Tomorrow I head out to Mt. Katahdin for the last hike of the season, so no pithy observations for you until Sunday night. Might be a cold night out there on the trail. Hopefully I'll be comfy cozy in my sleeping bag. Then, it's on to the top of the world--or at least the highest place in Maine. I just came in from the shed where I climbed the rope a dozen times (ouch, ouch and more ouch) and caught the tail-end of an NPR story about a guy who got laid off and decided to hike the AT. He said that every day was "magical," but he got the flu on the trail and that was pretty tough. Then he said, "what they say is true: no rain, no pain, no Maine." (I don't know what rhymes with Georgia if you're a Southbounder). At any rate, I never heard that one before and I quite like it. Sort of makes me hearken back to my misspent youth, when I used to listen to a song with the refrain pleasure is the pain.