So here begins the fear of the weather. 

Today began in Center Harbor, which I know well as we’ve spent a bunch of summers near there. We had an overflow of day walkers, beginning with about 50 walkers, including an 11 year old and his Dad,  midway through, a favorite student from 20 years ago, who now writes for the Times, and the famous Ben Cohen from Ben & Jerry’s (and his dog). 

This was to be our last 20 mile day. Thankfully. I increasingly think New Hampshire is an Escher drawing, as we seem to be only climbing hills as we descend from the White Mountains. 

We made it to Laconia by around 2:30pm, and the advance team had pulled together a spontaneous event at the Vintage Cafe — an incredibly cool place with about 50 people packed together for lunch and two short talks from Ben and me. 

This is the experience I wanted most on this trip: making the idea convincing in 8 minutes, and without a machine. And here was born a new meme for me: The GD Walker. (No no no: Granny D, not that). We are GD Walkers, exercising a different but amazingly potent form of political expression.

But then the weather turned against us. A blizzard was brewing, and we were still 4 miles from our hotel. So after deliberation and a vote, we split an expedition team of 6, who took off into the snow (with lights and vests and extra extra care), while the rest were shuttled to the endpoint. 

The weather does not look great for the week. Cold mainly — really cold a couple days. We’ve been blessed so far. Blessings seem to be fading. There are mainly short walks ahead. But difficult short walks to be sure.