Depressed

[Wise Old Owl]

Oh when I said whining - it was in general - I try not to point talons at folk. We are all here to get along.

[Blissful]

Section hikers are never thru

(courtesy of Captn Blue)

[Wise Old Owl]

Section hikers are never thru

(courtesy of Captn Blue)

Yea and the reply to that is "we grow olde and moldy."

Whats that smell? - that's not hiker funk - that's Icy Hot....

[sbhikes]

Now we've also bought another dealership and my boss wants to promote me to manager, which would mean not taking the time off I want to for one of my last life goals. I havent yet decided what to do, still planning on a mmarch1 start date, but these newest developments do throw a monkey wrench into my plans(ed abbey fan).Im not depressed, but i am flusterd and dont know what I shold do. the "responsible "thing would be to postpone the hike, take care of business and daughter, but ...........

If you hike, you will lose your job. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. You will never get another promotion. You probably will never get another raise. Gosh how I hate the US and our lack of decent vacation time sometimes. We should not be slaves like this.

[hikerboy57]

If you hike, you will lose your job. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. You will never get another promotion. You probably will never get another raise. Gosh how I hate the US and our lack of decent vacation time sometimes. We should not be slaves like this.

if i just stay in sales, Ill have a job when i get back, theres zero doubt about that.but at this point of my life, I would be better off going into management, and i dont know if that opportunity would be there when i returned. The bigger issue is my girls. In addition to my older daughter being pregnant, Ive been estranged from my younger one for the past three years. Last week we met for the first time in a long time and agreed to try to get to know each other again. I dont think going away for a few months would help with that.
Again, Im not depressed, if I stay home , I get the chance to repair a relationship long broken, and get to see my first grandchild be born. not so bad.the trail will always be there, I always have a great time on my sections, and i can still take a month off in the summer. Im still looking to leave springer March 1,but as i "let go and let god" as they say, my instincts are telling me to postpone.
"life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
but its all good.

[nitewalker]

i finally finished work for the season and i was planing on starting a hike this week. my son went into the national guard on the 21st. i planed on hanging around till monday the 28th. well between the 21st and 28th my life has been changed for the worse but i will be okay. its the people around me that will feel the brunt of the sorrow. on fri the 25th my brothers 35 yr old exwife deanne bastow [still close, 9yr old neice] had a heart attack that has put her in a comma up to now. there has been no change and she is in a deep sleep. on sunday the 27th my daughters gram on her moms side was rushed to the hospital with shortness of breath and confusion she is still there being tested. i woke up monday went and cut some firewood. after cuting firewood i went in for lunch got on the computer only to find out that my friends wife passed away after being struck by a car....hopefully this is the end of the bad news around here because its geting ridiculous.


its okay to be depressed over a hike but a hike can always be done later on in life. so what if u dont complete a thru. just get out and hike any trail because if its only hiking your depressed over then your doing just fine. now if your depressed over something similar to what i mentioned above, then u got something to be depressed over.

hike on and happy trails. life isnt always fair but we have to be strong for those who may need help.......peace and love

[nitewalker]

so much for paragraphs......

[Chenango]

Well form a long term plan based on two years - jump on a treadmill and work up to a new goal - and stick to it - stop whining about the minutia of life - for some its a circle. For you and me its a sign with "wrong turn..."

Is this picture in NJ? Looks kind of familiar.

[Gray Blazer]

Oh when I said whining - it was in general - I try not to point talons at folk. We are all here to get along.

We need to dissect your pellets to see if you are telling the truth.

[Berserker]

I still haven't thru-hiked, but I'm working on doing something rarer. Section hiking. I just read that only about 1/4 of the people who complete the trail are section hikers. So being a section hiker actually puts you in a more elite crowd than being a thru-hiker. My son and I are still thruing when I'm done with this teaching thing. However, if we've already knocked out or very nearly knocked out the AT, we might just to the PCT instead.

Yeah, I'm section hiking too, and I don't run into many hikers who are truly sectioning the AT (i.e. actually have a plan and intent to finish the entire trail). I may be on the same plan as you. Hoping to finish the AT in sections, and then maybe do part of or the whole PCT.

The perseverance it takes to complete the trail as a thru hiker is well known but has anyone ever documented the sacrifices that are made yearly as a section hiker ? Money spent on gas , time spent traveling , arrangement for shuttles , family schedule changes , etc. True , the section hiker has more time to complete the trail but at what cost ?

I'm a nerdy engineer by trade, and I have actually thought of doing this. It would vary greatly of course depending on how the trail is broken up into sections. For me I've done 787.7 miles in 19 sections up to this point over 4 years. 15 of the sections were weekend hikes and the other 4 were longer (usually a week). The weekend hikes have run me around $150 on average, and the week long hikes have been about $700 each. So at this point I've spent around $5 K. I think a lot of people thru hike the entire trail with that budget. Projecting that out to the rest of the trail it looks like I'll spend at least $15 K. I do have to admit to splurging on things a little here and there though like unnecessary hotel rooms and decent steak dinners, but hey that's what vacation is for. Plus it will be spread over more than 10 years.

[lemon b]

All we can do is what our individual lifes will allow. Just Grateful we have the AT. Although my goal is the same as yours, I'll never feel incomplete if the time and body and family stuff, including working, do not allow.