Date: 2006-01-26
To: Preparation progress
Miles today: 0.0

As you will notice I have changed the style of my journal a little bit. The new colour fits better into the overall design of trailjournals and the bigger font size is much easier to read for the folks with poor eyesight. Blue and white are the colours of my home province Bavaria and represent the blue skies and the white clouds - ideal conditions for a perfect hiking day. Tomorrow is the last day I'll have to work until I depart to Atlanta. And 17 days from now I'll sit on the porch of Hiker Hostel, shivering while staring at the gloomy lowering woods of Georgia, asking myself :"Boy, what the hell came over you as you decided to do such a stupid thing as hauling a pack which is bursting at the seams through the waist high snow all the way to a mountain in the middle of nowhere?" (Provided my plane hasn't crashed into the Atlantic Ocean beforehand). Ambition is really a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy. But now it's to late to change my reservation to a more pleasant destination like Tahiti. Aside from speaking French even worse than English, my down sleeping bag would make a pretty odd looking pad for laying at the beach. (In case you haven't noticed yet: I love to blow things out of all proportions. It's like whisteling while walking through the grim forrest with a basket in your hand, hoping your grandma will seek bloody revenge if the evil wolf picks you for dessert. Geez, what a delight for my psychoanalist if he discovers that I sometimes feel like Little Red Riding Hood. It will take decades to cover his bill.)My preparations are making real progress. I finally managed to boost my caloric intake to 4000, so I will have no problem to continue to eat enough while on the trail. You're certainly familiar with Charles Darwins theories regarding the "survival of the fattest". To build up some additional layers of fat on the one hand is a perfect natural insulation and otherwise a good source of energy if you are running out of food. It really doesn't matter if you carry your food in your pack or on your hips. The next two weeks I will prepare for another important part of my journey: Taking zero days. It's absolutely essential to prepare for EVERY aspect of the trail, so I will take this really seriousely. Maybe I will interrupt my exercise with a couple of short test hikes to the fridge, but I promise I'll carefully watch not to overstrain. Perhaps I will also stop taking showers as soon as sunday, but I'm not yet sure on this. The risk of beeing thrown out of the plane while at 30.000 feet because of excessive smelling must not be underestimated. An important part of my preparations is to think carefully about appropriate exit strategies. A good variety of reasons not to finish the trail can be found here. But all in all they sound a little embarrassing and everybody will take them as a lame excuse. So I tried to come up with some more sophisticated excuses to justify a possible dropout. Something that gives the impression you are a real hero instead of a whiny looser. Here they come:Science"Humans really don't belong to the outdoors. It's not their ecological niche. So I came to the conclusion hiking is actually an unnatural behavior."Environment"I stopped hiking for environmental reasons. To figure out how many litter and CO2 output a hiker can produce gnawed really hard at my conscience." Religion"I recently converted to Budishm. The risk to step on some insects and accidentally killing them was simply to high."Society"I just couldn't stand the idea that all my duties have to be taken over from others. Mawing the lawn, walking the dog, serve in a jury, raising funds for the local charity organization. So many things I simply couldn't leave to other people for such a long time."li>Economy"It's the economy, stupid! Just think about the immense damage to Gross Domestic Product if I really had stopped working for 6 months. I don't want to be responsible for slowing down economic growth in our country!"Politics"I stopped my hike because most of the trail is located on land owned by the federal gouverment. I'm strongly opposed to every aspect of federal paternalism. Let's give the trail back to the states it's crossing through. The locals know best what's good for them."Health"Latest studies have shown that high oxygen output as occurs in deep forrests can lead to severe genetical deformations in male reproduction cells. As I haven't yet reproduced myself, the risk of badly damaging my potential descendants would have been highly irresponsible."and finally my favourite ... Superstition"My astrologer predicted the end of the world for Monday, February 27th, 6.33 am ET. So I thought it's not worth hiking farther."As you see it's all a matter of plausible justification. NutsPS:To those of you who might think my approach is not serious enough: Please accept my sincere apologies. I honestly promise to get better about it... eventually ;-)