May 6, Zero days

I'm on day 2 of zero days. I'm staying at the Roan Mountain B&B. Ann and Steve are wonderful hosts. I highly recommend this B&B if you can afford it. I'm on day 2 because of the rain. It rained all day yesterday and the forecast called for rain all day today. BUT, it stopped raining this morning and turned into a beautiful day. Thunderstorms are forecasted for this afternoon. We'll see if that pans out. It's nice to have the rest, but it's kind of disheartening to waste a good weather day not hiking.

I met Rocketman a few days ago and we've been hiking at about the same rate since then. He has a lot of hiking experience as well as mountaineering and other outdoor expertises. He summited Mount Denali a few years ago and has also hiked parts of the Pacific Crest Traill and the Colorado Trail. He offered to look at my backpacking equipment. I readily took him up on the offer. He gave me some great advice for reducing my weight. The main item was to get a new pack. He has about 20 packs at home. He is hiking the AT with a ULA pack, an ultralight pack. The company is based out of Logan, UT. I looked them up and called the company today. It looks like the Circuit would fit my needs. I would lose almost 5 pounds by exchanging my current pack with that one. Other suggestions he made were to reduce my cold weather gear by getting rid of duplicate items. He also suggested using Gatorade bottles instead of my Platypus water bladder. I could lost about a half pound by doing that. I think I can drop about 10 pounds with all his suggestions and the reduction due to upcoming warm weather. It is going to get warm this summer, isn't it?!