Monday

Waiting for my train to Georgia. It's supposed to get up to 59 degrees today in DC.

Union Station

Breakfast at Union Station, watching the working lives of DC flow by. I caught an early ride to the metro with Matt on his way to work. Once it's warmer I'll meander over to the Smithsonian. They have an Earl V. Shafer exhibit at American History, I think.

I had the best home cooking last night at Matt and Maggie's while watching the Oscars. It was a perfect impromptu sendoff.

Already I'm missing Ashley. But I know I'll see her in a few weeks when she comes to spring break with me in the South. It'll be a nice complement to our bright days in Vermont last summer.

Eggs are getting cold, must go.

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Countdown: 66 hours until I leave for Georgia

Everything's about good to go!

The top AT memoirs

According to a recent poll I started on Whiteblaze.net, the top five AT thru-hiking memoirs are:

1. Walkin' on the Happy Side of Misery, J.R. Tate [8 votes]
2. AWOL on the Appalachian Trail, David Miller [6]
3. A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson [3]
4. As Far As the Eye Can See, David Brill, tied with
5. Walking with Spring, Earl V. Shaffer [2 each]

 Walking with Spring recounts a WWII veteran's 1948 thru-hike. AKA the first ever thru hike. First printed privately in 1981; 160 pages.

AWOL on the Appalachian Trail recounts a middle-aged engineer's 2003 thru-hike. Published 2006; 236 pages.

Walkin' on the Happy Side of Misery is a retired marine and four-time thru-hiker's account of his first thru hike in 1990. Published in 2001 [originally self-publihsed]; 554 pages.

As Far As the Eye Can See recounts a 1979 thru hike. Originally published in 1990; 192 pages.

A Walk in the Woods is a travel writer's tale of a botched thru-hike in the late 1990s. Published in 1999; 274 pages.

The diversity in these memoirs isn't in the authors, almost all of whom wrote or hiked and wrote as middle-aged, white men, but in the eras of the hikes - 1948, before anyone knew about the trail; 1979, the first wave of the modern thru-hiker and then through the 1990s and early 2000s.

Wednesday notes: Heading to the ATC, "A Walk in the Woods" etc.

I'm a member at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, so I'm off to Harper's Ferry this morning to get the maps for Georgia through southwest Virginia at a discount. I'm also going to ask the assistant on duty what weather I can expect in Georgia.

I've got my Irish drinking songs playlist ready on my iPod - The Pogues, Flogging Molly, The Clancy Brothers, The Young Dubliners and Dropkick Murphys- for March 17. It's something to look forward to. And fyi, Irish/Scottish stuff makes for great music to hike by.

Right now my hiking gear is a messy pile in my bedroom. I've settled on hiking in my old, hopelessly soiled Cap 1 baselayer rather than buy new, because the local outfitter didn't have my size during their huge sale last week. I also dug up a forgotten, barely worn pair of soccer shorts while emptying my dresser which I'll adopt as my primary hiking shorts. As far as other stuff I still need, I got an 18L bear bag, Sea to Summit, with 50ft of nylon cord at Cabela's Monday. All bright orange.

I've also started a lively forum discussion about ranking the extant AT memoirs over at Whiteblaze. Check it out if you're really into reading about the trail and you're exasperated when you browse Barnes and Noble for new stuff and find only the trusty old "A Walk in the Woods."

Which I recently read the first few bits of again. I skipped all the stuff about trail history, geology and the US Forest Service [Bill Bryson hates the USSF] and read just the trail narrative.

Here's a key passage set in Gatlinburg, Tenn. after Bryson and his buddy, Katz, come out of a blizzard in the Smokies:

Katz needed bootlaces, so we went to an outfitter's, and while he was off in the footwear section had an idle shuffle around. Pinned to a wall was a map showing the whole of the Appalachian Trail on its long march through fourteen states, but with the eastern seaboard rotated to give the AT the appearance of having a due north-south orientation, allowing the mapmaker to fit the trail into an orderly rectangle, about six inches wide and four feet high. I looked at it with a polite, almost proprietorial interest - it was the first time since leaving New Hampshire that I considered the trail in its entirety - and then inclined closer, with bigger eyes and slightly parted lips. Of the four feet of trail map before me, reaching approximately from my knees to the top of my head, we had done the bottom two inches.
I went and got Katz...One thing was obvious. We were never going to walk to Maine."

The first time I read that I was like, 'Shit. Really?' and felt deprived of an adventure, since I was reading it with an eye towards hiking WV->ME. Gatlinburg is just about 200 miles into the 2,179-mile hike, mind you. What "A Walk" lacks in that aspect, Bryson more than makes up for it in the breadth of his research and in his laugh-out-loud style.

But it's not the only book on the AT out there. I'll try to post a top five list here once the Whiteblaze discussion wraps up.

Anyway, have a happy Wednesday! Signing off.

Update for Sunday, Feb. 21 continued

Thought I might as well list the items I got at Giant tonight, re: first Ga. resupply. It's a good snapshot of what trail food is.

Breakfast

• Powdered milk, enough to make 8 quarts, 80 calories per prepared cup. I'll separate these into baggies and mail the extra ahead to Neel's Gap.
• Post Just Bunches cinnamon granola/cereal, 17 ounces, 2,000 calories in the box. Can eat with the milk as cereal or dry as granola.

Breakfast/midday

• Pop-tarts, 15 ounces. Frosted Wild Berry, 210 calories per poptart. A personal favorite since 1985.
• Nature Valley chewy trail mix bars, 6.7 ounces, 120 calories per bar. 

Lunch/midday

• Enchilada-size tortillas, 8 count, 16 ounces, 160 calories per tortilla. Beats bread and bagels because it doesn't mold up or crush.
• Nutella, 13 ounces, 2,000 calories in the jar. 
• Smuckers squeeze grape jelly, 20 ounces, 1,400 calories in the tube.
• Clif bars, 3 count, 2.4 ounces/bar, 250 calories per bar.
• Dried fruit [pineapple, papaya and mango], 6 ounces, 560 calories in the bag.
• Pepperoni stick, 3 ounces, calories ?.

Dinner

• Ramen noodles, 6 count, 18 ounces total, 380 calories per brick. I eat two bricks for dinner.
• Knorr sides, 2 count, 9.7 ounces total, 680 calories in one and 500 in the other.
• Tuna pouch, 4.5 ounces, 175 calories.
• Salmon pouch, 5 ounces, 120 calories
• Cans of deviled ham and chicken spread, 2 count, 4. 25 ounces each, 260 calories [chicken], 360 calories [ham].
• Block of cheese, 8 ounces, 880 calories. Cabot Horseradish, another personal favorite.

Altogether around $40. I'll be packing 158 ounces of food, or about 10 pounds. That's five days' worth, more than usual, for sure, but I've carried more before.

Update for Sunday, Feb.21

My initial resupply for Amicalola Falls SP visitors center to Neel's
Gap, roughly 5 days.
Also my first post from my new Droid.