Some Statistics from the Hike

I allowed myself a complete rest day today. The most strenuous thing I did was to fill the birdbath. It's really interesting to me that not a single bird visited it for the first three years I put it out. After they finally began to visit, it was obvious that the word got around, and birds came looking for it earlier this season. And this was after it was never put out last year at all.

Now that I'm pretty much home for the summer to keep it filled, I'll enjoy the visitors. This is an Eastern Phoebe.

Now for some number crunching about the hike. I had originally hoped to finish in 365 days. That requires an average of 13.2 miles per day with no breaks. Or, as I hoped, 4815/15 mpd = 321 days, which would give me 44 days off. Seemed like enough.

Ha! Actual hiking days... it took me 408 days to walk the trail. That is an average per hiking day of 11.8 miles. That's a lot less than I was trying for.

I also took more days off than I had planned on, logistics, weather, the flu, car trouble, blah, blah.

There are some circumstances that changed, but the truth is that although I put in some long mileage days (for me) at 18 miles, and a lot at 15, the short days just dragged down the average. Even as of Nov 11, 2022, before the snow began to take a toll, my average was only 12.4 miles. The ice storm in Ohio gave me nine days of single digit mileages. I did two shorter days after I was sick in April, until I regained full strength. The Kek and the Border Route were accomplished with almost all single digit days.

There is no way I can hike far enough on enough days to make an average recover from hits like that.

And then, once it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to hike the western UP until at least May, probably June, it became less important to me to keep the miles close to 15. The completion date wasn't going to happen until I could do those miles in the Trap Hills, so I did back off a little. The hike was taking a big toll on my body.

Although I managed to hike an amazing portion of the UP in winter, a lot of that was accomplished with single digit days.

True confession time. When I came home for a seasonal break at the end of December, I was really beat up. Even I did not realize how tired I was until I got home. Basically, I could hardly move for two months, let alone try to stay in shape for the rest of the hike. I wondered if I'd done some long-lasting damage to my joints.

But, hey! Solvitur ambulando, hiking cures everything. Maybe just moderated a little. Since there was no point in hiking long mileage days with a completion date in June set in stone (snow), I altered the plan and did a lot of days with shorter mileages. You may remember that at the end of March, Bill and I were hunting hard for any piece of trail or roadwalk that we could even hike.

So now, I've finished all the miles, all on foot, every inch... just not quite as fast as I had hoped. I'm disappointed, but not overly so. Physically, I feel great. The body healed, and I honestly don't feel any older than when I started.

I was joking in November, when the Dec 1 goal was definitely out, that I had better finish before I got to be 75. But that didn't happen either.

We are pretty sure that I am the oldest person at time of completion to hike the NCT. I may be the first person to do it twice. This has not been verified as there is another person who did at least large portions of it twice. None of these "records" is why I hiked it again. I really just wanted to see how much things had changed and to share it day by day with people.

Tomorrow- I'll thank a lot of people who deserve huge orchids, kudos, and praise.

My rest day included an unusual daytime nap. I was in one of those strange, catatonic dreams where I was dreaming that I was dreaming, but I knew it and couldn't wake up or even move my body parts. I was sleepwalking somewhere in Europe with my friends Bill and Phil and Nan trying to wake me up and not being able to. I kept falling flat on my face but it never hurt. If I knew what this meant other than that I guess I was tired, I'd tell you. Haha! Make of it what you will.

See The Final Steps