Two Wheeling West

Who?

Hi, my name is Andrew.

Vitals:

Born on Christmas and I was a hefty baby.  I had rolls in every place a baby can have rolls; puff out your cheeks - that’s pretty much what my baby-face looked like. I had a habit of getting milk/food stuck in my chins (several), only to be found after I started to stink up the place.  Fortunately that little problem went away at some point. My favorite color is blue, I like the number 8, chocolate chip cookies, and long walks, though not necessarily on the beach.

Geek:

Web developer by day, superhero web developer by night.  It sounds strange to me that I’ve been working with this stuff for over 10 years.  Netscape 1.22 was a solid browser, 2.0 was bloated, and IE 3.0 was wild.  I remember Geocities at 2 MB per account, the first days of A List Apart, guestbooks, 14.4 modems, and Prodigy. I blogged before ‘blog’ was a word and I downloaded Quake the night it was released. I saw the sun set and rise while coding HTML tables of awful and unmaintainable complexity. Ahhh, those were the days…

Biker:

I bought a mountain bike in 2006 and promptly started breaking components and bending wheels. Doug explained that it was a good bike to play with, but it would need work if I rode it hard. Solid bike, and I’m happy with it. In 2008 a new road bike took up residence in my living room since that’s a perfectly logical place to store a bike. I wasn’t positive that I’d like being a roadie, but turns out I do. Now it’s 2009, and a 3rd bike has arrived to take me cross country: Surly Long Haul Trucker, Deore XT all the way around. This biking thing is fun, I definitely recommend it. Warning: it’s expensive.

Hiker:

After college I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. I hiked north from northern Georgia to Northern Maine, March 17 - September 20. I was not in a rush, and took plenty of time off off nursing nasty blisters down south, relaxing in Virginia, resting in New Jersey, and visiting friends in New Hampshire. The hike was absolutely amazing and I highly recommend it. Random advice: pack light then get rid of a few things, get hiking poles, down sleeping bags are fantastic, Snickers bars are a legitimate food group, stay at The Doyle, stay at White House Landing, wear a skirt, and take two pictures of people for every one of mountains.

My Dad and I at the start of the approach trail to Springer Mountain, the official start of the AT. I look pretty clean.
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Footbridge in VA somewhere
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Friar and I - I think these were "small" ice cream cones
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Mt Washington, NH - Critter, Caterpillar, Megabite
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My Dad and I at the end of the AT
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