Earlier this week, I let my friends know about my plans to hike the Appalachian Trail. On Sunday, I let my friends Andrew and Monica know. (Starting Monday, Monica is running the weekly D&D game myself and friends play in, so she needed to know first.)
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I visited my mom earlier today, ostensibly to do her taxes, but also so I could inform her of my plans to hike the AT. I had decided going in that this was the conversation that was most likely to cause me to abort my plans, but she took it better than I expected (and also raised a number of concerns I had already anticipated). Apparently, this is something my dad would have liked to have done, had he known about it when he was still healthy enough to do this sort of thing. And apparently, one of my cousins had hiked part of the AT at some point, so I potentially have someone else to talk to for pointers.
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Strictly speaking, the last time I touched the Appalachian Trail was October 13, 2014, when leaving the "Jersey House". But, that was when we drove over the road crossing on US-206 in Branchville, NJ.
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Today, I attended the Hiking the Appalachian Trail: Trip Planning class at REI College Park, led by Michaela. The class was ok, and it was exactly what I expected it would be, which is to say, not super helpful, given the prior reading I had been doing. It didn’t actually answer many questions I had, since I had already been musing about this for years, and done a whole lot of internet reading, and spent four hours talking with other REI employees a few days before, though it did validate some of my thoughts, so it was still useful to me. But for someone who hadn't done any of the research I had already done, it would have been an excellent introductory class.
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I have been thinking about hiking the Appalachian Trail half-heartedly since 2011, and looked into it a little bit over the years, but never really seriously considered it, due to the time involved and the two concurrent jobs I've had since late 2010.
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