Day 109, 110, 111: Celebrity status.

109:

The cafe we slept behind has soy milk... And they open at 7:00! Praise be to Jah!

To begin our day we have to get out of Falls Village, and the only way to do that is to ford the Housatonic River. This normally would sound fun and challenging but in all reality is gross and disgusting (our crossing being between a dam and a power plant) and leaves us soaked from the waist down. 

Having wet feet totally sucks, but having wet shorts is worse. Why? Chafe.

And now a word from our sponsors:

If you're like me and many other underwear foregoing hiker trash pieces of shit then you too probably suffer from Chronic Nut Chafe. This often overlooked malady effects literally dozens of dirty and disgusting thruhikers. That's why I use Body Glide. Don't let the name fool you, it does anything but "glide", in fact, it should more accurately be called Body Smear. Body Glide is the only plant based sports lubricant guaranteed to completely rub off in less than thirty minutes, leaving you wondering why you've been carrying such an ineffective product for 1500 miles. So make sure you carry enough to reapply it every hour when you notice that you're bleeding profusely from the Worst Chafe Ever. But watch out for day hikers, you don't want them to catch you in the bushes to the side of the trail putting what looks like a
miniature stick if deodorant down your pants. Body Glide... It totally doesn't work.

A few hours later I'm looking for a spigot in a cemetary in Salisbury, CT. Nothing like a little bit of corpse water to get you through the hottest part of the day. I eat a couple of snacks with my back against a gravestone and watch the locals drive by in confusion and maybe even outrage.

Off in the distance there's a thunderstorm on the way but there's no way for us to dodge it, so we set off knowing they we'll get soaked through in short order. We long ago decided that rain gear wasn't worth it when it's this hot out, so we just embrace the rain. What we didn't take into consideration was how difficult it would be to ascend/descend the highest point in Connecticut during an insane thunderstorm.

Here's an inaccurate sign:

Almost to the top of "Bear Mountain" and the rain (and consequently, chafe) is hitting me full force. It's so bad that one hand is holding my poles and the other is in my pants, keeping my crotch separated from my thigh so as to diminish friction. I know this is a weird mental image, but I don't care, I'm well beyond keeping what's left of my dignity intact.

We summit the mountain, the rain miraculously stops, the sun comes out. Like a child, Stevie plays in puddles as I climb a weird monument. It's a bunch of rocks with a pole sticking out...

The descent was the absolute worst. I mean total shit. It would be hard under any circumstances but the rain has turned the boulders into frictionless montrosities and it takes us an hour to go less than a mile. Sweet.

At some point we passed into Massachusetts and although there was never a sign, it's almost palpably more beautiful.

And why wouldn't it be? And just like that, we're that much closer to Vermont...

110:

Short hike into Great Barrington, MA. On the way we summit Mount Everett, and I contemplate defacing the sign to say "Mount Everest". Petty vandalism burns too many calories these days, so I leave it be.

The mosquitoes are horrendous. Worse than ever before. They're so thick that I'm honestly concerned that they might pick us up and fly us away to their secret mosquito lair as an offering to their mosquito queen.

We hitch into Great Barrington, and (apparent) tourist trap that it is, I still like it more than almost any other town. We eat Thai food, drink espresso, get food from a coop, and fall asleep in a (vegan gluten free) pizza coma in a free hotel room that would ordinarily be 260 dollars. 

Extreme dirtbag success.

111:

Great Barrington, MA.

This town is hard to leave. It has a plethora of vegan food, farmer's market, and last but not least, soy lattes. God damn.

Besides, we gotta do laundry anyhow.

So we leave late, but not before Cheyanne takes pictures with famous people.

Those are the Eisenberg siblings. Apparently Jesse (top) is vegan and donates money to Farm Sanctuary. Dope. He's also Lex Luthor in the new Batman/Superman movie. Double dope.

We hike out and I notice that I'm feeling a lot stronger these days. Gotta be these tinctures. Or my probiotics. Or the apple cider vinegar. Or the produce I've been packing out of every town. Or all of the above.

I eat dinner by the light of my shitty new 10 dollar headlamp on a beach by a pond. The wind is strong enough to keep most of the mosquitoes away and I hang out on the beach listening to music on my phone until way too late (10:00 PM, an hour after hiker midnight) before passing out at my stealth camp in a hemlock grove nearby.