Date: 2009-02-13
To: Hike Plans 
Miles today: 0.0

It's a good thing this isn't my FIRST AT hike. With everything else going on in my life right now, I would not have had time to plan for this little walk in the woods the way I did in 2005. Back then, I worried over every detail and planned for every contingency. This year my hike plan consists of the following six steps:1.   Saturday, March 14, fly to Atlanta and travel by car to Springer Mountain2.   Sunday, March 15, start hiking north3.  Meet up with some equally crazy people and have a blast sharing the good times and the bad over the next 2,178 miles4. Sometime in September, reach Maine and summit Mount Katahdin5.   The next day, find a rental car and return home6.   Repeat every 3-4 years!There will be at least one new wrinkle this time, however. Could be interesting, depending on how it works out. When I attended ¢The Gathering¢ in Pipestem, West Virginia last October (the annual meeting of the Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association), I was approached by a guy looking for ¢09 thru-hikers who might be willing to participate in a documentary he was going to produce about hiking the AT. The idea was for about a half dozen participants to take a camcorder with them and video-tape their journey. The producer would then edit the footage to come up with a made-for-TV adventure series that he called ¢The Road Less Traveled¢. My first reaction was: ¢No way, dude! I¢m trying to get weight OUT of my pack. I am NOT going to carry a video camera, several additional battery packs, a charger, and all that other crap up and over mountains for 2000 miles!¢ After thinking about it for awhile, however, I changed my mind. Two things occurred to me: first, since his proposed camcorder also takes photos, I could leave my digital camera at home. The net weight, therefore, would only be about 1 12 pounds. I know, I know. I¢m the same guy who cut the handle of his toothbrush in half to save weight. But here¢s the clincher: instead of having only pictures of my hike, I could capture, in glorious color, the sound and the fury, the chills and the spills, the drama and the pathos, the naked women¢¦.no wait, that¢s a different movie. So I said: ¢Ok. Count me in.¢When I left Pipestem, I wasn¢t sure I¢d ever hear from the guy again, but I did. His name is Jason Pavelco, and he is now the proud CEO of his own production company. Long story short: I¢ve got the camera, and the battery pack and all the other crap, and spent last Saturday learning how to use it -- along with the six other ¢contestants¢ on what some of us are referring to as ¢Survivor AT¢. He doesn¢t have a network signed up yet, but he¢s optimistic. I mean, he¢d have to be, right? Otherwise, he¢d be nuts to hand out expensive video gear to a bunch of homeless vagabonds who are about to disappear into the woods for six months. If he succeeds, fine. If he doesn¢t, that¢s fine too. What I want out of the deal is the footage that I shoot. If I am truly able to capture my journey, and not just my journey, but that of my friends and companions, then I will have something worth treasuring for a lifetime. Then there¢s Walter. His mind is already churning at the possibilities: Rich and famous star of his own reality T.V. series; Hollywood moguls begging for the rights to his life story; arriving at Cannes for the film festival on a gleaming white yacht surrounded by young and voluptuous starlets; snarling at the paparazzi who swarm his entourage as they duck quickly into the waiting sanctuary of the air conditioned Bentley¢¦.