I posted my first trail package this morning. Using the “hold for pickup” service, you can post a package to a U.S. post office which will keep it for you until you get there. In this way, you can stage boxes of consumables to be picked up during your hike. It’s a bit of a…
Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz is often misquoted as saying, “No operational plan extends with high certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy force.” In fact, it was not von Clausewitz, but rather Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke who said that, even though it’s a fair restatement of the battle philosophy of…
As I finalize the items that I’m taking, as always, I’ve packed too much. I’ll pack my gear several times before Friday and begin to cut items that would be nice to have but I really don’t need. Once on the trail, as I make that first ascent, I’ll vow to cut another group of…
As the time draws near for me to step-off, the reality of being gone for a month is beginning to sink in. Routine things like paying bills, adding chlorine to the septic tanks, bathing the dog, and checking the mail have to be addressed. Of course it helps to have a family that will take…
Fifty days from now, I will be retired and on a plane heading to Washington, DC to start a month-long trek on the Appalachian Trail. I’ve been hiking the AT for about 15 years now and covered a respectable portion of it. But I’ve never been gone for a month, and never by myself. The…
I bet that got your attention. This is the first line from a well-known story that illustrates the difference between pyramid reporting, and inverted pyramid reporting. Pyramid reporting, also known as academic style reporting, is characterized by starting with a problem statement, elaborating on the background, discussing influencing factors and finally stating the conclusions. When…
Nobody likes email retention, especially me. Believe me. No … really. Why on earth would I ask you, a productive researcher with no time for chit-chat, much less time to police your email, to spend time looking at your email, pondering it, and (hopefully) deleting a bunch of it? No sane person would do that….