Date: 2003-03-12
To: The Trail!
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

So this is it. This is my first journal entry. I guess I should talk a little about hiking.I will be leaving my job this Friday (3/14/03) to begin the long trek Northward on at AT. To get everything in order, I've given myself a week after I leave my job before my plane for Atlanta departs (3/24/03). Karen, my wonderful girlfriend and hiking partner, will be hiking with me.Hiking the Trail is something I've wanted to do ever since I knew what It was. A couple of years ago, as I was finishing up my college degree, I shared this dream with a friend of mine, Karen. Sometime afterward, we became more than friends, but the Trail has been something on our minds, in the background, for our entire relationship. Recently, we decided that Spring 2003 was the time to do it.Although Karen and I are fairly experienced hikers (this is my 20th year as a hiker!), neither of us are pros, especially when it comes to thru-hiking. My first backpacking experience was about 5 years ago. And I will never, ever, carry a gas lantern and can of baked beans into the wilderness EVER AGAIN! I laugh now at how silly I was... ;^) But I'll tell you, it took a lot of willpower not to chuck that lantern down a ravine when I realized exactly how useful it was in the backcountry.So we've been planning on doing this for about two years, and really actively planning for the last year. I can't believe how fast time has gone by! Just got our super high-tech capilene underwear in the mail yesterday.I am aware that this is not going to be an easy thing to do. I've tried to cut my pack weight as much as possible. Next week, I'm going to load the thing up and weigh it, and see how good I've been with cutting weight. I've done a fair amount already: I traded in my Kelty Pacific Crest 6500ci external frame (rode like a Cadillac, weighed about as much: 7.5# EMPTY) for a Kelty Coyote 4500 (4#), my trusty Coleman Peak 1 (9#, with fuel) for an MSR SuperFly canister stove (13 oz with fuel), etc.I've also been exercising regularly for the past year. I cycled all summer, mostly to and from work, which came out to 26 miles a day. During the fall, I ran around the hills and woods of Amherst and Northampton. And during the winter, I kicked it up a notch and started doing longer runs (1 hour or longer) and track workouts (indoor track). I feel that I'm in pretty decent shape now. Injury aside, I think that just sheer mental toughness - the ability to slog through a week of rain - is going to be the tough part. Fortunately, I learned the ropes while hiking and backpacking in New England. I'm pretty sure that there's never been a drop of sunshine in the Pemi; at least not while I was hiking there.I get the impression that I am understating everything. To say that I am excited doesn't nearly describe the enormity of the Trail in my mind right now. It's on my mind pretty much all of the time.Karen wants me to do all of the writing (I'll make her do a few!), so I guess I will be the narrator... While I'm at home, I'll be entering these things into the computer personally, but that will all change soon. This leads to my thank-yous:-Thanks, Mom and Dad, for volunteering to type up our journal entries and post them here! You deserve many, many other thanks, too!-Thanks to my friends who have encouraged me to do this. No one has even suggested that I wasn't capable, even if maybe they were thinking that I wasn't. (So in that case, thanks for not DIScouraging me)-Thanks to my coworkers for putting up with me leaving the University in the middle of a statewide budget crisis. I know that this is a bad time, but all of you have been great.-Thanks to everyone who suggested that I carry a firearm. Those were some good laughs. Oh, and thanks to the person who didn't smack me when I smartly said "Yeah, I've been looking at lightweight backpacking guns." Heh.-Thanks to Karen's family and parents. Yes, I am her crazy boyfriend, and I am dragging her into the woods. ;^) To eat bark. But seriously, though, you know who the crazy one *really* is... (hint: the speed freak who likes to jump out of airplanes and zip down mountains on skis).-Last, but not least, thanks to my hiking partner, Karen. I might have tried to do this without you, but it would be a lot harder. Without your eye for the details, I think I probably would not be prepared. Plus, it's really fun finding slugs in our boots together.Okay, so that's it. I'll post another couple journals here before we go, but then after that, it's up to my parents. For those of you watching our progress, there will be a bit of a delay as the journal entries get mailed back to Newburyport and typed in.Wish us luck!