Log 2012102201

I have been on the road for 47 days so far.  I think that beats my last record by 10 days. 
After getting my bike repaired in Cambridge, I dropped it off without test riding it out of the store.  Well, I pre positioned the bike a day later at Campground H on the Stockport Section - Buckeye Trail in the evening.  The next day, I got off to a late start, but it was only a 15.6 mile hike and about 1/3rd of it was on-road.  So, departed Basecamp Alpha anyways on foot. 
The remainder of the Belle Valley Section was easy, even on the off-road.  And that's partly because the portion of off-road trail on Belle Valley was recently built.  And for the most part, the trail surfaces didn't usually angle parallel to my feet.  The only thing that I didn't like there was that the grass surfaces were not benched.  Benching is used when the trail is coming around a hillside and rather have the hiker walk on a tilted surface, they dig under level it out.  There's probably a reason why they didn't do that.  I must admit that I've never maintained a surface under those conditions before.
The Belle Valley is the 18th section that I've completed.  Currently, the Stockport, Road Fork, Whipple and West Union Sections are in progress. However, RF & Whipple are connected and I could finish both up in one hiking day.
The Stockport Section in AEP is older and looks like the segment needs a adopter, or they're filling in with other maintainers, or they have a maintainer whose adopted a large off-road segment and hasn't gotten back to groom parts of the off-road yet.   I think I've mentioned before that Whipple Section off-road was difficult to navigate.  Stockport 1 - 3 was not like that.  It just looked like it's missed 1 maintenance session.  For all I know, somebody's coming back to maintain it and I just got there before hand... it happens.
So, I got to my bike, got on and realized that the new chain wasn't holding gears. And that's when I realized that I had a 16mi, 5 hour walk back to The Cramper in addition to the 15.6mi that I already hiked.  Well, I'm no expert at tuning a rear dérailleur, but I got my screwdriver out of my swiss army knife and managed to lock it into 7 HI. 
That night, I got back to camp in 2 hours, instead of 5 thanks my "handy work."  Well, this after noon, I gave up on trying to tune the transmission.  So, I took the bike to a shop in Zanesville.  And the technician looked at it, tuned the tranny, but when I got back to pick it up, he showed me that the top of the chain was sagging.  Turns out that the previous technician over looked that there was an extra link in the chain and I had Zanesville take it out. 
But he also alerted me that the gear cassette might have needed to be replaced.  This all 7 gears on the rear wheel.  I took it for a test drive and found that after the link was removed and transmission was tuned, that it still wasn't holding any gears.  So right now, the bike is still at the shop, having a new gear cassette installed and tomorrow we'll see if my old seat post, which is wider than the one currently installed, can be modified for use with my noseless seat?
I'm currently investigating the possibility of cycling the independent east stem of the American Discovery Trail.  My measurements show that Belpre of Washington County to the Buckeye Trail junction is only 31 miles.  A 62+mi trip by bike, or hike and bike is certainly possible in a day.  What bothers me is that it's nearby right now.  The question is do I want to cease that day?
Tonight, I didn't get the outer shell on The Cramper just right.  And now that my corners are exposed, the electric ceramic heater won't heat beyond 61F.  Usually this unit at 47F outdoor temp can heat my bunk upto 72F+.  The old tarp wasn't wide enough to cover the corners.  I guess that I know now that it really did need to be upgraded.