ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, July 6, 1996 TAG: 9607080059
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: DALEVILLE
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above
``I sign my name `Waldo L. Jaquith' and my intentions `GA->ME'. As I do this, three more hikers approach. They, too, will be joining us in our trip scoop up a handful of rocks. Bits of Springer [Mountain]. They will join me in my trip to [Mount] Katahdin, witness to my journey ... Turning on heel, I take my first step towards Maine. It is surprisingly easy.''
So ends the first dispatch Waldo Jaquith filed from Georgia on his "Waldo Takes a Walk" World Wide Web page.
The 17-year-old Charlottesville resident set out April 15 with a laptop computer, a cellular phone and a camera to document on the Internet each day of his six-month journey along the 2,159.1 miles of the Appalachian Trail. His mission: To show the world the Appalachian Trail in the hopes that a few people might see the value of preserving at least a little bit of nature.
The dispatches - a blend of meditation, off-beat humor and blow-by-blow documentation - were filed regularly on Jaquith's web page until May 6.
On May 7, he left a note saying his computer had broken, but another one was on the way, so his journal would continue then. After that, Jaquith disappeared from the Internet.
His lengthy absence from cyberspace - going on two months now - coupled with his name, beg an obvious question.
Where's Waldo?
Thursday night, the lanky, fresh-faced Jaquith and two friends he'd met along the trail stepped out of the woods onto U.S. 220 in Botetourt County.
Eighty days, two computers, and a pair and a half of boots after he left Springer Mountain, Jaquith checked into the trail-side Best Western, safe, sound and hungry.
"I went to the Burger King and had five cheeseburgers, three orange juices and a large chocolate shake," he said. "Then I went to Pizza Hut and had a pizza."
Jaquith's family and friends knew he was fine all along, but the 12,000 or so web-surfers who have kept tabs on his journey have not been so well-informed. At last check, he had 800 e-mail messages. He says he intends to respond to every one personally.
"I feel awful, not updating my web page as often as I'd like," he said, "but I can't help it."
The technology he depended on, he says, "is nowhere near where it's touted as being."
The IBM Thinkpad computer he started out using quickly molded to the shape of his back from being crammed so tightly into his backpack. In Erwin, Tenn., it finally shattered. IBM refused to replace it.
"Apparently carrying it 400 miles through the woods violates their `reasonable use' policy," he said.
After that he tried a Toshiba computer, but that broke, too. When he gets to Charlottesville, friends at the Comet.Net Internet service company where he works will hand him an Apple Newton computer. He plans to update his web page while he's home.
He'll also visit with his family: his parents, a twin brother and a 13-year-old sister who "likes me now that I only come around every two months."
If Jaquith's author mother and insurance underwriter/playwright father set out to raise a free-thinking son, they may have overdone it.
Witness:
* Waldo was named David until he was 14 or so and decided "Waldo" was "just has been less than cooperative about his name change.
* The administration of West Albermarle High School suggested Waldo and his brother find another school to attend after the two started up a subversive newsletter that questioned why students were suspended and mocked certain items in the school budget. He finished high school at the Living Education Center for Ecology and the Arts, a private school he paid for with money he earned designing a web page for the Dave Matthews Band.
* On "Nude Hiking Day" on the trail, Jaquith hiked all day in nothing but a backpack, boots and a hat.
At the outset, Jaquith says, his parents were guardedly supportive of his plan to hike the trail - but he had told them it would take only two months.
"Sometimes parents don't know what's best for kids," he said. Now his mother has a care package waiting for him at every town.
Besides his environmental mission, Jaquith wants to prove to himself that he can hike the trail, and show others they can do it, too.
"The hard part is the mental stuff - being away from your friends and family, getting six months off work," he said. The rest is easy. "It's just walking. Left foot, right foot, repeat as necessary."
He lined up sponsors for his hike, garnering six months of free cellular phone service and $700 worth of hiking gear, among other things, in exchange for some advertising space on his web page.
He's six pounds lighter and a few weeks behind most other "thru-hikers" - those hiking the entire Appalachian Trail - but determined to finish. He figures he'll hit Maine in early October - he hopes before the snow starts.
His father picked up his pack Friday afternoon and carried it ahead on the trail a few miles so Jaquith could "slack-pack" or "bare-back" for a day.
"Some people call that cheating," Jaquith said. "But I said I was going to walk to Maine, not carry 60 pounds there."
Waldo's Internet address is http://www.comet.net/apptrail/
LENGTH: Long : 103 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN Staff. Waldo Jaquith, 17, has run throughby CNBtwo computers and 1 1/2 pairs of boots during his first couple of
months hiking the Appalachian Trail, which is 2,159.1 miles long.
color.