Date: 2004-03-17
To: Hiker Hostel, Dahlonega, Georgia
Miles today: 0.0

Hiker Hostel Proprietors: Josh ¢Profile¢ Saint and Leigh ¢Almanac¢ SaintTrain arrived Gainesville at 7:40 a.m. Met another hiker, Rob from Seattle, on the train. The conductor seated us together because we were disembarking at the same stop. When I saw his enormous red pack in the overhead storage area I asked, ¢Are you hiking the trail?¢ Yep. ¢Me, too.¢ We compared notes on pack contents, planning we had done (he much more than I ¢ ¢Maybe your trail name should be Data,¢ I suggested, but he rejected it as too ¢Star Trek-y.¢), and the hiking pace we expected to set for ourselves -- his much more conservative (and as it turned out much more realistic) than mine. Rob decided to join me at the Hiker Hostel and Josh, our bearded, bedimpled host, picked us up and cooked us a grand breakfast of waffles, eggs, bacon and coffee at the lovely, fresh and airy hostel that is also his and his wife¢s new home in Dahlonega, Georgia. At one point during the day, Josh asked me, ¢Are you through hiking?¢ ¢No, I haven¢t started yet,¢ I responded. ¢No,¢ he grinned, ¢I mean, are you hiking all the way to Maine?¢ ¢Oh!¢ This was my introduction to the A.T. coinage ¢thru-hiking.¢ As of today, I identify myself, along with the other 2000 or so other hopefuls, as an A.T. thru-hiker.After breakfast, we joined Josh as he shuttled one of his guests to the Springer Mountain trailhead to begin his 2174-mile journey. On our way back, he checked in with a group of hikers who had paused for breath and lunch at a gap near the road; an older lady hiker flagged him down and asked for a ride to town. Joanne, or ¢High-Minded,¢ ended up joining us back at the hostel, and taking a few days to recover from her first few days on the trail. An adventurer from California, Joanne mentioned that her children had set up a website for friends and family to keep track of her whereabouts: WhereIsJoanne.com! Although I had been the only reserved guest at the hostel 24 hours ago, by day¢s end, Josh and Leigh had a full house, as the buzz spread up and down the trail section between Springer Mountain and Neel¢s Gap that the Hiker Hostel offered great accommodation, good eats, inexpensive shuttles, and a nightly trip into town for dinner and supplies. Josh offered to give me a pack ¢shake-down¢ later that day, a process that every novice thru-hiker should undergo before heading out on the trail. I emptied my pack on the floor of the living room and we went through each item gauging what was essential, non-essential and merely wanted. He helped me to weed out 15 to 20 pounds of non-essentials including all of my cotton (except for one t-shirt, 2 bandanas, and my underwear), over half of my oatmeal and some other food, my swimsuit, sarong/towel, one of two fleeces, eight inches from the bottom of my foam sleeping pad, one of my three books, all but three pair of socks, all but five pair of underwear (though later I discarded three of these, and much later all of them), half of my supply of Tylenol and Advil, and my outdoor ¢toilet¢ spade. One thing I acquired from the hiker box (a ubiquitous cardboard container at all hostels, for disposing of discarded pack items, the hiker box is also a great treasure chest for thru-hikers who are under-supplied or otherwise willing to take on more pack weight) was a tube of Nestle coffee-and-cream paste that an Australian hiker had unloaded. Just add hot water! This should help to ease me off of my caffeine habit during the first few days on the trail.