By Elliot
There is something known as hiker’s restlessness that afflicts many of the people on trail. When some people on the TA take a rest day, they have a hard time sitting still; they need to do something. Even if the rest day is to give the body a chance to recover, people will want to walk. This often carries on when people are done the trail and go home. They can’t be still, so they go off in search of another thousands kilometre long walking adventure.
One thing that I’ve learned is that I am only restless tactically. On days that I know will be long, I’ll be up early and be nervous until we get going. But on a rest day? I’m happy to sit in front of a long-empty cup of coffee and luxuriate in the lack of urgency.
Today we caught a hitch into Palmerston North from Bulls.
We thought that it would be an easy hitch: the road we were on combined two different highways. And there were many cars. But that also meant many cars that didn’t stop for us. Still, it wasn’t too long before a man stopped. He was in an old car with the panel on the passenger side door missing on the inside, he had crutches in the backseat and he was shirtless. He was also going the wrong way for us, so we thanked him and passed up the hitch.
We waited over ten minutes, which felt like ages given the number of cars going past, before someone else stopped for us, this time in a gleaming orange pickup truck. And he was going to Palmerston North! So we hopped in, and learned that he worked on the airforce base in Bulls, which we didn’t know existed, and that he was going to the gym in “Palmy”, which was twenty minutes away. He actually went out of his way at to drop us off in the middle of town, no matter how much we insisted we didn’t want to inconvenience him.
Once in Palmy, we went for coffee, got new shoes for Ruth, and went out for lunch and dinner. On days when we aren’t walking, it feels like we are on vacation. We did manage to do something trail related: we ordered groceries to a place halfway through the next section of trail we are doing. That way we will only have to carry 3 days of food out of Palmy, instead of 8.