[at-l] Brian Robinson in the NYT

[janl2@mindspring.com (Jan Leitschuh)]

This is the best general story I've read yet. 
Thanks for sharing it.
Jan

Bob Cummings wrote:
> 
> Here is the New York Times version of Brian's monumental walk. Thanks to Marty
> for providing an electronic version.
> 
> For a Speed-Hiker, Three Trails End in Maine and a Record
> 
> By BLAINE HARDEN>
> 
> MOUNT KATAHDIN, Me., Oct. 27 — Brian Robinson, his thick brown beard fringed
> with ice, made easy work of this forbidding mountain.
> 
> He scampered up Maine's  highest peak, climbing nearly a mile's rise in three
> hours without taking a  sip of water and barely breaking a sweat. The climb did
> not interest him. It certainly did not challenge him. The top  was all he cared
> about. For at the freezing, wind-blown summit, which is the  northern end of the
> Appalachian Trail, Mr. Robinson, 40, completed the  longest, fastest walk in
> American history: a meticulously planned 7,371-mile,  10-month hike fueled by
> 6,000 calories a day.
> 
> His finish here today made him the first person to hike in less than a year
> America's three national scenic trails, the Appalachian, Pacific Crest and
> Continental Divide Trails.
> 
> En route, he ate early, often (every two hours) and voraciously. He had whole
> chickens and entire cheesecakes for supper, periodically polished off two
> quarts of ice cream for lunch and put away 900 Snickers bars (three a day for
> 300 days). He ended his walk as he began it on the first day of this year —
> as a speed- hiking 155-pound beanpole whose trail name is Flyin' Brian. Among
> the gustatory insights Mr. Robinson acquired while eating wolfishly in 22
> states was that "salad is a waste of time."
> 
> Mr. Robinson, a computer engineer who worked at Compaq in Silicon Valley
> until he quit last December, "is a very disciplined person who always pushes
> everything to the theoretical limit," said his brother, Gregory, who flew up
> from Virginia to be with his brother for the last five miles of his journey.
> 
> But at the top of Mount Katahdin, having planned, provisioned and trained for
> two years before making his single-year attempt at the Triple Crown of
> hiking, Mr. Robinson allowed himself an out-of-control moment of triumph. "I
> did the impossible," he shouted, his arms thrown into the snow-speckled sky
> and tears welling in his eyes.
> 
> He had not shed a tear since February, he said later, not from emotion but
> from a midtrail case of Bell's palsy, a sudden and usually temporary
> paralysis of the facial nerves. For a couple of weeks, it upset the
> involuntary blinking response and tricked him into biting the inside of his
> mouth while eating. He walked it off, willing himself to blink and chewing
> carefully.
> 
> Since Jan. 1, Mr. Robinson, who is single and has no children, has been alone
> most of the time, primarily because no one can keep up with him. He set speed
> records on the Pacific Coast and Continental Divide trails, averaging 30
> miles day.
> 
> Along the way, he said, he met a number of attractive and seemingly available
> women who knew all about him. (Thanks to his father, Roy, they had been
> reading his trail journal at www.royrobinson.homestead.com and his journey
> has been widely covered in the hiking press.) But romance required something
> he did not have: time.
> 
> "Hiking is a very social experience," Mr. Robinson said on Friday. "This time
> around I am missing it. I'm moving too fast."
> 
> Although he came off the trail to pick up supplies, bathe and binge eat, Mr.
> Robinson became something of a peripatetic Rip Van Winkle in the last 10
> months. As of this weekend, he did not know who was in the World Series or
> that Rush Limbaugh was going deaf.
> 
> He found out about the attacks on New York and Washington a day late after
> walking into a Wendy's in Silverthorn, Colo., and glimpsing a front-page
> article. For the next two days, he said, he walked and thought about nothing
> except an American war against men who hide in mountains.
> 
> "As a hiker, I know that if people are willing to be completely rural, to
> live under trees and hide in caves, they are impervious to the kind of wars
> we fight," he said. "I think the war against Osama bin Laden is hopeless, but
> I also think we have no choice but to fight it."
> 
> The war obsession ended, Mr. Robinson said, when he realized that he could
> not do anything about it and "moved on."
> 
> Moving on is what he has done more relentlessly than any previous hiker.
> 
> Fewer than two dozen people have completed hiking's Triple Crown. No hiker
> had previously walked even two of the big three trails in one year.
> 
> Before Mr. Robinson, many hikers talked about trying to complete all three
> trails in a calendar year, but it is not known if anyone actually tried it.
> Rational contemplation of such a walk is clouded by the facts — too many
> miles, too many mountains, too little summer.
> 
> Mr. Robinson succeeded, he said, because he had good weather. He walked
> briskly through near-record low snowfalls in the high mountains of the
> Pacific Crest and Continental Divide trails. Good fortune continued here this
> weekend. By late October, Mount Katahdin is normally slathered in ice and
> closed to climbers, as it had been the day before Mr. Robinson walked to the
> base of the mountain.
> 
> Mr. Robinson willed himself into a position to take advantage of good luck. A
> former Eagle Scout, he has always been obsessive about solving problems, his
> family said. He won a contest in Northern California in 1983 for solving a
> Rubik's Cube in 27 seconds.
> 
> In the two years before his big hike, he ran 50 miles a week, raising that to
> 90 miles a week in the final three months. During that time he gave each of
> the three brands of mountain shoes he would be using a 25-mile trial run. (He
> wore out seven pairs of shoes this year.) He also field-tested his ultralight
> hiking equipment, cutting the weight of his backpack to 19 pounds in winter
> and 13 pounds in summer.
> 
> When not running, he organized, using a computer spreadsheet to calculate
> when and where to mail 95 bundles of provisions to be picked up near the
> trail. He figured out his 6,000-calorie diet — roughly three times what a
> normal person should eat — while hiking in 1997. His cuisine was chosen
> solely for efficiency. "I eat food," he said. "I don't taste it." He could
> afford a year off from work because he sold all his high- tech stocks in
> January 2000, about four months before the Nasdaq crash. "I saw it coming,"
> he said. "That is why I am here. I have enough money to live with a backpack
> for the rest of my life."
> 
> Mr. Robinson said that he spent less than $10,000 on his hike this year.
> Besides being organized, he is thrifty. He took the bus between trails and
> hitched rides with relatives and friends.
> 
> Finally, Mr. Robinson owes his success to the fact that his body did not
> collapse. He had no severe or chronic injuries that kept him from walking.
> But near Lake Tahoe this summer, there was a day when he could not eat and
> found it impossible to walk.
> 
> "I thought my body was having a bad systemic reaction to this lifestyle I
> have chosen," he said.
> 
> It turned out that the peanuts in his trail mix had gone fungal. He threw
> them out, slept for a few hours and walked on.
> 
> Tonight, after bagging the Triple Crown, Mr. Robinson celebrated with
> Champagne and an entire extra- large pizza. He plans to write a book. He may
> go back to the computer business. Yet, as he inhaled pizza, he said he
> already missed the hiking life and was feeling a bit blue.
> 
> Making things worse, he had had two showers in two nights. He said his body
> was asking him why.
> 
> Weary
> 
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