Day 7 - where we return to civilization

Day 6 sucked. I predicted that day 6 would suck, but for different reasons. When we drove our route it looked like that day would have very little shoulder on the road and thus would be more dangerous. This was still true, but we've become used to that part. No, this time it was the weather's fault. It rained steadily on us all day which is more upsetting than usual when you are supposed to walk 20-some miles that day. It also didn't help that we had no cell phone reception all day.

But we finished it. We stopped at a hotel for the first time and thus survived to walk again. The hotel, the Inn at Iron Masters, has a bitchin' name, yes, but I was not enthoused about the staff there. It consisted of one lady at the desk who was, in a word, smug. Of course this is Connecticut, so...

Day 7 brought us back to cell phone reception and into more frequent small towns here in Connecticut. It also brought us to a newly defined rule of the trip. As John wrote in his post, we got a ride for the last few miles. Two women pulled over to adjust things in their pick-up and as they were getting back in they came back out and offered us a ride to town (Winsted).

At that point in the very hilly day we were very ready for this so we accepted. While riding John and I came to an agreement. Yes, this blog is called "walking the rivalry", and no, getting rides isn't walking, so we would not hitchhike or ask for rides. It was okay, however, to accept rides if freely offered without provocation.

While the more cynical out there would argue that this is not legitimate in the spirit of our journey, I say this: We are definitely walking the VAST majority of this as rides are not offered often (we've been offered rides maybe three times out of seven days), and besides that, we are masters of our fate here. The idea of the walk was not brought to us by a third party, but a creation of our own and as such we are allowed to include or exclude any guidelines that we want. We will not go so far as to ask for rides, but taking rides we are okay with since it also gives us a chance to meet more people when we have the energy to talk to them.

So with that, we start day 8. We will end at the Connecticut/Massachusetts border today.

This blog is brought to you by Timmy, our host for two nights. Thus, he rocks.