22 days to go update

I am starting to get very anxious about my hike the closer it gets. It's like a mixture of nervous and excitement, and I'm not sleeping very well, not that I ever sleep much anyways, but each night I have crazy dreams about the trail. I also moved my start date up to the 18th to sync up my first few supply points with week days so I can recieve my resupply package without delay. The weather has been so great that I wish I could leave tomorrow, but I gotta be patient.

Now on to the not so good stuff. I have developed some sort of stress injury on the front of my ankle\foot. I noticed it while running a few days ago and I've been hiking on it this week in pain, stubbornly hoping it will go away. It only hurts when I put my shoes on and tie the laces. I've been icing it and if it continues to hurt during my hike tomorrow, I'll switch to biking for awhile and ice the shit out of it.

The other thing that shocked me today was my first pack weigh-in. I packed up alll my gear, which looked and felt pretty good, but my packed weighed 20.8 pounds! WTF?! Where did I go wrong? I was stunned to say the least. So I immediately gave my pack a shakedown, stripping items from my first aid, clothing, electronics, ditty sack, etc. I'm still forcibg myself to drop other items so that I can get my base weight down to 15-16 pounds, though 17 would be acceptable.  With all the water problems this year and the long waterless stretches, I know that I'll be carrying manynpounds of water, and my food isn't exactly light-weight, I need to slim down my pack weight. I'll never be satisfied anyways.