Maybe later...

I tend to be fairly obsessive about carrying my plans to fruition. I am open to flexibility, but when I have set my mind of something, usually it happens. It's not necessarily a good characteristic, to be so stubbornly directed in life, but it has allowed me to experience and accomplish quite a lot.

That said, my plan to raft the Neuse River is on hold. For a while. It was a good and exciting idea, due in part to its appeal as a bold and semi-disgusting proposition (being somewhat the Love Canal of North Carolina, full of leached pig-farm shit and industrial and agricultural refuse from upstream). But it was a bad idea, because for now, I am happy spending time with other people and in asphalt/concrete settings: wide frames around the copious parks and lakes of Minneapolis, Minnesota. I am working part-time and saving money to travel around Southeast Asia for a couple of months, beginning in January.

I am still more than willing to share my experiences on the MST with anyone who is interested in my trips, or in hiking it themselves. I added a bunch of daily entries, which are labeled by the date when they were handwritten in my journal, in addition to the summary blog entries I left while I was hiking. Feel free to e-mail me with any questions (my email address is on my profile page).