The Happens and Happenings

(Night before actual departure, or the same time Daniel wrote the following post)

In the week following up to my departure, I only had to work three days (M-W) which left me with two days to pack and get everything organized to leave on time. Being a social individual, this also gave me some time to say goodbye to people that I more than likely wouldn't be seeing for five months. I now know that two days were not enough time to do everything that I needed to do.

May 1 (H) - Today I spent time at whole foods buying bulk grains and looking for specialty foods that may make a nice treat for the trail to keep things interesting. After Whole Foods, I went home and added gromits to the tarp to make it more versatile in the variety of tarps that I could make. This will add more weight (for all the weight crunchers out there) but once again, I gain versatility from this modification. I met my friend Matt for lunch at Triangle Town Center in Raleigh, got a hair cut, browsed Dick's sporting goods for anything that I may have missed, then went home and conked out on the couch. I made sure my alcohol stove would boil water after the sun went down. It was successful. I am pleased.

May 2 (F) - This morning I woke up early to buy the rest of my food from Food Lion. Food bought consisted of Minute Rice, Lipton Sides, Spice Packets, Instant Oatmeal, Powdered Milk(for cooking), Crackers, Peanut Butter, Honey, Tortillas, Granola Bars etc, so on and so forth. I took a trip into Raleigh to neaten the end of some rope with a hot knife at work, pick up my MTB, and say bye to those peeps. I ventured over to the old apartment to take care of some moving business related to my borrowed furniture, went through Allison's pack with her, ate dinner one last time with my homies from the Bowen and Tucker crew. Around 8:20, left the venue of dining to buy some last minute things from REI including a pot, extra stakes, a solar charger(which will charge everything from camera to phone to ipod) and some boots (for use as a second pair of shoes). I hung out at one last party at Krystal's place afterwards, then went home and passed out so I could wake up early to finish packing and leave.

May 3 (Sa) - I woke up around 7:00, got clean one last time, repackaged food, filled fuel bottles, packed my pack, cleaned my room, cleaned out the car, packed the other car, and did this all in time for lunch. It's safe to say that I didn't make it out at 9:00a like I planned, not to mention this Saturday... as I planned. Around 3:00pm we had finally made it to Allison's house, separated food and packed everything in our bags and the car. By this time, it was too late to leave and make it to Amicalola Falls State Park at any reasonable hour. We decided to take the rest of the day to calm ourselves, rest and get up at 4:30am for the early drive. It was needed on all accounts. I was tired, Allison was tired, the folks were tired and not liking the plan post drop off which put them searching for a place to stay for the night, half way through the night. We went to the Family Buffet in Wake Forest which is practically the most amazing buffet eveeerrrrr. Not only do they sell Chinese Food on the Buffet, they also have Sushi, a Hibachi grill, and my favorite, Mexican food. An excellent choice.

May 4 (Su) through May 20 (T) - The plan will be to leave the house at 4:30 and make our way down to Georgia. So sometime after lunch, maybe around 2pm or 3pm we will be on our way down the trail. After 50 miles or so of trail travel which I give us a max of 7 days to walk, we will make our way into Helen Ga. After we stop in Helen, we will make it back to the trail and head North and our second scheduled stop will be in Franklin NC. We only have to make it to Franklin by the 16th which gives us 12 days or so to make it the 100 miles into town. Brittany should be delivered around the May 20 to the mountains for a meeting in Franklin or further down the way if Franklin is boring and I don't want to stay around that long. In that case, who knows. Nobody knows now, but no worries, I am a communication master and you will know then. Anyways, good luck on your last exams, I'll be writing personally as soon as I find internet access again although Allison will be our post monkey and put our snail mail blogs up for us.

Write to you soon,
Daniel Lewis