Date: 2017-04-15
From: Morgantown, WV

To: Morgantown, WV
Miles today: 0.0

4/15/17 Morgantown, WVMiles hiked: 544.4, Miles to go: 1645.4Got out and rode my bike 20 miles today and discovered that hiking and cycling do not use the same leg muscles! My legs and butt are tired and sore after only a 20 mile ride. At least I got out and moved some. Another question I've gotten is, "what is your favorite thing about the hike?" Undoubtedly, it's the people I've met on the trail. I have met a broad range of people, from high school students to retired military personnel, doctors, lawyers, steel workers, Germans, Danes. And the coolest thing is that it doesn't matter who we are off the trail. We are all thru hikers and are linked by the common bond of shared experiences. We've all slept in shelters, pooped in cat holes, had sore feet from rocky trails, hiked in the pouring rain, and been cold at night. We've all experienced the thrill of coming into town to get a shower and eat way too much town food. And we can all pick out another thru hiker from a mile away. We all basically look like homeless people with hiking poles. It's amazing how quickly friendships form on the trail. And you may hike with someone for a day or two and then not see them for another month. As soon as you see them, though, the friendship picks right back up. I have hiked with several different groups over the course of the past seven weeks and know or at least heard of most of the hikers a day ahead of me and a day behind me on the trail. Whenever I go into a restaurant and see a table of thru hikers,I tell the server that I'll just sit with these people. If I don't know anyone at the table, I will soon enough. Since we are all in this adventure together, we tend to watch out for each other. When one of our thru hikers lost his debit card and had no money to buy food, the rest of us made sure that he did not go hungry until he got a replacement card. 1st Sgt is actually well known on the trail for giving food away, especially chocolate. Since the hike takes 5-6 months, it tends to happen at transition points in people's lives. Most people are either straight out of school (or taking a semester off) or retired. You don't tend to see many people in the 30-50 year old range. As a result, you see a bunch of old people hanging out with a bunch of young people - it's pretty cool. Another thing you see a lot of is former-military hikers. Once again, I think the hike serves as a transition from military life to civilian life. In fact, Earl Shaffer, the first documented thru hiker, said he came out here to "walk off the war" in 1948. Although there is a lot of age and social diversity on the trail, unfortunately there is very little ethnic diversity. I have met two Asian, three African American, and one Hispanic thru hiker. All the other hundreds of hikers I've met are Caucasian. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy has actually implemented programs to encourage hikers of color to join the thru hiker family. We'll see how successful they are with future hiker classes. Another funny phenomenon is how fast information is spread among the thru hiker community. The rumor mill is alive and thriving through word of mouth and shelter registers. We all have heard of Double Barrel, the hiker with the eighty pound pack which contains such things as a solar shower and a camp chair. Or Little Foot, the five year old boy hiking with his mother who snores so loud he wakes up the entire shelter. A constant topic of conversation is who has gotten off the trail and why. Without a doubt, even though the views are incredible and the feral ponies were really cool, it's the people who make the hike.