Lessons from the Trail: Logistics

So I knew before I came out here that there would be some logistics involved but it definitely surprised me how much really is involved.  If you are thinking about a long distance hike listen up.  I constantly have to think about how many miles I will be planning each day and try and figure out food resupplies as well as taking the time to charge my phone/battery pack.  Doing this blog also makes it much more difficult because I have to work around the weather and when i can get data.  Right now i am sitting on top of Mt. Killington freezing my butt off to do this.  But its worth it to me.  Another thing is gear failures.  My trekking pole snapped coming down Mt. Moosilauke so i got in touch with Black Diamond and they are sending me a replacement section free of charge but I had to take the time/effort to make that happen.  Same thing with my newest pair of shoes.  They started falling apart with under 100 miles on them so I contacted Merrell and told them the problem and that I am an AT thru hiker.  I just emailed them some pics from my phone and told them my location in 9 days and they had a brand new pair of shoes in the mail same day.  Thats pretty awesome customer service by both companies.  Having a smart phone has been really handy also.  Otherwise, I would be relying on public library computers.  There are a million other petty things I could talk about but I will leave that up to you to figure out for yourself.  Thru hiking kinda reminds me of painting... planning and prep work is 90 percent of the job and the other 10 percent is actually doing the work.