August 5th: Woke up at 6am and scrambled a bit to get everything ready. Everything fit in my backpack because of the absence of running clothes and shoes. 2 bowls of Fruit Rings and a protein shake (newly purchased chocolate caramel protein powder) for breakfast. HQ at 7am to rendezvous with John and Justin. Meet them at Lincoln Woods parking lot at 7:45am. Drove up in the Ford F-550 (dump truck). Thread everything in the bed of the truck with the sand/gravel mix. Arrived at the campsite and worked from about 8:30-1pm. I had 2 Ritz nutella pretzel sandwiches at 11am to hold me over for lunch. Justin and I worked at the campsite while John grabbed two more loadsat Campton Sand and Gravel. We brought two more pieces for a tent pad from the other sites. We were able to carry one easily (the smaller hemlock), but we were in no way going to carry the larger pine without seriously injuring ourselves. Justin thought on his toes and insisted we use the resources around us. We reverted back to our caveman instincts and rolled the tree over two smaller logs all the way down the campsite. Worked magically. Once we got them to their rightful places, we began peeling the bark away. I used a drawknife for the pine tree. Peeling like a friggin pro. Moving right along. Once we finished those, Justin dropped another tree (chainsawed a tree down) while I started wheelbarrowing gravel down to the area of the next tent pad. Took a lunch break at 1:15pm and then resumed work for a bit before cleaning up the site. John and Justin headed out in the dump truck at about 2:30. I set up camp, checked out entire campsite, cleaned up work area, tidied up the latrines, and gathered water until 4pm. Sat at my picnic table and took a couple power naps on the bench until about 6. Guy stopped by with his black lab to say hi and meet the caretaker. Dinner started at 6:30pm. This dinner went smoothly. Rice, beans and cheese wraps. 1st one broke apart, but the 2nd one didn't. I had leftover rice and pinto beans that I tried my best to finish. I couldn't. I wanted to continue stuffing my face to be part of the clean plate club, but then I thought to myself, "What if I throw up?" For one, that just makes a mess. You're in the woods, you would think you don't need to reall clean it up. With bears in the area, I would need to clean it up thoroughly and bury any of the upchuck. I didn't push my luck and threw the remains in the garbage (it wasn't too much). Cleaned up and made my rounds at 7:30pm. There were only 2 groups when I started that were at the end of the campsite. As I finished with them, three more people had crossed the river to stay at my campsite. First guy was Junior who actually lives in Keene. Once I heard that, I let him know that I just graduated from Keene State. He was like same here (not recently), did you play rugby there? I wasn't sure if he was joking. Did he take more than a quick glance at me? I mean I know the manual labor might of bulked me up a little bit, but not enough to be mistaken for a rugby player. Maybe the uniform makes me look bigger. I don't know, but I let him know I was a runner. He started at Keene in 1991 and paid his way through to finish in 2001 (he mentioned he had a full time job for part of that time). Cool. Some other interesting characters along the way especially at site #15. I talked to the guy for probably 8-10 minutes and he must of taken off his glasses to clean them at least 10-15 times. I wanted to ask him if I could clean them, but I didn't want to interrupt the riveting conversation we were having (I forget it completely because I was so concentrated on whether he was ever gonna stop taking his glasses off his face). Retreated back to my tent site to brush my teeth and retire for the night. Exhausted, but a good day of work.
Summary: First day of 3 days with no running. It wasn't bad because I didn't have a lot of down time after working on the tent pad and setting up camp. Stretched and Sticked (yes that is a verb, for runners) my calves before I went to bed. No dip in the river.
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