On your mark

So this is one of the first crucial steps to starting my hike. I hope I can keep everybody up to date on my progress. My mom has agreed to type up my trail journals when I send them home. She doesn't know it yet, but she's about to enter the "blogoshpere" - lame, I can't believe I have joined the ranks of internet bloggers. Oh well, we all have our faults - thank God it's not Twitter. I hope a combination of posting pictures and reading my journals will help give everybody an idea of what it's like on the trail. I also hope I make it the whole way. I've got my gear and plane ticket ready to go. LASIK surgery is on Tuesday, then 2 weeks later I am off. I'm a little anxious.

For those of you who don't know, I have wanted to thru hike the AT since I first learned about the AT and the fact you could walk the entire way. I was 10 or 11 and we were getting ready to go on a backpacking trip with my Boy Scout troop. Years later, when I got to Virginia Tech, I saw a thru hiker (trail name: Cucumber Boy) give a presentation on her hike at an Outdoor Club meeting. That is the moment it hit me that after graduation would be the time to do it. A life time of dreaming and three years of planning have gotten me this far. i have had a lot of encouragement from people about this hike. Whether they knew it or not, my parents were the catalyst for this journey because they introduced my brothers and I to the outdoors pretty much from birth. The other big source of encouragement is Kelly Wilson. She has spent countless hours planning out a diet to help me through this hike. She has been incredibly supportive and even threatened to break up with me if I didn't do the hike or finish it. I will carry my parents and Kelly in spirit as I hike, and hopefully, they will join me at some point - among many others.

I think that is enough for now. I'll post a few more times before I leave and maybe have a few chances along the way.

Happy Trails