Date: 2004-05-07
To: Why Blog?
Miles today: 0.0

There a lots of reasons I am keeping a weblog.A weblog is a simple way of taking care of all of my communications needs while I am hiking. The most important of these is keeping track of my maildrops. I have a rough outline of where i will be and when, but it is very possible that my maildrop dates and even locations will change. Also, i may decide that i need additional items in my maildrop that i didn't expact, for example when my shoes start to wear out, i can inform my parents i need the next pair.Keeping a weblog is also much easier than sending postcards or emails to all of the people that i want to inform of my progress. Postcards would take a long time to write, and i prefer not to send out frequent mass emails, because i know that i would never read them if i got them.The only electronic device i am bringing on the trail with me is a camera, a Minotla Dimage x20 2.1 Mpixel digital camera. Each time i stop in a town, i will snail mail my memory card to ben in worcester. He will copy the pictures to this website and send the card to my next maildrop. The first pictures of my gear should be up in the next few days.Finally, i intend to keep a journal of my trip; however i don't think that i will want to publish the entire journal for the entire world to see on the internet. Keeping a weblog will be essentially a public summary of what is in my journal.It seems the first question everyone asks me when i tell them i am hiking is if i have read a walk in the woods by bill bryson.I read the first chapter. Then I decided not to read the whole book through. I skipped to the third chapter. I read a few words here and there, then i read the last page. I don't care what anyone says, I have read A Walk in the Woods.I did read the first chapter of the book a few times, but could never get interested enough to read past it. It is clearly aparent that bill bryson was just trying to write a book to make money, an has no respect for the AT or for through hikers.I have, on the other hand, read several books by people who have acutally hiked the appalachian traile, some multiple times. Check out the details for an incomplete list of what i have read.Good Appalachian Trail Books:Beyond Backpacking by Ray Jardine.This is without a doubt the lightweight backpacking bible, if not in the fact that it is the source of the best information on the subject, then based also on the fact that it is written by the most fanatical lightweight backpacking zealotA Season on the Appalachian Trail by Lynne SryzerThis book has some good quotes, anecdotes, and stories from various hikers. It's much better than some of the boring 'i did this, i did that' books about a single person's hike on the AT.How to Shit in the Woods by Kathleen MeyerRequired reading. A combination of humor and also the authoritative text on the subject.The Appalachian Trail Backpacker by Victoria and Frank LogueThe Backpacker Magazine guide to the Appalachian Trail by Jim chaseHiking the triple Crown by ???All three are pretty good books with details about specific parts of the trail as well as some stuff about how to plan maildrops, cooking, hiking, etc.Long Distance Hiking by Roland MueserI opened this book to a page which had a table that correlated MBTI Extroversion with sucess on the trail and knew that it would be my kind of book. As opposed to just being a bunch of interviews and stories about the AT, this guy surveyed a ton of through hikers and summarized his finidings and their comments in topical sections. It's a social scientit's guide to the Appalachian Trail