About to Start

I am packed and ready to go. For those of you who don't know I am about to start hiking the Appalachian Trail. It spans 2174 miles from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mt. Kahtadin in Maine. I am planning on taking just about 5 months for the whole thing. Tomorrow I fly down to Atlanta, buy some more food and then on Sunday I start hiking. My pack currently weights about 36 pounds without water and only some food. I am wondering how much of what I have I will decide that I do not really need. At this point it all seems fairly essential, but priorities can change when I have to carry everything up and down and up and down.
I think I am fairly ready as well. I have been running since I got back into the country and for a while I was swimming as well. So I am in decent shape. I spent last week in Portland visiting my brother and trying out all of my gear and doing some practice hikes. But I never had my pack completely full and I aways came back to my brother's house at night.
I will be hiking alone for the most part. A couple of people have talked about meeting me for a section, and a couple of people who live close to the trail have offered a place to stay or to meet me for lunch. I am not worried about hiking alone. That means I get to go my own place. I also get the impression that there will be other people on the trail, so I should not have to spend too many nights alone, but I will have a much better feel for that after I have been hiking for a while.
I am a little nervous, but the normal nervous when I am about to start something new. But I am also ready to start hiking. I have been living at home with my parents for the last three months and I I ready to be back out on my own. This is something I have been thinking about for a while, and realistically thinking about since I was in grad school in Tennessee. If I don't go out and at least try it now, then I don't know when I will.
When I finish the plan is to move out to Portland and become a high school math teacher. I have applied to two MAT programs starting in the fall. One starts Aug 25, so I am planning to finish Aug 10. If I decide on the other program then I get an extra two or three weeks to finish the hike. Of course it is going to be fun coordinating receiving the paperwork for the programs and sending it on.
So I am currently at 0 Miles Hiked (MH) and 2174 Miles To Go (MTG). I do not know how often I will be able to update, but I am hoping for about once or twice a month. Whenever I update I will be checking email as well so feel free to write back to me, and I will have my cellphone with me, but i will only be turning it on when I am going through towns.