Nerves are setting in

Yesterday and today have been pretty busy.  I spent yesterday packing and cleaning everything in my apartment.  I had done some work, but as always hadn’t realized quite how much remained to be done.  After stuffing things in boxes for the majority of the day I had a hard time getting to sleep.  Last night was my first official nervous moment.  Now that I’m moving out of my apartment it’s just now starting to feel real, and I’m just now starting to feel anxious about the hike.  I finally fell asleep between 3 and 4am.  I was awoken at 9am as my parents arrived to help load the truck.  Another full day of packing, and now I’m living out of a U-Haul truck.  The truck’s due back Monday morning, so tomorrow will be spent unloading.  I don’t plan on unpacking the boxes – everything I’ll need for the next six months is in my backpack.

I’ve been ordering hiking gear for a few months now and I’ve been having it shipped to my parents’ house, since that’s where it needs to be anyway as of today.  As such, there was a bunch of gear waiting for me that I hadn’t yet had the chance to see, touch, or drool upon.  Needless to say, I spent some time in the living room wearing a balaclava and headlamp while zipped up inside my sleeping bag.  This week I need to weigh all my items and update the gear list on this blog.  There are a couple remaining items to buy/make too – WalMart style stuff like a first-aid kit of ibuprofein, band-aids, and antibiotic cream.  I also need to treat all my hiking clothes with the permethrin that just arrived this week.  There’s a seemingly endless list of things to do before you can start hiking, but I can feel the list getting smaller.

Most importantly, I need to choose which guidebook to bring with me – ALDHA Thru Hiker’s Companion, or AWOL’s The AT Guide.  AWOL seems to give a bit more information on town services, and he provides elevation graphs of the trail as well, but leaves out most detail about the shelters.  AWOL gives phone numbers for all the restaurants in a town, but ALDHA gives buffet prices.  AWOL’s guide weighs 2.5 ounces less than the ALDHA guide.

I’m anxious to get all my gear together and packed.  I want to start hiking up and down the hills in my parents’ yard while wearing the pack.  It’s supposed to take about 4 days to reach Neil’s Gap (the first re-supply on the AT).  I want to do it in 2.