Desertwurm - Appalachian Trail Journal - 2011

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Last Entry...

This will be my last post at postholer.com. If you want to catch all my other adventures, please follow me at http://desertwurm.blogspot.com/. I just installed the official Blogger app from Google on my DROID2 and it works great.

I got my car and bike insurance up to snuff yesterday and took my first drive in the Orange Crush (my orange Dodge Neon SRT4) and was quite happy to drive my own car again. The tight steering and suspension, the loud bass of my system (self installed), the psssssssssssshhhhh of the blow off valve, the whine of the turbo as it kicks in, and of course, the acceleration that 230 HP and 250 FT/LB of torque can give you. Yes, its nice to have my own car back! I plan on taking my bike for a proper spin today, and probably taking the misses out as well. When I first got back to RI I just took a quick ride up to the high school as I didn't have any gear (or insurance for that matter).

My Dad asked me the other day, what would it take to finish the trail? I didn't get a chance to expound and I thought all my readers would like to know. So here goes...

First off, you have to be crazy to hike the trail, 2180 miles, all at once. I realized this soon enough. What madmen walks from Georgia to Maine (or Maine to Georgia) when he can take a horse, train, automobile, or plane? I often thought to myself, we invented machines and developed cities and civilization so that we did not have to travel like this any more! But, anybody who abandons everything to take a journey like this must be a little crazy. The main thing for us was time and money, which I talked a lot about in other posts. Physically, I think we could have made it. We had no real physical issues, although it could strike at any time I guess. I must admit though, my leg was somewhat of an X factor in the end, but nothing I could not hike through. Mentally, I think we could have made it, had we the time to hike at our own place, and the money to do so. Always back to time and money. Well the easiest way to save money is to live a Spartan existence, that is not stay in hotels and motels or eat at a lot of restaurants. It also helps to have your gear spot on when you start. We spent a lot of money on upgrading gear. The easiest way to save time is obviously to hike more. That means taking less zero days and hiking more every day. We took a lot of zero days and side trips and such. So when you put that all together it means hiking a hike that we didn't want to hike. It means being a complete mountain man, no amenities. We talked to some people who washed their clothes every month! We couldn't do that.

To sum it all up, it would seem to Joyful and I, that in the end we needed more time and money, and that hiking the trail as we did was most enjoyable, and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. It is all about hiking your own hike, a big topic on the trail. It is sad that we did not finish, but we would not trade all the experiences we had, the sights we saw, the side trips and high points, just to finish the trail. In the words of a Linkin Park song, "The journey is more important than the end or the start"

Please follow me on http://desertwurm.blogspot.com/ for more journeys!

Entry 127 of 127
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