Date: 2012-02-15
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Miles today: 0.0

Yesterday I received an interesting letter from another hiker who saw my trailjournals journal this year. He said that I corresponded with his wife back in 2002 and shared my www.asthmastory.com website with her.He said that thanks to that information she was now completely cured of her asthma. And they invited me to their hiker hostel in Vermont (Green Mountain House Hostel in Manchester Center, VT). He also mentioned a video I made in 2003 of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. He said he still has it on his ipod. It's very relaxing and shows the beauty of the smokys and is dedicated to our late son Paul. Paul met me at Clingman's dome with my wife at the end of the 2002 section hike.Preparation for this hike has been coming along very well. Hopefully I learned something in the previous 2 hikes. The last time I hiked, I went too lightweight for my taste and ended up not enjoying the hike as much. Four things can mess you up on a hike. 1. Not sleeping well. Without a good nights sleep, you're going to feel lousy out there. My last hike I had many bad nights of sleep and several times got wet in my tarp. A few days I tried a hammock and that wasn't for me at all. This hike I will be bringing a Big Agnes down bag with the built in pouch to slide your sleeping pad into. No more sliding off the pad in the night which I always did. And I also bought a Big Agnes Copper spur UL1 which is a bit small but very light ..   almost as light as my tarp. And something I've always wanted is a side entry tent so I'm looking forward to this tent. 2. Not eating well. This time I will pack better food and have a decent cooking system. I may even bring a lightweight frying pay which is kind of crazy to most people but it's my hike and I can fry veggie burgers and make pancakes. I may ditch it after hiking awhile but it will probably go with me.   My wife and I have been dehydrating vegetarian meals and are experimenting with tasty recipes (or as tasty as you can get with dehydrated stuff).3. And the big one ... too much weight. After using the jetboil on my kayak trip, I fell in love with the jetboil. But ... it's a bit heavy for my needs and the pot isn't as practical for cooking. But I'm not bringing my miniature alcohol stove this time and will take the pocketrocket which cooks as well as the jetboil but a lot lighter. And of course my 8 oz jetboil frying pan will come with me as my luxury item. Since my first hike in 2002, there's a lot of cool new gear out there that allows me to drop ounces from my gear. I'm taking a newer steripen to sterilize water and hoping that it works better than the last one I took which didn't work at all. But i'm not up for dragging a heavy cantancerous water filter with me again. And I got one of the newer exped synmat air matresses which are lightweight and take up less room than my old thermarest. So weight wise I should be ok.4. Injury and blisters. My first hike had me wearing 50 pound boots ... well maybe not that heavy but they sure felt like it. And as a result I ended up with painful blisters. And to top it off, I didn't start treating them until after they became a big problem. Now I know how much your feet will swell on the trail and I have appropriate sized comfortable trail shoes. I'll never use Hiking boots ever again. So this hike I'll keep a close eye on the blister situation and have my second skin blister kit ready. By not having any agenda, I can take my time and avoid the occasional head over heels tumble and rolling down the mountain injury that happened to me last hike where I twisted my ankle.   I know the first 2 weeks will be brutal until I get my hiking muscles back into shape. And I can't wait !