In the past months I’ve been picking up food here and there to stick in with the gowns. I’m shipping them all ‘Regional Rate – Flat Rate Priority’ Which means I ordered boxes that are a bit smaller than the sizes available at the Post Office (although I did still get them from the P.O. although they were delivered to the barn. Since I’m shipping gowns from Eastern WA to the trail, I can save money due to closer zoning, than if I just ship regular flat rate boxes. Confused? So was I.
As you likely know the flat rate boxes, in this case, allow up to 20 lbs per box. Since the gowns weigh a quarter of that, I figured I would throw in some food as well since it wouldn’t cost any more to ship. My parents and sister are doing most of my food drops, and I thought this would be easy for them. WOW was I wrong. I’ve re-packaged everything into lighter and less bulky ziplock bags. Then I have to figure 5000 calories a day, and try to keep the weight around 2 lbs per day. My first attempt last week went all wrong, but I was just going to deal with it. My average weight was a minimum of 3 lbs of food / day. Since my parents have officially decided that they’re flying down to see me off at the trail head, I told them I would be sure to ship the first 3 full food resupply boxes so they wouldn’t have to worry about getting back and figuring out the same mess I’m trying to…. ARGH !!!
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- Stacks of repackaged food
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- Calorie Laden Snacks
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- Bumble Bar (sponsor) and other muchies for the trail
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- Spaghetti With Meat Sauce
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- A food gift from Janet Ake of Arkansas.
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- More dehydrated wonderful goodness from Janet
After working up all of this food, I was ever so delighted to receive a box of dehydrated home-made food and snacks from a PCT secion-hiker, Janet Ake, of Arkansas. She gave me her old tent a while back as a spare… It’s much larger than mine and I love it, but it weighs twice as much. So after I get used to the trail a bit, I may just switch up to the larger tent. The food and fruit leather she has sent looks scrumptious, and it’s a far cry from the low budget, lazy food that I’m throwing together. The generosity of everyone astounds me, I’m one hell of a lucky guy.
Well, in the midst of wrapping things up at the barn, so i can officially depart on Thursday, March 22, (bound for Montana, then back, park my truck in Newport, then take a train down to Portland for a few days, where I’ll then depart around April 2 for San Diego …. ) I read that one of the hikers is dividing his food into daily gallon zip-lock bags of everything he’ll need each day. This is a brilliant plan. He’s doing it because he doesn’t trust himself to eat all of the goodies at the beginning of his trip out of the resupply town, and leave the less desirable food for last. I would surely do the same. So for the last 4 hours I’ve been dumping out the boxes and reworking the food resupply just the same. What’s wonderful – I’m ending up with far less weight. I’m not sure where I went wrong, but I’m happy to drop some weight in my pack, and have extra food to send to my folks to pack up for me.
Information overload? probably. I’ve been so distracted with last minute prep, that I haven’t kept up to date.
That’s it for today…. Thanks for keeping tabs on me… I can’t believe the hike is so close to happening… =-P
