Until we meet again, AT

This journey is complete for now. To follow the continuing adventures of AcroYogi, please check out my movement arts blog, Flow Like Water

trail metrics & stats

 37 days on trail
 50 miles hiked in three days (circle of life challenge)
 28 miles hiked in one day (marathon challenge)
411 total miles hiked
 48 lbs. starting pack weight (with food and water)
 32 lbs. finishing pack weight (with food and water)
155 lbs. starting body weight
140 lbs. body weight after 14 days
161 lbs. finishing body weight

jettisoned gear:
- stove and fuel :: replaced with natural fires
- water filter :: replaced with iodine tabs & intuition
- first aid kit :: stripped down to 1 ace bandage and penicillin
- umbrella :: clothes all dry within 4 hours of any soak
- extra tent stakes :: replaced with rocks and trees local to site

Food / Climate pairings

New discovery:

Boiling hot soup which tastes like the best thing in the world on a breezy mountaintop 40 degrees Fahrenheit....

Is a *very* different experience at sea level, 94 degrees and 100% humdidity.

Lesson learned,
Point me to the nearest amplified dance floor with AC! :D

बेक इन थे हाई लाइफ अगं

headed to LA. fuck this trail.
some observations:

1. 45 pounds on back? NO. ending base-weight: 25 lbs. next time: 15 lbs. when I cut 1/4 of my packweight, I literally doubled my speed, and perhaps more importantly, the Joy of Movement.

2. 20 miles per day? perhaps, once the baseweight slims down to 15. I did 3 or 4 twenty mile days, and they were all fairly brutal. Did one 28 mile day, which was actually quite fun, since I was gunning for the goal. hiked til midnight that night.

3. the trail is NOTHING like I imagined it. It was far more of a struggle (very mental), and much less of a vacation. My body got hardened. And so did my willpower. Having to actually *get* somewhere really changes the nature of a hike.

Thousands of photos. In process of editing. Will post to flickr when done in next month or so.

re-entry to civilisation and society is a slow process. I'm spending lots of times in the outdoor air, and working out the plan for: what comes next.

stay tuned :)

The Sound of Music

I've just started to learn how to play guitar in earnest, and it is truly a journey of joy, much akin to when CM taught me how to spin poi and hula hoop back in 2007. (also see http://playflow.blogspot.com )

Guitar is in some ways even more of an opener; I've wanted to play guitar for as long as I can remember. As a child, my mother gave me a "choice" of which instrument to learn; when I chose the electric guitar, she simply said "OK, but first you need to learn the piano." Thirty years later, my mom died and I inherited her buttery smooth Guild acoustic guitar. I learned 5 chords and one song on it, but that was the extent of where I could go with it. I bought a cheap steel-string guitar, and even a really cheap electric guitar (and a really nice amp!), but could never get past those first five chords.

What I failed to realise is that I didn't have any fundamentals. I'd been taking the advice of the virtuoso kid I had met in the music store where I bought the steel-string: he simply said, in patented street smart fashion: forget lessons, forget all the books; just learn as many chords as you can, and learn to transition between them.

Of course, that is the hard course; kind of like telling an aspiring poet: just learn words; don't worry about rhyme, rhytmn, or metaphor.

So in my grand tour of America, I started noticing who had a guitar in their house, and asked each of them to show me chords; I learned them in the same fashion as I learned acroyoga: by watching really closely with my eyes and my heart as actual skilled players plyed their craft of music, imitating the gestures and movements as closely as possible, and committing these gestures to muscle / pose memory.

Thank you to Krish (lead guitarist for the Vaginas), to my dear brother Karl, and to Sid, my first jam session partner (the first place where there were two guitars accessible).

Playing with Karl taught me how nicely vocal harmony could play with live guitar. We belted out the old folk songs, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Amazing Grace, and of course, Folsom Prison Blues... that last one really tests the vocal limbo of who can go the lowest. :)

Playing with Sid showed me both the dance of lead and follow in jam sessions (or pickin circles as they're called here in the South), and the intense *character* of each of the chords. Playing A-minor, I could almost *feel* the melancholy in it. And that so inspired me: if chords had emotions, then they were kind of like foods, that is to say that each chord had its own unique character and flavor: bitter, joyous, flirty, happy, etc.

To bring this full circle, Karl agreed to be the caretaker of the old Guild, and got me the most wonderful gift of a Gibson Backpacker guitar, a brilliantly designed instrument weighing in at just under four pounds. Of equal importance, he got me two really great guitar books.

I cracked the first one open today and, as they say, "began at the begin." Once I comprehended that there were actual notes on the fretboard, I quickly progressed to playing a full scale, C-D-E-F-G-A-B and back down again. As soon as that happened, I closed my eyes and the whole fretboard exploded visually as a colorful matrices of notes, and I suddenly *got* the relationship between piano and guitar, both just ways of playing notes really, and now we're moving faster, the Music is coming... :)

Gratitude for all the great teachers in my life, who have given so geneously of their time, music, passion and homes that I might learn the arts of Joyous Living.

math

weights:

25 pounds of gear
(bag, shelter, sleeping bag, stove, fuel, clothes, first aid, knife)
+15 pounds: food and water
40 pounds total on back
BONUS: tithe 10% to the muse: add 4 lbs. for Backpacker guitar
TOTAL: 44 lbs. starting weight

food data:

4,500 calories / day estimated burn
average food energy = 5 calories per gram, or
2,200 calories per pound
therefor...
average load = 2 lbs. of food needed per day

sample calorie loads:
m&ms = 5.5 cal/g
cashews = 6.0 cal/g
mayonnaise = 7.5!!! yum!

measures:

2,175 miles
20 miles / day
109 total days hiking

Here we go!

luxuries

so you don't think I'm a total spoilsport, I am bringing the following:

* backpacker guitar
* fire poi
* bubbles wand

They make me smile just thinking about them. Music and Toys!