We awoke this morning to a wet tent. It was raining lightly but steadily. We packed up somberly and set out around 6:30. The rain didn't let up for nearly 7 bitter, bone chilling hours.
All morning long we cursed our luck and kicked ourselves for passing up a night in the hot springs ranch. Surely, had we gotten up out of a warm bed this morning and sat down to a hot breakfast of eggs and home fries and bacon, a nice cup of coffee, perhaps an early dip in the spring waters--surely we would have looked out the window and said, "no way in hell are we going out there today."
But there we were, worrying, terrified that it might never end. Already by 10 everything I had on was drenched, undies and all. The rain jacket Eliza made for me out of ultralight sil-nylon never got a zipper or anything (we were rushed and it was low on the list of priorities...we were going to the esert afterall) to keep it closed, so it turned out to be ultra-ineffective at keeping me dry.
Later in the day, after things were starting to dry up, Eliza nostalgically recalled another time when we were similarly stuck in the rain with this mutual feeling of pure hopelessness. We were in Jerusalem in the early Spring of 2002--it may have even been Palm Sunday or something, there were bus loads of Christians about for some reason--and we had just taken the bus down from Haifa near where I was living at the time in Shefa'Amr. We had hoped to stay with a friend of mine, Tarek, at the University, but he was visiting relatives and when we got there we had no place to stay. So being the intellgent, resourceful kids we were, we decided t go out to a fancy Geargian Restaurant and then sit in the back of a little wine shop and drink a bottle of wine as the rain started to fall outside. It was all fine and dandy until the shop closed and all of a sudden we were alone in the rain and it had gotten cold and we had no place to go. After wandering for a hour we finally desc!
ended the steps arond Demascus Gate and entered the Old City in search of a hostel. I can see so well the vivid silhouette of the battlements atop the city walls and the cold drizzling clouds whipping over our heads as we clamored down the wet deserted aleyway. That night we ended up barely sleeping in a miserable tin shack that was rented to us as a double bedroom for some outlandish fee.
Today ended pretty well. Things cleared up and we descended a bit. All our things ended up just drying riht on our bodies--amazing, these wickking materials! We finally had our oatmeal breakfast at 4:30 after putting in 22 miles (There is no reason whatsoever to stop walking when it is pouring down rain, so we didn't eat, didn't drink any water, barely stopped to rest).
We went a few more before setting up camp for the night. Eliza chopped her dreadlock of a pony tail of with her swiss army knife scissors as I cooked the nightly snack of Beans and cous cous. We read through the guide book a little and debated stopping at this Trail Angel place, Hikers' Oasis, tomorrow--we're torn because while we'd like to check out the social scene of the trail some, we sort of feel that things are going just fine as is; why get off the trail if we don't really feel the need to. Of course, it could be tha we do really need to "take a zero" (hiker lingo for a day without hiking any miles along the trail) and just don't realize it. We decided that we'll wait and see what the day looks like in the morning--anything like today and we're cutting out and heading for the Oasis.
I will now roll over and read approximately 1.3 pages of Mr. Samler's Planet, the novel I have been shlepping along with me every day. Worth the weight? Not sure yet. If I could only stay awake long enough to...
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