Date: 2011-06-30
From: Clarence Fahnestock State Park

To: Morgan Stewart Shelter
Miles today: 15.8
Weather: few clouds

(In which I discuss the future of trail guidebooks)Doc Boom leaves early, around 7am, and Capt. Planet and Gas Cap are still sleeping at 8am when I leave, so I hike alone for most of the day. I try to listen to my iPod with its cracked screen, but my ear buds, which began their long decline back in PA, have reached the point where I need to pinch the wires just right with my fingers in order to get any sound to reach one of the two ears. I carefully carry my cracked iPod with the failing headphones in one hand and a pole in the other as I hike and listen to All Songs Considered.I think about all of my gear that has broken or is wearing out, and I recall something that (girl) Sherpa said the other day, that this is the point in the hike at which everything starts breaking down: gear, bodies and resolve. The cumulative wear of 1400 miles is rough, and even the toughest gear and hikers show the signs of it. I make a list of all of the gear I've broken or worn out so far: trekking poles (two), shoes (two pairs, soon to be three), socks (four pairs), ground cloth (mostly repaired with duct tape), rain jacket (also duct-taped), a Platypus water bottle (not quite worn out, still serving as flavored drink container), iPod Touch, and Etymotic headphones. Despite the long list, I've been lucky, other than the iPod, that my essential, expensive and difficult to replace gear items have all held up so far.At the RPH shelter, an impressively sturdy and well equipped concrete shelter, I meet up with Badger. Badger recently interviewed for a marketing position at Google, only to have the job offer vetoed by the finally hiring committee, and we share our Google interview stories and comiserate. It's fun to be around someone else plugged into the tech scene again, and pretty soon we are swapping ideas for hiking-related apps that we've though of on the trail. He tells me of an idea for a website for discovering new hikes, and I tell him about an idea for a smartphone app that would act as an advanced guidebook replacement.Think a cross between the AT Guide, Wikipedia, Facebook, Yelp, Four Square and Google Maps, I say. The app would contain similar data to the guidebook, but be entirely user generated and instantly editable. As a result, it could be vastly more up to date (learn if a water source was dry this morning), more comprehensive (see every unofficial tent spot, or add your own new ones), more social (follow the progress of your friends ahead or behind), and more personal (keep track of personal stats and see a personally relevant dashboard with the miles until the next water source, the miles left for the day, and more). It could contain hiker-specific reviews of motels and restaurants, along with the combined town, AT and elevation maps.Badger asks me about monetization, and this is of course the sticking point for commercializing the idea; even generalized to work for any long distance trail or for day hiking, the addressable market is still currently too small to consider financially, though creating such an app and giving it away might make a fun hobby some day.I see Badger again at a deli and pizza shop 0.4 off trail. He's been having headaches throughout the day and has arranged for a friend of his mother's to come get him and put him up for the night. I order a serving of garlic bread with cheese and curly fries, but having already eaten two lunches for the day, my stomach rebels at number three and I only make it midway through the garlic bread. Even eating half of it is enough to make me feel queasy, and begin to question my strategy of never passing up town food.I make it to the shelter slowly but successfully, but I still feel the unpleasant effects of the garlic bread and cheese in my stomach. I set up my tent and hang my bear bag before a wave of nausea comes, and I sit in the privy for a while, glad that there is no one else needing to use the facilities just now. As unpleasant as nausea is, it brings a clarifying simplicity to one's existence, and for a short period of time all other worries or concerns are irrelevant, as are all thoughts of the past or future, and I exist only in the queasy present. But then the wave subsides, I begin to feel better and a more or less normal sense of existence returns.Tomorrow I hope to take a train to New York City. Exactly how or from where I have not yet determined, but I do know that a few days of rest sounds wonderful just now.