something like 5mph up the mountain, we could hear it coming for about 15 minutes but couldn't see the damned thing! By the time it came into view it took the 3 of us by surprise as it was basically right in front of us! So we dropped trou' and began shakin' and slappin' our hineys, hootin' and hollerin' all the while. Well damn that thing took FOREVER to pass on by! SLOW is the word! And while I was lookin' back (laughin' my butt off of course) I see this 20 somethin' yr old kid (who I guess was supposed to be shoveling coal into the engine) turn away from us and reach down.... next thing I know there's a barrage of coal coming at us! The first huge chunk flew right over Beebo's head and in front of mine! And if it wasn't big chunks, it was a spray of smaller pellets! I didn't even take the time to pull my britches up - I was off and running, pants hangin' down around my thighs as I tried to avoid rocks in the trail to get away from the attack! Keep in mind I had my pack on which I'm not sure was good or bad.. it might've slowed me down, but at least I had a little protection that Beebo Fox and Wasp's Nipples didn't! And Beebo ended up getting tagged pretty good in the back... the train tootin' its horn in victory as it faded out of sight in the fog and me straddling a huge rock after having lost my balance while dying of laughter - aaahhh, good times! ;)

Well, I'm about to get booted off again so I'm going to save and publish this before I lose what I'm doing again!

Not sure when I'll be able to post again as I'm about to take off again tomorrow and I've already asked for an extension on my time here.

But hey, at least there are some pics up now! Thanks Mama!!!!

Later!!
Fool!