stacey ewing

I’ve been in a horrible funk all week and tonight was feeling especially bad. Tim is out on a gig, playing with a jazz group downtown, so kinda bored, I dialed up ye olde google reader to flip through my blog subscriptions and catch up on my reading. That’s when I saw Ann Aguirre’s reminder that she was having an online chat tonight for her readers. Looking at the clock, I saw I’d missed it by an hour but visited the link anyway on the off-chance that things had run over and they had!

So I got the pleasure of spending an hour and a half totally geeking out over scifi books and shows with Ann, Michelle, and Has. It was great talking with other folks who love those things as much as I do (kinda helps me feel like I’m not totally alone in my nerdiness! haha).

I loved Grimspace so much that I tore through it, finished it the same day and then picked it back up the next morning and read it all over again (gotta love a three day weekend! haha). So it was especially interesting to hear how she envisions her characters (Claudia Black as Jax and David Boreanzas as March) and to hear about the process of fighting to get published- with the bottom line being: Never. Give. Up. :)

I cannot wait until the new projects she’s finished up come through the publisher!! So, C’MON! hurry up Penguin!! stop the torture and publish us some more Aguirre and oh yeah… bring us some chicken wings… extra spice-eh…

Okay this is SICK but I really, really, really, really, really, really, really,really, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY want a Chumby. I can’t help it, I saw it on the net, read about it on their site and watched all the videos and demos and I still want one… in basic black… :)

I got a call from tim around 7:30pm on Thursday night but his cell phone cut out as soon as I picked up. Guess the reception is not so good up in that part of the mtns.

He called me again this morning around 9:30am and was heading back out on the trail. I guess he made it to the shelter yesterday just as it started to rain but they all got wet anyway, having to go out and cook their food outside the shelter. The shelter in the pictures I saw online looks big and roomy but unfortunately it’s open. He said they didn’t really get wet from it being open, it was more from the humidity and foggy mist in addition to running back and forth out there to make dinner.

This particular shelter had a privy and I asked him if he used it and I got an emphatic, “NO WAY!” Apparently it was pretty wet (no roof) and quite disgusting. I think holes were dug out in the woods behind the privy instead. :)

So, he estimates that he’ll be off the trail around 4pm or 5pm today. He’s looking forward to the nice sun and cool weather the front brought through yesterday. I think he’s also looking forward to a hot shower too! :)

When he gets to the end of the trail today he will have hiked approximately 46.7 miles this week.

To date, he has hiked approximately 74.6 miles of the AT (including the 8 mile approach trail @ Amicalola Falls).

He’s only got about 2075 miles to go before he has completed the entire trail.

Picture of Tray Mountain Shelter from Flickr user cyclopshiker:

I walked into my office after working the ref desk this morning (around 10:20) and got a call from Tim. He had just made it to Unicoi Gap (located right off Hwy 75 which leads to Helen). He wanted to give me a loose itinerary to pass on to my parents so they would know approximately where/when to pick him up.

He is planning on making it to Tray Mountain Shelter today (hopefully before the bad thunderstorms hit this afternoon), he’s got about 5.5 miles left to get there. Friday, he is hoping to push past Deep Gap and pop out on Hwy 76 right outside Dick’s Creek Gap. If he can get that far and if my folks are able to pick him up that night, he’s going to exit the trail that evening so he can have all day Saturday to get cleaned up and chill out before the long drive home on Sunday.

Before we hung up, I quickly checked the hourly forecast for him to let him know the bulk of the storms were to hit around 2pm today. As I was looking up the weather, two guys from the trail yelled goodbye to Tim. Apparently they had decided to take a zero mileage day over in Helen so a shuttle was picking them up to take them to a hotel. I heard them call out, “Last chance for beer and crab legs! You comin’?!” haha Tim reluctantly declined…it was a pretty tempting offer. :)

He will try to call tonight after I get home from work and I’ll post an update after that.

Meanwhile, here is a picture of the Unicoi Gap parking area (by flickr member tjc) from where Tim called me:

So sorry for the delay in posting- my webserver was down for several hours tonight. If you tried to check the site for updates and found it unavailable, that’s why. Sorry! :\

Tim called around 6:30pm tonight and was in high spirits. I asked him where he was camped out tonight and he said he was at the Blue Mountain shelter. Confused, I reminded him that he had told me he was at the Blue Mountain Shelter on Tuesday night. He apologized and said that he was obviously delirious when we talked and he had actually stayed at the Low Gap Shelter Tuesday night.

So here are the current ‘official’ stats (with corrections):

Monday: Woody Gap to Blood Mountain Shelter (approx. 8.5 miles hiked)
Tuesday: Blood Mountain to Low Gap Shelter (approx. 13 miles hiked)
Wednesday: Low Gap to Blue Mountain Shelter. (approx. 7.2 miles hiked)

I told him that I was blogging his trip and he said, “Be sure to tell everyone that there is a 60 year old guy kicking everyone’s ass all over the trail and especially on the steep climbs.” :) Apparently this guy is putting all of them to shame, including the experienced thru-hiking youngsters. haha

Anyway, Tim said he had a really good hiking day Wednesday and it was a MUCH better day than Tuesday. The various hikers he met on the trail Tuesday have sort of joined up into an informal group. As of 6pm on Wednesday night, there were 5 or 6 of those folks at the shelter already. Because they’d finally moved out of the burn-ban area on the trail, they were going to make a campfire tonight.

He seemed to think they might make it to Unicoi tomorrow (Thursday) or at least to the Tray Mountain shelter if the weather worked in their favor. I asked him if he wanted me to check the weather for him on the internet while we were talking, but he said that there was a guy in their group who has a blackberry with him and had already checked it! haha So they already knew about the strong probability for rain.

I saw later that Weather Underground is calling for 100% rain in their area so it should be an interesting day for them. If they hurry in the morning they might be able to make good time before the rain hits. He did say they were expecting two good climbs before Tray Mountain (which is approx. 7.3 miles away) so it will be interesting to hear how they make out.

So this is a picture of the Low Gap Shelter where he actually stayed TUESDAY night. :)

Well, I just got another quick call from Tim tonight. He was settling in and getting ready to PASS OUT. He left Blood Mountain this morning and ran into several groups of thru-hikers who were powering forth across the great mountains of Georgia (heh, heh). So, being the manly-man he is, Tim pushed himself hard to follow and keep up with them. Unfortunately, most of those guys are carying bivys (sp) instead of tents, so their packs are prolly several pounds lighter than T’s (which was 50lbs including his water and fuel before he left – and he really did only take the essentials).

He was so exhausted that he couldn’t remember which shelter he was at tonight. He said that it was either Trey Mountain Shelter or Blue Mountain Shelter. I looked them up online and have a strong feeling that he’s probably at the Blue Mountain Shelter since it is 20.2 miles away from Blood Mountain. I gotta say, if he’s at Trey Mountain Shelter I’d be REALLY surprised since it’s approx. 27.1 miles from Blood Mountain. Can people hike that far in one day?? He sounded really wiped out and said he was pushing hard today so maybe they really did make it that far. I doubt it though.

He was worried tonight that he was making such good time that he would be in NC by Thursday and even farther in by Saturday forcing my folks to drive farther to pick him up. Geesh, like they would care. ::rolling eyes:: I told him just to listen to his body and keep going at a pace that felt good to him and not to worry about mom and dad-they would pick him up wherever he ends up on Saturday.

Then I asked him if he felt weird talking on a cell phone all the way out there and he said everyone else at the camp was doing the same thing! haha!! I guess there were about 15 people camping out with him tonight and he said they were all really cool. Then right about that time, his advil kicked in and he started to fall asleep on the phone (we’d only talked for two minutes! I think he was zonked). We agreed to catch up tomorrow. I told him I was blogging his trip and he said to tell all of you “hello!” :)

Again NOT Tim’s picture (don’t worry, he said he’s been taking tons of pictures so we can all live vicariously through him later. ::grin:: )… here’s what the Blue Mtn. Shelter looked like in February (by AT008):

Well, I sent Tim away this week to go hike the Appalachian Trail for a week with the hope that maybe he’ll experience shakabuku (or maybe just the swift kick part…heh heh ::grin:: Geez- who doesn’t like that movie??!). He’s continuing towards his ultimate goal of hiking the whole trail from beginning to end. He obviously doesn’t have the time or money to thru-hike the entire trail (that takes 3-4 months) but he’s going to do it in chunks over a period time when he gets the chance.

He drove up to Mom & Dad’s on Sunday. There was hardly any traffic out that day so he made pretty good time up there (about 7 hours) and had no problem finding their place. Dad was still in Kansas visiting family, so Tim took Mom out for Mother’s Day dinner at the local chinese restaurant and they had a nice time.

The next morning, Mom dropped Tim off at Woody Gap where he, Bob, & Nathaniel left off in late December. She emailed me as soon as she got home and I got this message at work:

We left here about 7:05 a.m. and got up to the Woody Gap about 8:15. It was so windy up there that I had to hold the back door, so he could get his backpack out. He put on his hat and got another coat out and put on. It rained a little here this morning and the wind is still blowing. I told him he was lucky the backpack weighed quite a bit – that way he wouldn’t fly off the mountain. He will be TRYING to walk into it. Bet he will be one tried puppy tonight. Said he went thru his backpack 5 times last night to make sure he had everything and didn’t go to bed until 11:00 – up at 6:00 a.m. Your dad called at 5:00 a.m, he was 30 miles from Kansas City. Told him he probably woke Tim up. yak later. Love, mom

Later Monday evening, I got a very quick call (trying to save the phone battery) from Tim letting me know that he made it to the top of Blood Mountain. He got up there around 1pm and said that he could have kept going but it was just so beautiful up there, he decided to set up camp near the shelter and chill out. He said the shelter was in pretty bad shape but it didn’t matter because he was using his tent that night (despite the wind). He didn’t run into anyone all day.

I can’t wait to hear how his bear bag worked out. He practiced on the trees out back Saturday night working on the knots, etc. I’ll try to keep an update here as I hear how things are going up there.

BTW- The following picture is NOT from Tim. It’s just a picture of the Blood Mountain shelter I found online. Tim brought his camera with him so we’ll be sure to post HIS pictures when he gets home. :)

Well, George Bush and the IRS “stimulated” us on friday and nearly all of it was spent within 24 hours… on our sick, geriatric kitties… sigh, oh well, so much for being able to attend the ALA conference in California this summer. :\

On Friday, Tim took Pris to the vet because she was looking pretty bad and leaving what Tim calls the “trifecta” (a combo of vomit, urine, & feces) right outside the litter box every morning (and sometimes in the afternoon) while I was away at the conference (so sorry to have missed that! har har!). Oh man, are we ever glad to have tile floors in that area! [If you need a good stock tip- buy lots and lots of shares in Chlorox... our household alone has exponentially increased the company's value over the last twelve months! Seriously, we go to Sam's and they just bring out a pallate on the forklift and load it directly into the station wagon...]

Poor kitty, tim was giving her subcutaneous fluids every other day and had increased her prednisolone dosage per doc’s instructions from last week but she still wasn’t doing very well. We were both worried that the vet was going to say that it was finally time for the “pink juice.” sigh.

Well, turns out there was good news and bad… it’s not time for the “pink juice” but she DOES have a urinary tract infection. Her white blood was so high that the vet suspects it may have travelled to her kidneys so another special test was ordered with results coming in on Monday. She’d lost another pound since January so she was down to about 4lbs. If she’s not doing better by next week, they’re going to take more blood to send off to Michigan State’s endocrinology lab for thyroid testing since her t-4 level was up from 3 to 7. They juiced her up with some subcu. fluids before sending her home so she looked pretty good by the time I got back Friday evening.

She is now on 1.5 doses of pred, 2 cans of science diet KD, 1 tsp of plain metamucil, clavamox antibiotics (for infection), and glyco-flex (for arthritis) …all of this is given daily… in addition to 150ml of lactated ringers (subcu. fluid) as needed. I swear, we’re like a freakin’ full-service vet hospital here at home.

Then, this morning, we had to take Mort in to see Doc Nichols. Apparently, all week while I was away at the conference, he suffered from “the diarrhea” and looked like he was losing weight. (Did I mention that everyone who works at Millhopper Vet knows us all by name??). He’d recently had a blood test in Feb. so she didn’t order another one today but they gave him a full exam (he LOVES the part where they take his temperature… oh yeah.). His heart murmur is up from a 1-2 out of 6 to a 2-3 out of 6. He’s got two really nasty looking teeth so those will have to be taken care of as soon as we can save up for the surgery. They’ll have to give him an ultrasound beforehand to figure out what kind of special anesthetic to use.

Meanwhile, she sent him home with 3 cans of science diet ID (mild diet for his stomach for the next coupla days), Pro-Pectalin (which smells like total ass but is supposed to work kind of like Imodium. It is chicken flavored and looks like tan caulk… blech!), and 150ml of subcu fluids to help him rehydrate. oh man, I hope all of this works.

This evening I took a few things out to my car at the conference center hotel and as I walked back into the lobby, I looked over just in time to see a man walk in the front doors wearing a bow tie. I thought, “Man, that guy sure looks familiar.” As our paths crossed, he looked over at me, smiled and nodded ‘hello.’ That’s when it hit me! Holy crap! It was Bill Nye the science guy!! How cool is that??! :D He looked exactly like the picture above! Of course, I was too chicken to say anything but instead just smiled and nodded back like I run into famous science geeks every day. :)

hi everyone!

sorry for the radio silence lately but the end of the semester wrap-up and extended hours at the ‘liberry’ have been INSANE and now I’m away at SOLINET and won’t get home until late friday.

I promise, I’ll have updates (AND PICTURES!!) of the ‘goings on’ quite soon! :D

xoxo,
stace