Date: 2003-07-31
From: New York City

To: New York City
Miles today: 0.0

I am sitting on the back porch at Mike and Estee¢s house. Mike is going to be taking me to the airport at 2:30 to drop me off. I figured I should finish the journal here. Close it out. I¢ve had a good time here. I¢ve had a great time on the Trail. There are so many things I want to say about how I feel about having walked the AT¢¦.the parts that I did and how I feel about not completing it. I feel a sense of accomplishment for having walked the distance I did of about 1700 almost 1800 miles. I feel a great accomplishment there but I also feel not so much sad but disappointment that I wasn¢t able to close the deal and finish the Trail. I certainly feel very much excluded from the thru hikers club at this point. I feel like I¢ve been thrown out. There¢s something about finishing the whole Trail and being at the top of Katadhin that they will do¢¦that I will not do¢¦that excludes me from that club despite what I¢ve gone through. Even just sitting at the Hikers Welcome Hostel and talking to the rest of the people that were still walking I already felt like I was not a part of the thru hikers community. I felt like just an observer. It¢s been about 5 days now since I took off the pack and stopped walking¢¦since I slack packed Moosilauke. I can feel myself hour by hour and day by day falling out of hiker shape. There¢s a certain feeling you get mentally and physically that gives you the ability to walk the kind of miles that I did. I feel it slipping away very fast. I have spent the last few days on Staten Island getting up and walking an hour or two and trying to get 5 or 10 miles in to try and stretch the legs out. It¢s almost like a warming down period where I feel that I have to walk just to keep my legs from locking up. That¢s the only way I can describe it is a warming down period. I just can¢t stop walking completely. It actually hurts. I¢ve spent some of the time here calling some of the people that I became close to on the Trail. I call their cell phones leaving them messages about where I am and asking them to call back and leave me addresses where I can send pictures to and to wish them well and wishing that I was going to be there with them when they finished. I¢ve talked to a lot of my friends while I¢ve been here. All of them just encouraging me to go back and finish that piece of the Trail that I didn¢t do at some other time¢¦this year or next year. How I feel personally at this point is I will never be a thru hiker until I can do the Trail beginning to end regardless of how many miles I do. At this point I¢m just short 380 miles from completing the Trail. That 380 miles might as well be 3800 because I just did not finish it. It¢s as simple as that. I¢ve already spent the last couple of days thinking that I¢m going to start over again and how I would change things. I got as far as even choosing a date. April 15th, 2005 I would like to be on the top of Springer again starting the hike. The million little things I can think of that I would do differently and several large things I would definitely change. Probably the biggest change would be one of approach. Mental and physical approach. I would not try to kill myself. Not to try and push it all the time. There was no reason. It really didn¢t get me that much further than anyone else. I enjoyed it but I probably enjoyed it less¢¦the hike less..than other people did who took their time and still got to where I went right around the same time. So, I would probably¢¦instead of trying to push it¢¦I would probably spend the first week doing nothing but 10 mile days and then pick it up a little bit until I got to 15 or 20 mile days and keep it there. I¢d try to maintain that throughout the trip. I¢d cut off a lot of the zero days and a lot of the hanging out in town that I did. I¢d spend more time hiking and enjoying the hike. I¢d spend more time looking around instead of looking at the ground. All the little things would be things like¢¦a complete re-design¢¦I¢d design my own backpack. One that is modular and has an external frame where I could just hook bags to it and it would be easier to get to. That¢s been an issue for me the whole time. It would also have a nice, large hip belt. The things I¢ve learned on the Trail in terms of equipment¢¦I¢d give the boots up completely. Just forget the boots. I¢d buy a whole bunch of New Balance Sneakers and hike in the sneakers the whole way through. I¢d throw away all the Bic lighters and get Crickets. Cricket lighters. The electronic lighters will light in the rain..will light when they get wet. The Bic lighters are useless if they get wet. There are a hundred other things that I can think of. The mental things would be¢¦more of an attitude of perseverance. There were a lot of times when I wasn¢t happy on the Trail and that effected the way I walked or the way I thought. You really have to maintain an attitude of no matter what happens¢¦.no matter how bad it gets¢¦how miserable you are¢¦how much it rains¢¦that you¢re in for the long run¢¦.for the money¢¦and nothing is going to stop you short of being unable to walk again. That also would make the trip a lot easier. That¢s where I¢m going to end my journal I guess for being a thru hiker on the AT with the class of 2003.