Everything is awful, I really want to not have to have a job (medicaid for all, where are you, if I didn't have to pay for health insurance I could go part-time and actually breathe), and somebody needs to talk me out of using up a bunch of my leave and going on a solo backpacking trip this spring.

(Current nebulous plan: Get someone to drop me around the 100-mile marker on the C&O Canal Towpath Trail; hike downhill. 40 miles in there's a train station where I can take the train home; 60 miles in there's another train station where I can take the train home; 100 miles in is the last train home.

Which means I don't have to commit to walking a hundred miles or call home in shame, I can just make a decision at each train station. And the terrain's good, so it's hard for me to imagine not being able to do at least forty miles in a week, even if all the worst happens.

It's not a wilderness trail, so I wouldn't be out of civilization for any very long stretches, which means I could go very light on things like food, and do a few hotel/restaurant stops if I wanted. And there's supposed to be potable water every five miles or so, so I shouldn't need to worry too much about carrying/filtering water.

The only tricky bit is that there's nowhere to sleep in the last 20 miles, and the very last stretch is through the city, so when I got to that last train station I'd have to be very sure I could do 20 miles in a day, and still not miss the last train. But I could stop before then if I didn't think that was doable.

I'd need to make sure my camping hammock was functional enough, and decide if I want to try to stick with a vintage Sterno stove or finally get the backpacking stove I've been lusting over, and figure out my cell phone charging strategy, but other than that I could probably just mark up some maps, pack a bag, and then go.

I've wanted to do this specific trip since high school, so, why not now?

And then once I've done a 100-mile solo trip it'll be a lot easier to convince myself I can do more ambitious ones.)

(Also convince me that if I do it, I shouldn't try to do it in period-appropriate cosplay.)

1. Here is your silly-but-good improvised cocktail recipe for 2011. I am calling it a "Sonic Shark", mostly because I can:

Make a basic Sonic Screwdriver with lemon-lime soda, blue curaçao and plain vodka, without shaking or stirring. (If you want to do a non-alcoholic version, you could use the lemon-lime with blue raspberry soda and skip the vodka.)

Then add freshly-made whole pineapple juice, nice and pulpy, about as much as the curaçao and vodka combined. (The host of our NY party got a juicer for Christmas, you see. There has been much juicing in that house of late.) The pineapple pulp should nucleate the soda-pop, causing a sudden uprush of foam like a toy volcano, and it will also make the foam persistent, so that your drink keeps a head. Also the pineapple juice makes it yummy. :D

(Why yes, we have watched the DW Christmas special.)

2. Also finally went to see the latest Harry Potter movie yesterday. I was not unimpressed - I know you all have been saying it's good, and it was: it somehow managed to follow the book pretty much exactly and yet still make a good movie, which considering my mixed impressions of the book is saying something.

Mostly, though, it made me want to go on a long backpacking trip around Britain. (I was possibly the only person who read that book and said "I wish she'd gone into more detail on the camping!) :D Especially combined with the fact that I got A Walk in the Woods for Christmas and have read it already. (In which our author attempts to walk the Appalachian trail and spends a fair amount of time whining about how hiking in the US is so much harder than hiking in Europe. And he skipped my state entirely and *didn't even mention it*. BAH.)

Also, I spent most of my Christmas gift card money at Target on a 20°F 2.5 lb backpacker's mummy bag, marked down to half-price, which has only been on my wish list for years, and I have slept a night in it already, and we loves it, precious. (Now what is replacing it on my backpacking wishlist is a Kelly Kettle-type stove, but apparently Americans, being addicted as we are to fancy distilled-and-refined fuels, have no need of such things, because nobody seems to make them for us, which means my chances of finding a cheap used one are about zip, and the import ones are out of my budget >:| I have heard rumors that dirt-cheap samovars can be bought in some ethnic neighborhoods in big cities here but I bet they're all electric.)

Anyway I think my official goal for this year is to do a solo backpacking trip at least once. You know, once it is not winter any more.

Tosay was such a perfect September afternoon that I decided to walk home from the train station along the old interurban tracks. I figure I might as well do that kind of thing while I'm still young and stupid enough to enjoy it, right? And anyway, Dad's not around to do them any more.

And it was a really nice walk, too. Only when I'd got just far enough that it'd be more trouble to turn back than keep going, the tracks went behind barbed wire and No Trespassing signs, and didn't emerge again until I was practically at my front door.

Everybody sing along with me & Woody Guthrie, in celebration of the Great American Dream:

Was a high wall there that tried to stop me
A sign was painted said: Private Property,
But on the back side it didn't say nothing --
That side was made for you and me.

*sigh* And then there's Route 32, the limited-access highway, which basically cuts this part of the county in half, unless you're willnig to risk you life in a mad dash: the only ways to cross it is to go under highway overpasses that have zero sidewalks.

And it's so stupid! Because if there was actual pedestrian/bike access anywhere at all along that corridor, it would be so nice and make cars so much less necessary all around here.

Maybe I'll spend the evening e-mailing all the local candidates asking what they plan to do the get thing moving again on the WB&A Rail Trail.

Best of the pictures from the day hike on the Appalachian Trail yesterday are up here, with bonus pictures of me looking goofy and Mom and sister looking goofy in order to make up an even 24 pictures, like you used to get on an actual roll of film.

Will possibly put up pictures of the rest of the weekend, and maybe even explicatory text, later. Or not -I'm tired, and will be fairly busy unil we leave for a week's trip on Wed., after which the new semester starts already. Maybe I'll just link to sister's.

Meanwhile am reading Home in Your Pack, drooling over pictures of backpacking hammocks, and dreaming. Oh, also trying to keep my legs from falling off.

Metro subway trains wear Vorkosigan livery; Amtrak wears Imperial Service colors. I just thought you might want to know what goes through my head while sitting at train stations. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone who dresses their minions in orange and blue (MARC) or turquoise polka dots (Acela). Although if I ever have minions I'd be tempted to try that last. CSX freight trains are patchwork, of course, but the locomotives are all gold and navy (who wears gold and navy livery? I can't recall. And it's been ages and ages since I've spotted a car that still had Chessie on it, alas.)

I timed my walk from the station to the car today; it took me eight minutes to go the .45 miles to the car, which ends up about 3.5 mph, while carrying an 18lb pack. (Apparently, ten-year-old laptops are godawful heavy. Who knew? Add in the two textbooks I *usually* carry, and we're up to 25 lbs, which is already approaching the suggested backpacking weight for somebody my size.) Then I helped Mom mow the lawn, and then I grabbed my hiking stick and we took a walk down to the old WB&A bridge over Old Mill Road that got washed out by Agnes in '72. That was about 1/4 mile in 6 minutes, which is still 2.5 mph. So let's split the difference and say my average walking speed when not pushing myself is about 3 mph. Which is actually better than I thought it would be.

Which means I ought to be able to do 16.6 mi in not much more than 7 hours, barring disaster, even at my slower stop-and-smell-the-wildflowers pace. This is relevant because it's 16.6 miles to the first campsite on the C&O trail, which would be both the longest stretch and the longest day by far. (What, you thought I wouldn't keep talking about that? Hahaha. The thing is, it's so eminently *doable*, and I so want to do it, so why not? I just need three days free with clear weather, and I shall be off, I will, I will.)

( Canals and trails, trains and hikes, maps and dreams, and oh yeah, I should be doing homework. )

Anybody want to join me some weekend in bushwhacking from my house down to Academy Junction on the old WB&A right-of-way, and find what's been built of the WB&A trail? If they ever, finally, get the wheels moving on finishing that trail, before I'm too old and creaky to enjoy it, which, fingers crossed, they may actually be doing at long last, it's concievable that I could go all the way from our front yard to my sister's place without leaving designated hiker/biker trails - and while I'm dreaming, then I could concievably just *keep going*, right past Mom's hometown, until I hit the Pacific Ocean - and wouldn't *that* be cool? But baby steps, kid, baby steps.

Which is to say, it looks like I'm going to be citing both my AP American History final paper and my 3rd Grade scrapbook project in my term paper for 212 this semester. w00t.

And speaking of that (... which is to say, speaking of crawling around in the attic drooling at all of Dad's old hiking maps) -

I hereby resolve that before I graduate from college -

Which hopefully means by the end of this August -

I am going to walk to stellar_dust's apartment from DC.

The C&O canal trail runs from the middle of DC right to (and beyond) the train station where Sister's been picking me up. That route is about 35 miles from the start of the trail to White's Ferry, which I *ought* to be able to do in three days at *most*, even allowing for disasters, even as horribly out of shape as I am, and most of it is through relatively settled country, too. Then a marked bike path would supposedly take me the rest of the way into Leesburg, so I can show up on her doorstep dirty, tired, and hungry and make her feed me and show me DVDs and put me on the train back home.

Okay, so 40 miles through the suburbs is really kind of pitiful for an epic cross-country trek, but a) I get winded just running up the escalator to catch the train, b) it's uphill all the way! and c) my family would probably be freaked enough just at two days. Sister says I should go with a partner at least the first time, but walking with someone is a *very* different experience than going alone, and especially since I have no idea what my pace would be like, I don't *wanna*.

Anyway. An overnight hike has been on my list of to-do since I was about four and saw Dad's slide collection for the first time. And I'm *finally* going to cross it off this summer. I *will*.