Does anybody want to buy a Porsche?

It is Saturday and I haven't left yet. I won't go into too many details, but I have been tying up a lot of loose-ends and working on getting my car, a 1983 Porsche 944, ready to sell. Do you want to pick up a project car? This has been taking a lot of my time, but I am set to hit the trail tomorrow morning!

One of those loose-ends was writing a mass-email to pretty much everybody that I know (at least everybody that I remember I know)... which took over two hours to do because I didn't have any email addresses stored in MD and ended up having to look up every single email address. If I forgot to include you, I am sorry! No offense intended! Well, maybe... just to you Andy! I just wasn't cut out to be a spammer.

My pack officially weighs 42 pounds at most (with two liters of water and about seven days worth of food on board). Without the food and water, the bag should be tipping the scales at about 26 pounds. Not too bad.

I should get some food sometime, huh?

I received a package in the mail today from Wisconsin. It contained the ever important books that will help me plan my meals and stops on the trail, books that I forgot to bring with me when I left the cheese state! Jessica was kind enough to sift through my storage unit to find them and ship them out to me. She’s so sweet ;-)

Since I have to carry everything that I will eat, I’ve got to pack as many calories into each pound as possible. Being a vegetarian makes this even more interesting... no meats makes protein a tough commodity to come by. There will be lots of pasta, grains, beans, nuts, and anything that is typically prepared by boiling it in water! Can anybody say Good Old Raisins and Peanuts? All the “expert” sources have said that I will consume about two pounds of food a day to support a hiker’s 4000(+) calorie per day diet. This means that I will need to carry about fifteen pounds of food alone in order to survive for a week on the trail. I’m sure that I will try to cut down on long legs of the journey in order to save on weight… eventually. Grocery shopping is going to be a fun time tomorrow!