Date: 2010-03-18
From: Home

To: Troutville, Virginia (only five weeks away!)
Miles today: 0.0

March 18, 2010Fraser FirSection HikerGeorgia to MaineFive weeks to take off!!The preparation for this hike has taken much discipline.The need to get up each morning and exercise is not only refreshing and rewarding, but almost deemed ¢necessary¢ to set myself up for upcoming success.The tension between what I need to do for myself and what the outside world expects of me can be quite a balancing act.Let me give you an example.The demands at my place of employment require an immense amount of extra time. I attempt to set limits as to prevent those demands from encroaching on me and my family. It is tough though but I seem to be doing ok. As you know, when you are constantly working, exercise can be put at the bottom of the priority list. However, I have made a strong attempt to exercise without fail four to five mornings per week. More importantly, I try to spend as much time with Stephanie, Bryson and Siler as possible. We are not over-committed with a bunch of extracurricular activities or anything like that. We love to eat together as a family, go to church together, read together, go to the library together, hike and camp together¢¦. you get the picture. In addition, Bryson and I are patiently waiting for ¢Toystory 3¢ to come out this summer. I can hardly wait and hope that we can go on opening night at mid night!! That will totally be awesome!! Back to the exercise: I have continued to walk over an hour each day going up and down the steep hills in my neighborhood. I took a brief break from carrying a pack and actually ran up and down the hills.I am back to a 50-60 lb. pack to prepare me for the end of next month. I am really trying to work on the endurance piece. You know, when you hit fifteen miles in a day, all you want is down hill to the water shed and the camp site. Ups become very taxing on the legs. I am trying to improve my stamina through endurance so that I can handle this.Ultimately, I can talk about all of this until the cows come home, but it is a matter of going out there and doing it.Still to come:Shuttle set up. Call Brenda at the Rendezvous Motel and or others in the Roanoke area.Buy food.Pre-pack of bag. Have my pack analyzed by the folks at Walasi-yi. They will probably laugh!!Keep walking every morning and keep doing the dishes for my wife and get ready to help with yard work! I want her to have a ¢scrap booking¢ weekend for herself when I get back. I will take the boys to Lake Winfield Scott for the weekend or something.As I told you, I am doing this section hike to raise awareness of the inadequacies of social justice in the world. This is something that I feel strongly about and that I am a champion for. Think about this for a moment: the way that we treat our environment has a negative impact on third world countries. What does this have to do with social justice you may ask? Marvin Gaye says it well in his title song, "What's goin on?" If you do not feel that you could ever have the resources to help someone financially in say the country of Mauritania, please keep in mind that what you do with your carbon footprint has a dramatic impact on the lives of others. Food for thought: I would be embarrassed to tell you how much we as Westerners spend each year on ice cream and pet care (and I have a lovely 12 1-2 year old mutt named Winzer). The money that we expend on some of these luxuries could build a water well in the Dominican Republic or educate children in Tanzania. It could provide medicine in HIV stricken areas of Africa and hope in Albania to a child that needs a coat.