Apr 18
Limping pretty badly, and yup a bit of bruising.
Went to the correct outfitter now that it was open and raided my box. I already had town clothes so left those in there.
Went to the foot and shoes class with a nice guy named Twisted as we both were having problems. He ended up being okayed to stay in the shoes he had and to only let his body heal itself.
I ended up taking about 4 hours of the foot and shoe guy’s time trying to find a better set of shoes and liners combo to stop my blisters, support my arches, correct my heavy pronating, and help support my ankles.
We tried a bunch of shoes and liner combos. After hours of this we were getting close but I was running out of spoons and weepy a little when he wasn’t with me. He had made an alteration to my right hand shoes liner, placing a strong foam support towards the front of my arch and slightly under the edge of the inside of where the inside pad of the ball of my foot should be and slight up into the crease between the two pads.
That felt amazing. It made my foot feel lifted, not roll inwards so much, and supported where my pads on the balls of my feet don’t line up with the bones correctly due to my foot surgeries.
We then did similar to the other liner.
After we fiddled with the first one for a while and found the right place he glued it. The second one he got lucky and it was right the first time. I walked around a bit to test them and started shuffling and being weepy in front of him, telling him they felt good! Good-good. Like, right.
He reassured me again (he had been a coupla times because I felt so uncomfortable having this guy work on me for hours) that this was his job, I wasn’t a problem, he didn’t want to out me into anything that fit wrong and would cause more problems, etc.
So, I finally had shoes (sneakers) that fit right with two different thicknesses of liners and custom middle-front-foot supports in them. I bought them and was told to come back in the next day to do any adjustments that felt needed.
Went back the next day after wearing them around all evening for that and some Permethrin for my gear that didn’t have it already and let him know all was good.
That night permethrined my stuff and hung out, later chatted some more with Twisted and found out I really like the guy (as a buddy).
So that was my birthday.
Apr 19
Day was pretty quiet, I walked around in my shoes some more as I said above.
Slack packed from Rock Gap to to Winding Stair Gap.
Twisted and I had established we both were cuddle people the day before or maybe before that and while he was reading in his top bunk I told him that unless I heard a protest I was coming up to read, too. He was like a stunned, “okay”, and I got settled in next to him and we both read.
Sebastian, another hiker in our bunkhouse came in and saw this and asked what this was, laughing at us each lying on our backs holding up books as we read. He cracked a joke about it being a book club and took a picture. I asked him for a copy but forgot to get it.
Turned out through chat during it we both had an interest in physics and he had an author to recommend.