Not Planning on Planning too Much

My departure date is getting closer every day and I slowly tying up as many loose ends as I can in preparation. It's funny, I realized today that my lack of a need for detailed planning should actually serve me well on this trip. I have read a few books and lots of posts on the internet by people who have their schedule planned down to the hour. They know exactly where they want to be by each date and push themselves to follow their plan. I have to wonder how these people handle the inevitalbe delays and modifications to their schedule that they encounter.

I think my approach of determining the broad strokes and figuring out the details as I go should serve me well on this trip. I'm not scheduling food drops or even anything beyond the first couple of weeks. I'll plan as I go and adapt to the reality of the situation as it arises.

I'm getting so anxious to get going that it's actually getting hard to go to sleep at night. I kinda wish I was on the trail right now. Just another month and a half!

Test post from new phone.

Virtual Garage Sale!

I'm trying to raise a little money to help pay for my hike and get rid of some stuff I don't use anymore in the process. After all, at this point I'd much rather have a down parka or enough cash to spend a night in town than a Nintendo DS or an Xbox. Take a look and buy something if you're interested (all funds go towards the trip).

Xbox 360

Valentine One Radar Detector

Nintendo DS Lite

Garmin Nuvi 200w Car GPS

Sony DCR-TRV22 MiniDV Camcorder

DeWalt 1/2" Electric Impact Wrench

Logitech G9x Mouse

Timbuk2 Messenger Bag

This is also part of that whole 'get rid of possessions and walk the earth' thing, isn't it? Maybe when I'm done I'll know some sweet kung-fu. I'll probably be listing more stuff as I start packing up the apartment.

Jasper's New Backpack

Jasper's new backpack got here today! Here's a pic of him trying it on. He really seemed to like it and knew as soon as he had it on that it was time to go for a walk. I put about 4 days' worth of food in the pack and we went on a 3 mile walk. He didn't even seem to notice that it was there.

On the way home, we stopped at McDonald's for some dinner. Jasper has never liked fries, but I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich with bacon on it and gave him the bacon. He seemed to like that. :)

The Checklist!

I really love Google Docs sometimes. I've had this online for a while now and I think I can embed it here!

Decisions

I'm currently trying to get my gear list in order and decide which pieces I'll be taking and which I'm leaving behind. I decided last night that I'm going to be using my Garmin Forerunner 305 wrist top GPS as my only GPS out on the trail. It's a lot lighter than my other, handheld GPS and it does everything I need it to. The only drawback - it only holds a charge for about 10 hours. Luckily, I found a charger that allows you to charge it up using normal AA batteries.

I also pulled the trigger on a backpack for Jasper. It should be arriving any day now and I'll be sure to post pictures when he gets it all set up. I'm still trying to decide what kind of boots he's going to wear when needed.

Getting Ready for the Trail

Hey everyone. Sure, the site is currently a boring Blogger template but this is where I plan to document my Appalachian Trail adventure and communicate with everyone while I'm hiking.

First big news, I've moved up my departure date to the beginning of February. It is going to be pretty cold, but that's what layering and sleeping bags are for. At the moment, I'm trying to list all of the things that are going to have to be inside my sleeping bag at night so they don't freeze and I'm wondering if there is going to be enough room left over for me.

I have most of my gear squared away and I don't think I'm going to be using mail drops, so it should be pretty easy to hit the trail.