MSBAQ

Why?

I did NOT do it for the following standard reasons:

I DID do it for these reasons:

Why Tahoe to Yosemite?

I'd tried this once before in my youth. I'd been an avid backpacker, inspired by 'On the Loose' (a Sierra Club book). Long distance walker and author (The Thousand-Mile Summer, The Man Who Walked Thru Time, The Winds of Mara, The Complete Walker) Colin Fletcher was my hero. Hearing of the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail, at age 20 i loaded my pack up with a ridiculus quantity of freeze-dried food and set off from Meeks Bay (on Tahoe's west shore) and travelled for 5 days to south of Carson Pass, a distance of roughly 45 miles, where i gave up out because i couldn't tolerate the loneliness.

So one reason was the idea that i'd show that i'd overcome whatever inadequacy had stopped me before.

But also of course on that prior trip (and others in the Sierras) i'd developed a feel for the terrain and the weather. Also, my buddy Carol (of webpage fame) could accompany me on the first part of the trip (she lives at Tahoe), and i had a vague idea that my brother Kevin, Yosemite Park Ranger, might hike out from there and meet me in the wilderness. (Further consideration made this seem impractical, as there would be no way to predict when i'd be approaching the area, and no possible means of communications enroute.)

Whadidya take?

I travel really light. No tent, no stove, no pots & pan, no matches, no flashlight, no ground pad or pillow, no around-camp booties, no compass, no poncho, etc. Radical. What i did take was my 23-year-old Kelty external-frame pack (which surely will last another 23 years), a North Face sleeping bag, a 'tube tent' (8-foot-long plastic tube for rain shelter or ground cover, some light cord to hold it up, mosquito netting, a couple of plastic water bottles, 2 plastic cups, a spoon, maps (pages cut from 'The Pacific Crest Trail' by Schaffer, Schifrin, Winnett, and Jenkins), my Sony camcorder, my Palm Pilot (for easy post-trip transcription of notes to electronic form), a couple hankerchiefs, a couple wash cloths (one wash, one dry), 'Without Remorse' by Tom Clancy, sun goo, bug goo, chapstick, toothbrush/etc, toilet paper, and a pile of 1st aid stuff which i thankfully didn't need. Without food or water, this tips the scales at very roughly 25 pounds.

(As it turned out, i never once removed the Palm Pilot nor the novel from their protective plastic bags. No time.)

Two items new to this trip were a 'Pur' water filter and a bear-proof food cannister, both from REI. The (anti-giardia) filter was light, convenient, and worked very well. The bear can weighed 2 pounds, cost 78 bucks, was a nuisance, and i saw no bears.

High-tech wacko that i am, I spent a lot of pre-trip time investigating the feasibility of making daily website updates (pictures and narrative) from the bush. Idea was to use a Sharp Mobilon palm-top PC ($1000) with attached PCMCIA camera ($200-400) hooked via its integral modem to a digital cellphone ($200). To my great surprise, the folks selling cellphones were very uninformed on the possibilities for data transmission. For example: AT&T: oh, you need a special adapter for that, which won't be available til late august, maybe. Also, there was no guarantee that a cellphones (intended for short distance transmission within a network of transceiver stations) would even do VOICE out in the wilderness. Carol, experienced cellphone-user and timber geek, was not encouraging. And then there was the battery uncertainty. And i'd need AT&T's One-Rate plan, which ain't cheap. Bottom line was this would cost me $1800 and probably wouldn't work. Technology has not advanced as far as i thought.

One additional item which Carol thankfully provided out on the trail was Spenko "2nd Skin" dressings, which proved excellent for some nasty chafing which i'm sure you don't want to hear about.

Whadidya wear?

I was most unstylishly attired - baggy shorts, old long-sleeved light-weight shirt, well-broken-in hiking shoes, park service gortex hiking socks, and a ball cap.

After much soul-searching and an evening of Shakespeare's Symbaline (brrrr!), i decided to also take along a Columbia vest and a pair of long jeans in case it got cold. Neither proved really necessary, tho' the fuzzy vest made a comforting pillow.

Whadidya eat?

I took various kinds of cereal, dried fruit, and powedered nonfat milk. This turned out to be really dull fare, and i had to force myself to eat enuf. Carol thankfully offloaded some jerky and, best of all, a bag of baby carrots, which helped me thru. And see The Assault, D-Day.

Why will NT 5.0 not support underscores in network pathnames?

This was foretold as a sign of the impending Apocalypse in certain mistranslations of the Book of Revelations: "And the Gates of Heaven will open the fifth seal, and there will be a wailing, and gnashing of teeth... and their underscores shall be made into dashes... and the promulgators of code shall seek death but not find it."

OR it could be part of the worldwide alien conspiracy which the current Justice Department investigation of Microsoft (or is it the other way around?) is cleverly intended to obfuscate. See a future X-Files episode for details.

Is it really true that Carol's one of the world's most amazing women?

Yup.