January 1

This is actually going to be a little bit of a challenge. Journaling is one of those things that I understand the value of but have a little difficulty adhering to.  

Well this is the year that I hike the Pacific Crest Trail, We finally got a little bit of rain, The way this winter is shaping up so far we may not see any snow on the trail at all.  That would be almost disappointing. Also some more work on the web official web page was done yesterday or today. AIM is really doing a good job on that page. 

January 8

Did 18 miles yesterday. My first bit of trail magic happened. I found a walking stick, homemade lying in  the street within a block of the house.  It was homemade with a bicycle grip for a handle and a metal sleeve on the bottom.  It took six hours walking time, gives me a pace of 3 miles per hour walking which I need to pick up a little bit.   

January 11

Picked up a program called TopoUSA, What a great find.  This program will not only generate the Topographic maps that you need to do the trail but also has the trail already marked. With this program we save about 600 dollars in maps and we get to save weight since we will not be carrying full size maps. 

January 15

Did my weekly hike today, After we did a little photo shoot for the hike 2000 web page.  Jan Wilcox met us with his digital camera. We went to Cowles Mountain first, which is one of the more popular hiking sites in San Diego and there were so many people there that it looked like a line of ants going up so we went over to Mission Trails near the old dam.  then Terry and I worked on the brochure a little bit. After that I walked 12 miles over to a friends house for a dominoes game. Walked too fast and had to stop at Starbucks so I didn't arrive an hour early.

January 16

What a great day, Tom Kostura and I went up to the Laguna Mountains, mostly to check and see if it was snowing at 6000 feet. (no it wasn't). What a great day though, cold windy and the clouds were below 6000 so we were standing in the clouds, every once in awhile we could see a snowflake swirling around. The desert below us was surreal with shades of gray and brown that I had never seen out there before. The clouds and shadows sometimes made it difficult to determine what was desert and what was clouds. One of the things that I love about this section of the trail is having the desert and the mountains at the same time. Thoughts of the first time that I was ever outside my car other than to stop at a store was about five years ago when three friends and I went up to the mountains to spend a quiet night and honor each other before I left to spend a year in Virginia. We did some stargazing and allowed ourselves and saying good-bye to one part of our friendships, as the future would never be the same for the four us as a group. Anyhow, I love that section of the trail and have spent a lot of time on it. From there we went down to scissors crossing which is where Terry and I plan to spend the first Saturday night of the hike. It probably won't be much further and we will stop keeping track of what day it is. Scissors crossing 

 January 22

Jan Wilcox, Terry and I did a little hike and a photo shoot today. Not to much to say about it. Didn't like the way I looked in any of the pictures.

January 29