Hiker Hostel in Georgia
Well I'm finally in Georgia, and at a great hostel near the start of the trail. The plane ride went fine, I got my backpack back in baggage claim, and I figured out how to navigate Atlanta's airport, and rail system. I rode their metro up to the northern-most station, and waited around a bit while another hiker came through, and then we got picked up by the "shuttle" (a Honda with 270,000 miles exactly).
Rob, the other guy there reminded me a bit of Dave, from REI - in appearance at least. He hiked up the approach trail to Springer Mt a couple years ago, and ended up breaking his foot on the thing. I'm glad I'm not bothering to do it - they're actually talking about it downstairs right now: "Yeah, you don't get any credit for doing the thing, and no one who's done it has had anything good to say about it."
I already miss people back home, and I'm not sure how I'm going to be taking it when I've actually been away for a while. It's hard dealing with such a culture change so quickly. Not that I've really dealt with it yet -- but everyone around here seems to be so deep in the culture already, and I feel like I'm just some guy who graduated college and figured it'd be something neat to do. I'm sure I will warm up to it pretty soon.
I finally pulled open the maps last night, and I got pretty excited looking at them all. I haven't been able to get too excited yet -- everyone else has been too excited for me. It's kind of like this girl I know who only really wants to do something when people tell her she can't -- everyone kept telling me how great it was going to be, and I couldn't help but get complacent. This is going to be some hard shit, and I'm going to have to get myself excited to overcome it when I start realizing how tough it will be to keep with it.
Mike in Illinois asked me why I was leaving so late, when I said that I was later than a lot of people. I said I had a pretty good thing going on. Not only did I have a great job with great coworkers, but then Nikki came along, and I was spending a lot more time with Trail Club too. Mike asked why I was even going then if I had such a good deal right now. He just wanted to get me to hear myself defending my choice - let me hear myself get fired up about it, explaining how it is the chance of a lifetime, and how it will be an incredible experience. How I can't live life never moving on to something that might be great, just because I have something very good going on right now.
Tomorrow is probably 9 miles, and I might have 8 and 5 on the days after that. I'm taking it easy so I don't kill myself before I really get going (or break my foot on the first day like Rob). There will be places to get more food, and to shake down my pack. I hope I will get into the swing of things soon, and I can really start settling down into my adventure!
