Top o’ the bone-chilling morning, hikers!

I apologize for not posting this sooner, but I’ve been where cellular signal dare not go. In those places where it did manage to sneak in, it just wasn’t strong enough to keep its grip on my aircard.  But my, oh my, the places we’ve been!

I’ve been taking notes, I have.  Those among you lucky enough hear the satisfying thump of a Tampa Tribune hitting your driveway may know that I write a weekly story from the trail.  I’m grateful to Alltel for supplying me adequate signal to file my story.

The bloggery works somewhat differently.  To post a blog, one must log on to a special program.  Well, my aircard and tbo.com were having words (or more accurately, weren’t having them).  Certainly the weather has been a factor, the cloud cover up here has been as impenetrable to cell signal as it has been to sunlight. 

So there was little I could do but keep moving, and that’s always a pleasure when you’re on the Florida Trail.

I arrived in White Springs a week ago after an incredible trip through San Pedro Bay, the Twin Rivers State Forest and the incomparable bluffs of the Suwannee River.  Even on those days when the sun was shining, the temperature refused to exceed 50 degrees F.  Now, this is excellent backpacking weather…as long as you don’t stop.  Stopping encourages every molecule of perspiration on your body to go cryogenic on you.  N-n-no g-g-g-good can come from that. 

The savior?  Oatmeal.  Yep, you are looking at the oatmeal poster boy.  I’m going to buy me one of those Quaker hats just as soon as I find a Quaker re-enactor specialty store!  Quick to fix, scar-leaving hot and a failsafe rib-sticker, a zip-lock freezer bag of oatmeal warms the hands, the belly and the attitude.

My long-time favorite elixir for warding off chill is the Shackleton, an oatmeal beverage I named for Sir Ernest in honor of the drink that sustained his crew during their epic voyage – made in a couple boats not much bigger than a Jon boat - from the Antarctic ice shelf to St. George’s Island.  My Florida Trail version of that drink is concocted by adding water and wee dram of powdered milk.  Restorative doesn’t begin to describe its effect.  I raise my WWII vintage canteen cup to the Endurance and to her intrepid crew!  OooRAH!

But I digress… food’ll do that to you out here.

Here, on a chilly, sun-bathed edge of the Osceola National Forest, the weather has cleared and my connection to the World Wide Web is 21st Century good.  I am smiling as wide as Texas and anxious to share a few trail tales.

Read on, hikers, they follow this entry. 

Beautiful sunlit Cheers from the Florida Trail!  Yahooooo!  Mike