Day One: Saturday, August 16 - Williamstown, Mass to the Start of the Long Road to Congdon Shelter
Distance: 13.3 miles (13.3 miles total)
Bad Night's Sleep
Despite the excellent filet mignon dinner and good phone calls with my wife Lee and my 97-year-old mother, I didn’t sleep well. Some nervousness was to be expected when starting this trip, I understand that. However, it was disturbing to have quite a few night sweats and also, for the third day in a row, slight leg cramps. I know how to abort cramps by immediately lifting my toes, but why do they happen?
In the dark, my mind wandered everywhere. A nagging worry about the cancer coming back, instigated by the strange sensation of random nerve firing in my legs, pushed me toward a half-hypothesis. The leukemia was removing a lot of electrolytes from my blood to grow, the night sweats were a response to expel water to maintain electrolyte balance, and that imbalance also caused leg cramps. It all might have made (a little) sense except that I was definitely in remission. Still, I pondered these possibilities until a strange sound caught my attention.
The Coffee Maker's Surprise
Listening carefully, I finally identified the sound as the coffee maker spontaneously starting up.
"Despite the excellent filet mignon dinner and good phone calls with my wife Lee and my 97-year-old mother, I didn’t sleep well." - Original Author
Author's Summary: The first day of the journey was marked by poor sleep, troubling physical symptoms, and an unsettling, yet odd, moment involving a coffee maker.