Saturday, February 26, 2011

shelterrr

i bought my tent tonight!! =D i'm so excited! i got an msr hubba hubba AND its footprint for $225 shipped from rei. a guy on BPL replied to my post on the used gear forums and told me that i could get last year's hh on clearance for $170. i called the store in asheville and they didn't have any in stock. i had to call all the way out to california to find a store that had the clearance tent in stock, but i should have it here in the next week! =)

so i've got two out of the big three: pack and shelter. now i just need a bag. =) i'm heavily leaning towards the campmor down 20+ bag, but we'll see how everything goes here in the next little bit. perhaps i can buy a better quality used bag for about the same price. 

if i were my dog, i'd have an excitement pee right now.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

still on the fence...

so i haven't updated in a while, but that doesn't mean i haven't been reading and researching and wasting time online looking and dreaming about gear and routes and mail drops and shelters and whatnot. i actually found a website that lets you organize all your favorite websites. it's called pearltree and i like it. here's my hiking pearltree... http://pear.ly/M9n5

i wound up losing four of my toenails on the foothills trail! =) the first two came off within a week or two, but the other two didn't come off until just last week. i had no idea the last two were even injured. i kinda consider myself a badass now. 

i bought my pack for the AT last night!!! :) i'm so excited! i was at wal-mart a few weeks ago and i was just perusing through the camping section and i noticed that they carried actual backpacks. i picked up a coleman max and it looked like a decent enough pack. i didn't buy it, but i made a mental note to google it when i got home. i never did, and then just last night i ran across a review on whiteblaze that actually said it was a really good starter pack. i googled it, and all the reviews gave it 5 *s. i tried to find it on wal-mart's website, and they said that they no longer carried it, so i got in my truck and ran to wal-mart to see if they still had it. lo and behold, i got the very last one. :) it didn't even have any of the tags on it so i couldn't see what the features and specs on it are, and when i got it home i was very pleasantly surprised to see that it even comes with its own pack cover! here's a video review of it i found, and i even learned more about the shoulder straps (cause they don't fit exactly right w/the hip belt and i just figured i'd have to deal with it - turns out - ajustableeee).



things really seem to be coming together for me to hike this trail. i still need to sell my truck; the two guys who've looked at it have fallen through. maybe i need to drop the price. i dunno. anyway, a friend of mine's boyfriend was deployed to afghanistan this weekend and he said i could borrow his jeep for the month of march while i figure out what the heck i'm doing. so i don't have to sell my truck and then rush into buying a piece of crap that'll get me to springer. i can just sell my truck and get out from under that note, and then use a car that i can give back in a month. how awesome is thattt... plus my landlord might buy my washer & dryer, so that'll give me extra cash money for the trail. 

nick is going to wind up taking jolie i believe, but i'll still have to hike with swayze. which will be fine, i'm sure. i just know i couldn't handle hiking with two dogs on the trail, and jolie wouldn't be able to make it anyway. with her short little boxer nose, she just overheats way too fast in the summertime. swayze, though, is gonna love it. i'll need to take her to the vet and get her UTD on all of her vacs before i head out; it'll be a little early (i don't think she's due til the end of may), but it's better than having to find a random vet while we're on the trail. 

basically, i'm so frickin' frackin' excited. i think this is going to be one of those very last-minute, pack your shit and go things if it does happen, though. my finances are the absolute only thing holding me back from this journey. if i won a million dollar lottery tomorrow, i wouldn't go to italy or vegas (i don't think you could pay me to go to vegas?) or cancun or anywhere other than springer mountain. it's extremely weird to know that your heart is someplace it's never been before.

also, as a side note, i renewed my subscription to equimax last week. i don't think i hate the horse world. i think i'm just tired of shitty employers, and there are a lot of shitty employers in the horse industry. i'd actually love to get back into the western discipline. wear my boots and be a cowgirl again. if the AT falls through, i'll hopefully wind up on a reining farm. :)