day 5: coming at you live from a wendy's

wowie zowie, i walked A LOT today! i'm actually still about two miles from my resting place for the night, but i'm having a bit of an airbnb odyssey (thus the evocative blog title) that i'll get into down in the daily bullet points. here are some thoughts from day 5:

• today was my first longer distance day since day 1 and WOW it was.....okay? hard? it's always difficult to quantify how i feel on these longer distance days because everything feels like a moving target - my destination, my body, how much i need to pee, whether there is or is NOT a sidewalk...
• speaking of sidewalks: we LOVE a sidewalk! we love them. now, what i do not love so much is how sidewalks just end??? indeterminately??? i can't tell you how many times i'll be walking along and suddenly the sidewalk will just....stop! i feel like i'm in a perpetuating rendition of the shel silverstein poem "where the sidewalk ends" because DANG i could tell you where every sidewalk ends in nassau and suffolk county!
• speaking of suffolk county: I AM IN IT! I AM IN SUFFOLK COUNTY! i crossed the border near melville and it was super anticlimactic lol! unlike when i crossed into nassau, there was no sign so i realized (somehow) through my limited knowledge of long island geography and the appearance of some sort of western suffolk county public works facility. i also ALMOST made it to the long island welcome center - i was on a service road that went RIGHT by it, but there was a big ass fence which kept us from meeting. woe, and woe again.
• speaking of woes: my body is SORE!!!! today! i woke up feeling pretty good which was amazing, but my body definitely took a minute to adjust on the road. i am continuing to be deeply in love with my compression sock, my ankle brace, and ibuprofen. truly gifts from supreme beings. i'm also DEEPLY grateful to jeremy for letting me offload a few of my belongings and gifts that were adding weight to my backpack - thank you, jeremy!
• speaking of the kindness of strangers: i am currently writing this blog from a wendy's instead of the airbnb i'll be staying at for the night. due to some unknown mix-up, my host hosted someone else last night and wasn't able to clean the room for my stay today. initially, i'd told them i planned to arrive around "dinnertime" (although their check-in is listed as 1 PM on airbnb). so when they told me they'd need some time to clean the room, i said i could delay my arrival til 6PM (friends i have been sitting in this wendy's since 3:30 PM now lol) and got a message back saying i might need to do a "LATE CHECK-IN." i am TrEPidACIouS about the vagueness of the word LATE in that sentence. hopefully it's not LATE late because - 
• speaking of lateness: i'm still going to bed pretty early and waking up pretty early. my dreams for this evening post-walk were mostly to take a long hot shower, continue my fierce battle with my heel blister, stretch my aching limbs, and lie as flat as i can until my interview tomorrow. hopefully, a lot of that can still be achieved just, you know...........later.

i'll check in with you again tomorrow!!!! see you then!