Warren Doyle's 'Book' now available on-line

[TJ aka Teej]

Weary is the ONLY reason to ever go to AT-L.

Wingfoot, if you want to post here please do so under your own name.

[minnesotasmith]

I haven't tried to thru-hike the AT yet, or done anything off the Approach Trail (except for 63 miles on the AT in NC as part of a Boy Scout troop in the mid-1970s), so I probably am not as entitled to an opinion on a lot of stuff here as the guys who actually have hiked the whole AT. That said, here is my take on getting food from a restaurant other than by ordering it:

Food is not expensive; it's GOOD-TASTING food (especially convenient good-tasting food) that is expensive. If you can get by eating beans, oatmeal, rice, occasional cans of sardines & spinach, and that sort of thing, it would seem to me that food will not be a big deal money-wise. If you want to cadge food from a restaurant, hanging around late when they are not far from closing (after first socializing with one of the back-kitchen guys some) and dropping hints is the better way to go than going after some abandoned leftovers on a nearby plate, to say nothing of dumpster diving. I don't know about how it is in the South, but up north in the last few years, business dumpsters increasingly are being switched to the type that you cannot get into from the outside, and thus can't get anything from; perhaps dumpster diving will soon be over for people who don't own cutting torches? Still, though, that is a humiliating, time-consuming task IMO. Why not instead try to find AYCE places when you hit towns, eat cheap nutritious (if boring) grocery store food, and work a few more hours overtime at your job before you leave for the AT? If you make even just 12.00 net at time-and-a-half after taxes at your job, that strikes me as more time-efficient than hanging around a restaurant for several hours for a non-guaranteed shot at 6.00 or so worth of food (that won't keep if you luck into a whole pile of it). Besides, it would seem you could conceivably get in trouble with the copthieves doing plate-grabbing; I would not want to do anything avoidable that would have a chance of risking my finishing my thru-hike.

That said, if I were near the far end of a thru-hike and out of money (with no friends/family to send me more), I certainly would consider other options WRT getting food so I could finish the AT. Seeing if I could do basic labor, polish someone's cars, mow a lawn, bathe dogs, wash windows, rake lawns, weed gardens, move stuff, clear brush, do rough carpentry, tutor someone's kid (I do have a science master's degree), etc., for someone in a trail town for a few days in exchange for some food money would seem more the way I would personally want to go, though. Not everyone will agree with me at either point, I'm sure; HYOH, right?
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Warren, I'd like to find out more about your AT training camps. After reading what I think was everything on your website, I sent you an e-mail asking for the schedule of when additional ones (post-June) will be likely held later this year, but I haven't heard back from you. My E-mail is [email protected] (switch the "6" to an "8").

[smokymtnsteve]

It is not the point of food being expensive or not ....wasting food is wrong...
if someone wants to dumpster dive..good for them...the people throwing away the food are "more wrong" then the folks reclaiming it. money isn't the issue...waste is.

[Ankle Bone]

Dumpster Diving and Panhandling leftovers from the busboy are two different things. The latter just confirms the prejudice of some that hikers are bums. The former ain't much better, but at least the food has been thrown out.

I'll choose to do neither while hiking.

[Lone Wolf]

Bottom line. Work, save $ and pay your way end to end. ***n hippies.

[Lint]

Aww man, nobody has posted on this thread for, like, a year! And it's about dumpsters! I should of done a dumpster search long ago.
I dumpster at home all the time and get GREAT food. None of it is dirty, it's all in plastic bags. There is only one grocery store in town that doesn't have a trash compacter, so my options are somewhat limited, but they throw away the best food. Organic crackers, vegetables, fruit, bread, the list goes on!
BUT when I did my thru hike this year I only dumpstered food about 3-4 times. Didn't want to give hikers a bad name in town, so I just bought food, even though the dumpsters were probally overflowing with grub!
Alas, my hike is over, so it's back to a grocery bill of near zero. That's more booze money!

[Many Moons]

Here is a good post from the past I am enjoy reading tonight! Hike On!!!!!

[-Rush-]

What drink did you indulge in tonight?

[egilbe]

I've always heard there were philosophical differences in their approach to hiking between Doyle and Jack. They really were at polar ends of the spectrum.