I've been thinking about writing this for a while, but I didn't want to sound like a big whiny complainer.  So this is partially to tell my story and partially to help me remember all the sordid details. 

It's hard to use superlatives when talking about recent events.  To say something is the "best" or "worst", it needs to be compared to all other things in its category.  So the best or worst often doesn't really mean the best or worst; it means the best or worst in recent memory or the best or worst with respect to my changing worldview.  The worst experience of my life when I was 5 was when I was "forced" to go on Thunder Mountain at Disney World.  The best experience of my life when I was 12 was when my football team beat Sparta Blue 30-0.  Things change as viewpoints change.  So this is a difficult topic from the start. 

All things considered, up to this point in my life, the worst day of my life was September 2, 2006, the 2nd day of my epic hike from Vernon, NJ to Harriman State Park, NY.  When I think back on it, I can laugh about things and make fun of myself.  But all in all, that day contained the biggest series of ironies a day can possibly contain, making it the worst day ever.  To illustrate my point: 

1.  The bear scare.  My bear encounter actually happened the night before, but the feelings were obviously still with me.  Coming relatively close to death and having all the time in the world to think about it add up to some funny thoughts.  Thankfully, I stopped thinking about bears after a few hours of walking. 

2.  The hurricane.  Hurricane Ernesto hit the northeast on or around that day.  Although I didn't officially walk through a hurricane, the wind, rain, and cold weather didn't equate to a good time. 

3.  The distance.  My plan was to do 50-60 miles in 3-3.5 days.  It's an obtainable goal, but it was a little too ambitious for my tastes. 

4.  Wet shoes.  I don't care about being covered in sweat.  And I wouldn't mind rain if it weren't for one small problem:  Wet shoes don't dry overnight.  My shoes got noticeably wet by around 2-3pm, and I started to worry about the following 2 days of intense walking.  Wet shoes are fine if you're not walking far.  But wet shoes coupled with extreme distance and a 40-lb backpack means trouble. 

5.  The darkness.  It got dark sooner than I expected, so I was forced to stumble around with a headlamp while I splashed through puddles and worried about another bear encounter. 

6.  Lack of food.  By around 6pm, I knew I had about 4 miles left.  Four miles isn't too bad, but when you say it in terms of time, it's not too cool:  2 hours.  Every time I stopped, I lost time and body heat.  So instead of stopping to get some food in my system, I overdid it a little bit with the hope that I'd eat a nice big tasty MRE when I got to the shelter. 

7.  The Lemon Squeezer.  For some ungodly reason, the creators of the Appalachian Trail decided it would be "fun" to make people walk through a 2-foot passage between two walls of solid rock.  Note to the creators of the Appalachian Trail:  This is impossible, especially for people carrying any sort of backpack.  Jerks.  So I was forced to take off my pack and shove it through the two rocks as I followed.  This used up a considerable amount of energy I didn't have in the first place. 

8.  The failure.  After 2 hours and 4 miles, I didn't find the warm, dry shelter.  I thought I might've passed it, so I didn't want to go any further.  In utter defeat, I looked for a flat rockless area on the side of the path where I could pitch my tent.  I found one on the top of a mountain (I wish that was a joke). 

9.  The supposed bear scare.  It was around 7:30pm, totally dark, raining, and surprisingly windy.  Not only was it nearly impossible to set up my tent, but I had the very real fear that I heard a bear growling in the woods right next to me.  I shined my headlamp in the direction of the sound, but I couldn't see anything.  I frantically attempted to set up my tent, threw everything inside, and jumped in, hoping the thin fabric of the tent would protect me from the 2-inch claws and razor-sharp teeth of a hungry bear.  I laid there completely motionless for a while, hoping the bear would lose interest.  I couldn't eat my much-needed and well-deserved meal because the smell would definitely attract wildlife (if the wildlife wasn't already standing right outside my tent). 

10.  The feeling.  I felt something I never felt before, and I think it had something to do with my total exhaustion and my lack of replenishment.  Several times throughout the night, I felt sort of like I was gonna throw up, but it wasn't the normal throwing-up feeling.  It came from below my stomach, and it felt acidic.  Nothing actually came up, but I felt this feeling every few hours and every time I switched positions while trying to sleep. 

11.  Naked.  I was faced with a rather important decision:  Sleep in wet clothes and wake up freezing and possibly sick, sleep in dry clothes that will inevitably get wet and wake up freezing and possibly sick, or sleep naked.  The only reasonable choice was to sleep naked, so I stored my extra set of dry clothes in my backpack and used my wet clothes as a pillow. 

12.  The rainfly.  My tent's rainfly blew off after a few minutes, so I quickly got covered with a nice amount of cold rain.  Risking a bear attack, I got out of my tent (still naked), and attempted to quickly reattach the rainfly.  They should do this drill with people in high-pressure jobs.  Do you (a) risk a bear attack and/or being found naked in the middle of the woods during a semi-hurricane, or do you (b) sleep in the rain as your tent fills with water?  I opted for choice (a), but was then forced to go with choice (b) after my rainfly flew off a 2nd time. 

13.  The puddle.  Not at all contrary to popular belief, a tent will fill with water when left uncovered in a rainstorm.  So when it finally got light enough outside to warrant me getting out of my cold, wet sleeping bag, I found that everything I owned had sucked up 10 times its weight in water.  You'd be amazed at how heavy a soaking wet sleeping bag is.  There was no way I would be able to carry all my newly wet gear in addition to the 30 other pounds of gear in my bag.  Plus, my "dry" clothes (see 11 above) were no longer dry in any sense of the term.  I was forced to put on cold, wet clothes.  Ah, what a beautiful morning. 

14.  The shelter.  By the time I put on my wet clothes and ate my too-late-to-be-satisfying MRE, a couple of hikers came walking along the trail towards me.  I probably looked like a freak of nature with my wet gear strewn about the trail and a pocket knife in my hand (it was rusted open), but I asked them if there was a shelter around.  They told me the very thing I feared most:  "Yeah, it's right over there."  Sure enough, if I had walked about 20 more feet (see 8 above), I would've easily made it to the shelter, which would have prevented 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13. 

So, all in all, after writing all this stuff down, I feel fully qualified and completely justified in saying that this was undoubtedly the single worst day of my entire life.  Reading through it sounds almost funny.  And parts of it are funny:  Seeing a completely naked, practically glow-in-the-dark person (I'm pretty white) scurrying around his tent in the middle of the night (12) is probably either life-changingly frightening or side-splittingly funny.  Some of these events are entirely survivable and not even a big enough deal to mention:  Getting wet feet (4) and not finding the shelter (8) are a relatively small deal.  Some of the events were either completely avoidable or entirely in my head:  I found out the next day that there's an easy way around the Lemon Squeeze (#7) and the bear scare (#9) was "supposed" because I'm relatively certain that those noises were simply the trees creaking in the wind.  But at the time and under the circumstances, I could've bet my life I heard bears.  Taking all these events into account, I don't feel bad about text messaging Wendy that morning and asking to be picked up.  I think I deserved it.