We’ve now filled 23 resupply boxes with stuff for the trail.\u00a0 It’s been interesting to watch the “cycle” through our house.\u00a0 First came the lists (that was me), then the shopping (me) and ordering stuff online (me and also Fixit).<\/p>\n
Once the stuff started arriving, our living room became the receiving dock.\u00a0 Soon there were\u00a0bags and boxes of trail stuff, roughly categorized into things like “freezedried dinners”,\u00a0 “dried veges”, “granola”, “nuts”, etc.\u00a0 Our living room is small, so it got to the point where we could hardly walk around.<\/p>\n
Once we had everything, came step 2:\u00a0 Measure and count.\u00a0 (That was my job).\u00a0 I spent countless hours measuring and counting so that our supplies ended up as individual daily “baggies” of everything.\u00a0 When we first started backpacking, I didn’t bother with this step–just threw all the granola into one bag, all the dried veges into another, all the powdered milk into another, etc.\u00a0\u00a0 Problem:\u00a0 out on the trail, I never could get it right and at the end of the trip we either had stuff left over or were running on short rations.\u00a0 So when we did the PCT in 2005, I bit the bullet and disciplined myself to measure and count everything for each separate day.\u00a0 Wow, on the trail it was great!\u00a0 No measuring, no counting, no worries.<\/p>\n
Once all was measured and counted, came step 3:\u00a0 collate.\u00a0\u00a0 This was also my job.\u00a0 I assembled a “dinner bag” for each day, containing a freezedried meal (I repackage so it’s lighter and less bulky), extra carbs (rice\/noodles\/potato), dried veges, and some cookies.\u00a0 “Breakfast bags” contain vacuum-sealed granola (Fixit did the sealing), freeze dried fruit, nuts and powdered milk.\u00a0 “Lunch bags” have crackers, peanut butter or\u00a0freeze-dried refried beans & cheese, and dried fruit.\u00a0\u00a0 Then because we are old, there were the “vitamin bags” with our daily vitamin rations.\u00a0 And the “drink bags” with Emergen-C, Crystallite, and electrolytes.\u00a0 Oh, and every one of those bags was labeled as to which resupply box it belonged in.\u00a0 And there were various other small things, too.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, out in our garage, Fixit was laying out boxes, making his best guess as to which size for which destination.\u00a0 We use ordinary brown cardboard boxes, and scrounge them from all over the place, including out in back of a nearby large office building.\u00a0 Once I was done collating, he and I started making lots of trips out to the garage and dropping things into their destination boxes.\u00a0\u00a0 Finally our living room was cleared out!\u00a0\u00a0 We could walk through it without feeling like it was an agility obstacle course!<\/p>\n
At that point, Fixit took over.\u00a0 He likes the challenge of seeing how small of a box he can make stuff fit into, and he is really good at it.\u00a0 Once all the supplies are into a box, on the top he lays the maps, town guides and\u00a0journal pages.\u00a0 Then with the prayer,\u00a0“Oh Lord, hope we have everything here!”\u00a0 he seals the box and tapes on labels (address, “CDT Hiker, ETA______”) and\u00a0 “ORM-d” because there are Esbits inside and another\u00a0note on some of the boxes that says “Liquid not over 4 oz, double sealed” (those boxes have tiny bottles of Purell or shampoo in them).\u00a0 Last of all, every side of the box gets a green stripe that says “CHIPMAN” (our last name).<\/p>\n
Once a box is sealed up and finished, it goes back to our living room, stacked in towers based on what mailing date the box should go out.\u00a0\u00a0 We mail everything USPS ground, except for 3 boxes that HAVE to go UPS.<\/p>\n
The one box we have not sealed up yet is the one for Chama–we are still hesitating about whether to send snowshoes.\u00a0 We go snow backpacking every year and know how awesome snowshoes are, but they are heavy and they are a hassle to mail.\u00a0 Reports of this new storm in Colorado have us a bit concerned.\u00a0Will there be piles of snow, or will it be pretty much melting down by the time we get there? \u00a0We are going to wait till the last minute to decide, and are watching reports on Colorado snow in the meantime.<\/p>\n
Yesterday we enjoyed looking at pics of the\u00a0 “CDTKO” in Silver City.\u00a0 Looked chilly.\u00a0 Looked like awesome fun!\u00a0 Both times we did the PCT, we went to the PCTADZKO and it was a blast.\u00a0 We were sorry to miss Silver City, but there is no way for us to leave till after April 27, when our Awana Club kids all get their final awards and the big Awards party!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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We’ve now filled 23 resupply boxes with stuff for the trail.\u00a0 It’s been interesting to watch the “cycle” through our house.\u00a0 First came the lists (that was me), then the shopping (me) and ordering stuff online (me and also Fixit). Once the stuff started arriving, our living room became the receiving dock.\u00a0 Soon there were\u00a0bags […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-preparation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/42"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}