June 12th, 2009

 

Sorry that it has taken so long to get something on this page but I am maxxxed out!  This part of the world along my trek route is still in the stone ages for technology and so any time that I do get a brief moment to try and catch up on this site, the cell signal for my air card is slower than corn growing in Iowa.

I have experienced disaster in one form or another every day that I have been out here…. and I suppose that the handcart pioneers had the same thing(s).  I’m supposed to be in bed an hour ago but needed to write something while I have a signal.  Let me just give you a short order update of what has happened….My handcart was made in the dry heat of Utah and the moisture of Iowa has caused my wooden axle and hubs to swell and screech.  The handcart box that carries items has swollen so much in the rain that the boards on the bottom look like the rounded edge of a barrel.  I got two blisters the first day, a couple of smaller ones the second and two large ones the third day.  I have had to do roadside surgery to be able to keep walking.  I have put tape around the entire inside edges of my shoes to keep the friction to a minimum.  I soak my feet each day in Epsom salts just to try and relieve some of the pain.  I walk like I’m 90 years old.  Pulling up these steep country hills has my double hernia  s c r e a m i n g  at me and I have lost the feeling in the thumb and index finger from the way that I grab the handle to pull.  

I drink two gallons of water each day and only urinate two or three time because my clothes are soaked from perspiration.  My joints from arthritis is almost a secondary thing anymore, except when I have to sleep in my canvas tent on the ground with two wool blankets and I’m cold and my bones hurt.  And after a full day of pulling this handcart (217 pounds empty) twenty miles down these roads, all I want to do is sleep.  I haven’t got the energy or ability to even think about eating.  I also wasn’t allowed to stay in Victor IA, where I had walked thirteen and a half miles to get there and so I had to walk to the next town before making camp…. a total trek that day of 23.5 miles!

The list goes on and I could spend hours telling you how this all relates to the handcart pioneers, but it is an hour and a half past my bed time and I have been waking up a 4 AM every morning because my body hurts so much that I can’t lay there anymore.

I don’t know if my body will let me do this, but my mind and spirit say that I must.  It truly is my faith in God that I am helped and protected.  There are also some amazing stories and people that I need to write about, but not tonight.  It is pouring down rain and my canvas tent is leaking, so I have to go figure out how to make that work.