Richmond, VA: No more dates

Miles since last blog: 14.2

Okay, since the dates are up there I guess I'll start doing without my own. Well, I woke up against my will in Ashland. It's not that I didn't like Ashland, I just didn't like waking up. Even though I was exhausted last night when I arrived to camp, I couldn't sleep, not for a long while. When I did wake up it was because Free was informing me that the police were coming to work in 15 minutes and we needed to go. I wasn't functioning. I had been asleep for maybe 3 broken hours after 48 hours in which I had walked 84 miles. Free was taking down the tent which was covered in brush, I was trying to help but mostly standing slack jawed and fiddling with things on my carrier.

We packed up but I knew I couldn't walk yet. I grabbed the one-man tent and my sleeping bag and wandered into the woods. I was so thankful to have them, I was so tired I could barely put the tent together for the first time. I had to wake up a bit more to get my brain working, when I finally got it all set up it took me time to fall back asleep, I cursed the morning birds chirping, then the trains, then the lawnmowers, finally I got to sleep. It wasn't long, maybe an hour that I got to sleep when it finally came, maybe an hour and a half. I didn't feel great, but good enough to walk.

The timing was right, shortly after I got on the road a reporter from a local paper came pulled over and interviewed me. I needed the boon, Still it was hard to get going again, my legs just didn't want to move what I now felt was a relatively short distance. It wasn't pain, just shear exhaustion. I made it of course and a shower was a just reward.

My host baked cookies, we went to sushi and out for drinks. A fine night. I still don't yet have a plan for tomorrow, but maybe tomorrow will have a plan for me.