A Call To All...

For those of you who know me, it's fairly obvious that music plays a large part in my life. Hiking the trail hasn't removed me completely from music, though, as I did think to bring a couple of minidiscs and a small am/fm radio. However, many of the few albums I was able to carry along grew stale from lack of variety, and the endless stream of Nashville 'country', religious chat, and right-wing talking heads on the radio kinda had me down (to be fair, WETS is an awesome station when it comes in, I suggest you all check out 'Roots and Branches' on the online stream. VA's public radio is ok, too, but jumps around the dial a lot as it's broadcast on like 20 frequencies, and the music... well, not that good. The standard public radio classical or jazz mainly... but i digress, a lot.)

So, a solution was needed. And here it is found:

Basically, it's an iPod Shuffle, except it has a microSD slot to add more space and an FM tuner to get radio built in. Here's where you come in, my loyal readership...

Imagine you're on a desert island. A desert island made of mountains. Where you have to walk a lot, all the time. Up and down hills. Sometimes quickly. Now think to yourself... if I had only 1GB of space, one solitary Gigabyte, what would I like to listen to for eternity (or 4 months)? Would it be a batch of favourite albums? A special 'i sure have a long way to walk every day' mix? Ace of Base's 'The Sign' on repeat?

Whatever that special list of stuff would be, I want you to

• put it in mp3 format
  (don't worry too much about quality - lower=smaller=more songs, but I can't use AAC's, so if they're apple files you'll need to convert)
• burn it to a CD
  (or if you're feeling particularly generous or happen to have a spare microSD card lying around, directly on the card)
• and send it to me at the following address:

M (use my whole, real name)
c/o General Delivery
Waynesboro, VA 22980
Hold for AT Thru-Hiker
ETA 5/14/2007

Send a letter or something, too, and let me know who you are and why you chose what you did. or don't. I'll be grateful for some new tunes...

Also, if you're super-fast you can try to reach us in Daleville, VA 24083, ETA 5/5/07. If you're too late, just leave a comment or send an email and we'll let you know where we're gonna be. Many thanks in advance!