Blogging again...

Where to begin....? Well I guess I'll start by saying that I've been really surprised more than a few times by people letting me know that they'd checked out the blog and enjoyed it. It's been fun to find that many more than just those who left comments had actually been following the trek!

Soooo... as my travels are about to begin once more this coming Saturday, I'll try to get this thing going again and update whenever I get the chance.

First let me try to give the short story of what I've been up to since finishing my hike November 20th of last year.... from what I remember I spent about a week doing... not much of anything!

Well, so wait.

I guess I could start with some physical reactions to life after the trail before I tackle "events". For those that are curious, I was only 10lbs under weight coming off the trail.. wasn't all that surprised as I didn't begin with much body fat to play with and very little upper body muscle mass to lose - unlike most guys tackling the trail. Here's to soccer players making for good hikers! ;) But anyway, I think I gained 5 back within a day or two! and the next 5 over the following week or so. My father claims he'd never seen me eat so much in my life ;) While I think he exagerates, I'm sure my body probably wasn't buying the odd break in activity as anything more than the rare "zero" rest day. What was really weird though, was that after getting home, for probably more than a week or so, I'd wake up with really sore feet... got used to expecting that every morning on the trail - first few minutes of walking around always kinda sucked for that reason. After all I was hiking some big miles every single day. But now that I really wasn't doing much of anything, I thought it pretty odd. Let's see what else... I think I've already described the sensory "information" overload of civilization... all the noise... the big-city in-your-face bill boards... all the people... the cars whizzing by everywhere... One of the clearest memories is of my sitting in the living room at home flipping around on the boob tube - cable - as if that wasn't weird enough - and I end up stopping on CNN. Low and behold I'm surreally come to realize that I'm watching a LIVE story on the Nike corporate executive jet having problems with its landing gear on its approach into Portland...... now maybe that doesn't seem all that weird to all of you... just another news story... but I guess it was just something about my connection with Nike, my having left the company just prior to hitting the trail, that it was on the other side of the country - the distance in perspective to what I'd just finished walking, and how small the world is given there was a live story on Nike my first day off of the trail.... I don't know, I can't really describe why it was weird - it just was.

Let's see what else..... ahh yes... have I mentioned the nice warm soft bed!? Showers!? Warm, dry, CLEAN clothing!? Heck - the comforts of the home 'shelter'!? Don't know if I mentioned how cold it had been on the trail before it had warmed up the last couple of days on the trail... during the day is really not a big deal at all - your moving, your body's working and generating plenty of heat... but as soon as you hit the shelter for the night, you start to cool down, night falls and with it the temps.. there were some pretty uncomfortable nights for a while.. I remember calling home from a pay phone at Neel's Gap and my mom worriedly asking if I wanted them to come pick me up. While I have to admit that those nights weren't all that fun and almost being home was getting to sound better and better, there was no way I was going to go that route. I was only a couple of days (or nights rather) away from finishing. I responded, in an only half-joking manner, asking her not to even ask me that. Sooo yeah, getting back to the creature comforts - niiiiiiice. :)

Ok, so I'll get back to 'what I've been up to' in the next post.

David