The last days at home
I’ve had a lot to do since I returned from Portugal a week ago. Wash the laundry, improve the equipment, cut videos – all the things I had to do a little faster than I would like. Because in addition to these routine tasks, I also had to make the final preparations for my next major hike. I had to look for accommodation in San Diego, print my permits, book a mobile phone tariff for the USA, …
While other hikers are preparing for the greatest hike of their lives for months, start packing weeks beforehand and optimizing their equipment again and again, things were a bit more spontaneous and hectic for me.
By the time I finished the videos about Portugal and washed my clothes, it was already Thursday. Since I wanted to go back to Frankfurt on Sunday evening, I still had almost 3 days to book accommodation in San Diego, looking for a mobile phone tariff for the USA, cleaning my SD cards, cleaning my apartment and preparing, meeting people and Saying goodbye, planning the first days on the trail, reordering equipment, packing my backpack for a 5-month hike, …
The last few days have been at home accordingly. At least I knew roughly what was supposed to be in my backpack, because I can already estimate something I need and don’t. Nevertheless, it was a strange feeling to pack my backpack in about 2 hours and hope that I hadn’t forgotten anything.
A few things have flown out again this time and overall I now have a base weight of almost 8.3 kg. 8.6kg was displayed on the scales, but there were already sunscreen, toothpaste, etc. in the backpack.
So I reduced the weight of my backpack again, which sometimes also means a loss of comfort. This time I’m completely refraining from trousers. Instead, I have light rain pants with me, which I can also use as a tornado. Since my rain pants ordered had delays in delivery and will therefore only arrive at my place when I was already in the USA, I spontaneously had to scrounge my mum’s rain pants. At least this one fits me quite well and so my equipment is pretty much the way I wanted it.
With water and food, I should not often exceed a total weight in my backpack of around 15kg. I already had this weight on my back on other tours and got along well with it. All in all, I think that I should be able to handle about 30km a day with this equipment, which made me optimistic that I was also the longest and perhaps most demanding hike of mypreviouscould grab life.
Here we go – Sunday 04/21/2024
Today it’s finally time again. While the many tasks of the last few days didn’t really make me look forward to it, that should change today.
In the morning I got up early to make the final preparations. The remaining groceries were eaten, the kitchen was cleaned and the fridge was switched off. One last time the washer and dryer were operated and the bed made.
Around 3 p.m. I made a final tour of the apartment to see that I had done everything. Then I took my backpack and drove with my sister to our parents. There was coffee and cake again before my parents took me to the main train station in Karlsruhe.
From there we soon took the train via Mannheim to Frankfurt. At the latest when I was alone on the train and just looked out the window, the stress of the last few days was replaced by the anticipation of the upcoming journey. The longer I sat on the train, the more aware that I was finally starting.
Arriving in the hostel in Frankfurt, I was really in traveling fever again and while I was writing these lines in the hotel/hostel’s lobby, the joy and excitement that I usually have at the beginning of such a trip arose. I wondered what will happen in the next few months and what beautiful moments I can experience again.
Tomorrow we will continue by plane from Frankfurt via San Francisco to San Diego. There I would first like to visit the city for a few days and then on to Scout and Frodo, an elderly couple from San Diego who record hikers from all over the world every year, and then spend the last hours before the actual start of my hike and maybe the first people Meetings who, like me, want to set off on April 27th for one of the greatest hikes of their lives.
I hope to get a blog post about the first few days in the USA. On the trail, it’s possible that I don’t get new messages that regularly, because I’m sure I won’t always have a network on the go. But of course I still try to keep you up to date about my adventures as often as possible 😉.
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