Date: 2011-05-11
To: Day -1
Miles today: 0.0

This is the beginning of my 2,000-mile long Appalachian Trail hike, a journey that would take me 2 years to complete and change my life forever. I had been planning to attempt this hike ever since I was a Freshman in college and was ready to pull the trigger as soon as I graduated. I took my last exam in college on April 29th and was living in the woods full-time by May 12. I didn't even wait for my grades to come back to make sure that I had graduated because I figured that there was nothing that I could to to change things after-the-fact (I graduated, luckily.) I was in school too late to have started the trail in Georgia because the Northeast is much too cold for hiking come Oct.-Nov. So I had planned on doing a flip-flop, in which you start in the middle of the trail at Harpers Ferry, WV and hike north during the Summertime. Then you go back to Harpers Ferry and hike south with the Fall. This allows you to start a bit later in the season, do the easiest part of the trail at the beginning, hit your 1/2 way point as all of the Northbounders finish their hike in Maine, and finish your hike with all of the Southbounders in Georgia. Two of my best friends from childhood, Kyle and Omar, accompanied me at the beginning of my hike and then left at different times for different reasons. As you will see, you are never really alone on the AT though. Hopefully this journal will help any would be thru-hikers climb over that initial learning curb before you start climbing over mountains for a living.    Planning a hiking trip and actually having hiking experience are two completely different things. Before this trip, the longest hike I had ever been on   was a 16-mile weekend hike that I went on for a backpacking class that I took as a freshman. Without much-real world experience, I scoured the forums on whiteblaze.net and hammockforums.net. I spent countless hours watching youtube videos, building alcohol stoves, cooking, dehydrating, and vacuum sealing food, and purchasing gear leading up to my departure. Honestly though, nothing could have prepared for me for the experience I had out there and most of my planning wound up being futile in the end. In hindsight, I wish I had saved all of my money and waited until I was actually on-trail to buy all of my food and gear. But, back then, I though that the AT was going to be a much more self-reliant self-sustaining experience than it turned out to be. I didn't expect to encounter a huge community of fellow thru-hikers and an extensive network of hostels and individuals which exist solely to support us along the way.    I'd like to underscore the fact that this journal represents my hike and my hike only and in no way should be interpreted to be the general experience of life on the AT. We like to say the phrase "Hike your own hike" to other thru-hikers just as much as we like to say the phrase "pack it in, pack it out" to non thru-hiker types. This means that the experience you have is all your own, and what you find and what you learn out there is entirely up to you. I met young people, old people, athletes, dead beats, survivalists, gymnasts, people I liked, people I didn't like, foreigners, people from all walks of life out there in that narrow green corridor. And that is one of the things that I think I found most valuable after all was putting myself completely outside of my circle of friends and my little bubble of comfort that I had built for myself back in Florida.    I've left this journal essentially unaltered save for a few details that I've added from memory here and there. I hope that it accurately represents my thoughts and emotions out there as well as the people, places, and things I encountered along the way. It gets personal from time to time but that is, in essence, that is what the trail is all about: personal discovery. Try to notice as I literally change before your eyes from the beginning to the end of my journal. Feel free to leave any questions you have in the guestbook and I'll try to answer them to the bast of my ability. I'll keep updating this thing regularly until I've transcribed by entire journal from both the Appalachian Trail and the Colorado Trail. Enjoy.