Hey all, thanks once again for reading my journal! There’s a couple items I wanted to talk about so here you go:

First, as you may have known already, my friend Owl is hiking for the “Hike for Mental Health” charity this year. It’s a really good cause and he came up with an inventive fundraiser for it. For every dollar donated to it, he’ll wear a kilt for one hour on the trail. Personally I think he should come up with stretch goals such as if he breaks 5k he has to carry a battle axe too, but it’s a start :p If you want to help fund innovative research that’ll make the world a better place while at the same time making the AT more colorful please check out how to donate at Brian Hikes Home

Second, as you may have picked up from the few journal entries I have posted lately, I’ve come down with a hard case of the Virginia Blues. It really crystallized this week though. I’ve been missing home as last weekend was the qualification round for the Defcon Capture the Flag competition. It’s basically like the World Cup for hacking. I of course was unable to help out and my team did not advance into the finals. I’m not saying that I would have been able to change that but still I really would have liked to share in that defeat vs wondering. Plus those things are tons of fun. Then while out in the woods I came down with Norovirus which is a really bad stomach bug. That was not a pleasant experience. To top things off, after I was over that yesterday I broke out in rashes all over my legs. So my body really isn’t cooperating with getting me out of Virginia. Finally I had been planning on Aqua blazing with a bunch of friends which would have involved canoeing down the Shenandoah river but since I’ve been sick and don’t want to skip any sections of the AT I had to pass on that opportunity. I’m not saying this just to complain, but to put in perspective how much I appreciated Sunshine, (one of the many friends I’ve made on the trail), sharing her experiences with the Virginia Blues as well. I recommend you checking it out over at her and YoungBeard’s blog Life is Short Do Epic Sh**

Third, as several people have commented, I’ve been slacking on my updates. I still haven’t figured out how or even if I’ll get caught up but expect a lot of “stub” entries for a while. I’ll probably also be writing entries out of order as I might just hit a few of the high, (or low), points of the last two weeks. I realize that makes following this journal harder but I have to spend some time on the trail vs pecking on my phone ;p

Thank you all once again for your support and well wishes. I’m going to finish this trail! This journal on the other hand, eh it’s a work in progress 🙂