Blathering about backpacking and my knee

I decided not to stay off my knee, but to walk instead of running.  It feels better, but not 100%.  I had wanted to do a piece of the roller coaster this weekend, but at this point, I don't think my knee could take it.  And walking requires a longer period of exercise because it's not as intense.  Oh well.  I need my knee to work.  I'm also dosing myself with Vitamin I to keep the inflammation down.  Now that I've gotten into this regular exercise thing again, it's really hard to just stop.

I've also been going to bed hungry on the 1200 calorie plan, but I can deal with that.  The more weight off me, the better.  I can't even believe how much easier it is to climb hills less that 40 lbs of me.  Of course, I've dropped 10 lbs. off my pack weight too.  Yeah, I'm all into the backpacking again, and the AT is a great, big challenging goal that I can chip away at for years.  Hell, Virginia alone is 25% of the trail, and I've done about 50 miles of the 550 in my home state.  That ought to keep me busy for a while, and that will require me to be in decent shape if I want to enjoy it.  How could that be bad?

Besides, I seem to require athletic-type challenges (and I've never enjoyed any exercise as much as I like backpacking) to work out my Mars energy.  I envy Tino a bit that he can just yell and scream for a few minutes and then just be totally cool with everything.  Such yelling and screaming and breaking of things were proscribed for me as a kid, so I tend to not deal with my anger.  I push it down into a bitter little ball that turns into resentment, and unless I get it out somehow, I tend to do very extreme, irrational things that hurt both myself and other people...just to force a challenge on to my life, I think.

Backpacking is much healthier, I think.

I generally wind up backpacking alone.  I'm fine with this, but I'm also fine with friends coming along.  I have a rough plan for this year.  If you're a friend and you're reading this and you're interested, write me.  Included for this year (at this point, and anything could get fixed in time or go away completely) are:

Glenwood, NJ->Bear Mountain, NY

Sheffield, MA->Somewhere north of the VT line (includes Upper Goose Pond Cabin)

Damascus, VA ->Dickey Gap, VA (includes Grayson Highlands, grazing lands of wild ponies)

The 100-Mile Wilderness, ME (No, I'm not kidding)

Notice I didn't say Pennsylvania?  I'm just going to ignore that state for a while since it keeps making me want to hate the AT.  The NJ/NY trip is 4 nights, the MA/VT trip is 7 or 8 nights, the Damascus trip is 4 nights and the 100-mile Wilderness is 9 nights, plus travel to and from Maine.