I agree which was why I brought it up.
He refused a lot of help but apparently accepted others. I'll post more about this when I unpack it a bit more.
Identified! FL - Big Cypress Natl Preserve, Male Hiker, Denim & “Mostly Harmless” July 2018 - Vance Rodriguez#4
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Fantastic review, I enjoyed reading. I largely agree with your synopsis and frustrations. I've snipped to shorten but I have a couple points I want to make on your thoughts:
1. Linux and Java are both huge, probably millions of people are advanced programmers today. You know what else? A lot of them are freelancers. I can go on Fiverr or Upwork or a number of other freelance sites and get a Linux or Java developer build something for me. Point is, these people are remote and not have a lot of interaction with others.
2. The sister could have been visiting Sarasota, its a big vacation town.
3. If you don't have a CC you need a lot of cash to hike the miles he did. I've seen speculation that he "worked along the trail" to earn cash but here in FL trail maintenance is voluntary and unpaid. Not sure about the other trails but I don't think he earned money while hiking. So I agree he started out with a lot more cash than he began with. And yes, it is common for thru hikers to have a lot of cash.
4. About how he began, he told others he started hiking because he did not want to get in trouble for camping in a public park. You can camp while hiking so that seems logical.
Again great synopsis.
I'm not saying he didn't have mental health issues but I doubt it. He ran into, hung around with and hiked for days with many people. None have said they saw any indication of it. Not one person who was around him has said he got a bit strange at any point. As far as hygiene, everybody seems to have liked the guy and enjoyed being around him. Nobody has indicated he had that problem. Maybe he had a shower 5 hours before declining the shower offer. Maybe he knew he would be at a place that had a shower soon enough or maybe he preferred to sponge bath instead of using someone else's shower. Possibly he was uncomfortable using other people's showers, especially when very dirty.
In that log and some other places, it says he was an experienced hiker. We know he wasn't an experienced hiker. Also, that he's in the FT class of 2018. He is not in that. It's for people who finished the FT and he never finished it. His Demin, Mostly Harmless and Ben Bilemy names are not listed and the only person who looks sort of like him has darker hair and is much too tall. He's not in the class of 2017 either.
I don't expect to be perfect btw, just contributing what I can and hoping it can somehow help others figure out more.
1) Yes and I built a software business from home but I could have been anywhere with internet that was doing alright without meeting a single one of my clients. Now, there weren't lots of clients because each one paid quite a bit so, say 30-50 over the few years. They were all long distance from all over including Russia, Africa, Thailand, Cali, Georgia, Quebec, etc. and came through an open source project I managed.
2) Sure, possibly even the sister has a vacation place down there or time share and goes there often. Staying with his sister in Florida doesn't necessarily mean she lived there, good point that I hadn't thought of!!
3) K, so it wasn't odd to be carrying significant cash but it probably doesn't negate some of my other thoughts about that and him, the contained anonymous journey and thought of getting robbed or protecting more wealth at home.
4) I haven't seen about him hiking to avoid trouble when camping so I'll have to look more into that. If you have any handy references, appreciated, thanks
Lots of people with mental health issues interact with people daily. Princess Diana was an admitted bulimic.
IMO he had some mental health issues and specifically an ED. He may have been OCD as well.
If you go on Facebook you can find the comments from the other hikers who met him. One of those hikers talked about his hygiene, which was apparently pretty poor, even compared to other hikers. So I have to disagree with your statement that nobody commented on his hygiene because they did.
We also know he was extremely dirty when he was found. The ME commented on that.
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I'd argue that we know he was an inexperienced hiker at the beginning, implying he had never hiked long distance before and perhaps his trip was unplanned and/or poorly researched. By the time he got to Florida he was unavoidably experienced. Unconventional, sure, but he had many many miles under his belt. Just my thoughts.
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He was listed in the FT class of 2018 but he was not included in the photo. His name was removed at some point, but it was there at one time.
This is really, really great!
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How would have gotten out of the tent? He wouldn't have been able to crawl let alone walk?
Agreed. Nobody gets through the whole AT, Benton McKaye, Pinhoti and FT and is unexperienced. He had more hiking experience than 95% of all hikers by the time he died.
That is one of the mysteries of his passing. He made it so far and apparently camped out for 3 months and died.
OK, sure, by the time he got to Florida, he knew way more. I'm still not sure he's that experienced though, having only hiked a year or so really. He was experienced in what he knew but I bet there were giant gaps he did not know and I wonder if some of that got him into his final troubles.
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That's fair. It only takes lack of knowledge about one important thing, or a simple mistake, to create a huge problem when hiking alone. Could happen to anyone. There are hikers who get lost on trails they've hiked 100 times because they get turned around in fog or something.
(Not implying MH was lost, just illustrating the concept.)
What is ED? I feel like I'm missing a legend somewhere that explains all the acronyms you guys use!
@GatorFL I really appreciate your thoughts and comments throughout. Great detail and fully logical (I posted my agreement and reasoning for a possible eating disorder a few weeks ago).
I still believe that an eating disorder/psychological disorder is the most logical conclusion based on the information we have at this time. Of course, there's quite a bit we don't know, so it may be incorrect.
Two things came up. There was a recent post on the Facebook group (post now deleted, perhaps because it included real names) that seemed to prove anecdotally that two sets of hikers came upon Nobles campsite in early June 2018, saw his tent during the daytime, called out or at least tried to make content, and received nothing in return. This has led to reasonable speculation that, if those accounts are true, he was already seriously incapacitated by that time. Many are throwing out suggestions of poisoning by water supply, or an attack of rheumatoid arthritis, or something that would have immobilized him and thus caused him to starve.
However, my immediate reaction to that was: he was eating according to the autopsy. If he was eating and drinking, he should have been mobile to some degree. Secondly, if on the off chance he was gravely disabled, and immobile AND eating (because we know he was eating), his clothes and his tent would be..."soiled" would be a polite way of putting it, and there was no evidence to that. Thirdly, if he was suddenly rendered immobile, that makes the disappearance of his wallet, ID, and his credit card/gift-card (which we know he had from the hiking store), all the more strange. It does not seem logical that he, after safely hiking with wallet, presumed ID, cash, and card, for hundreds of miles and many months, that it goes lost when he was considerably more experienced as a hiker.
All true, of course, that none of that brings us closer to his identity. That said, @NickandNora4ever's mention of the recent Screeps post was very interesting. That Screeps player, after analyzing the notebooks, immediately began asking if MH was homeless or in dire financial straits. Because, to him, his notebooks suggested a backdoor application that used cryptocurrency on the Screeps servers (if I read that right). If more Screeps players corroborated that presumption, that might be something to look into. Maybe that $3,600 was all he had, and indeed, he was calculating calories and counting cash, as well. But, again, maybe not - I seem to remember a famous Sherlock Holmes quote about truth, "however improbable."
I still believe that an eating disorder/psychological disorder is the most logical conclusion based on the information we have at this time. Of course, there's quite a bit we don't know, so it may be incorrect.
Two things came up. There was a recent post on the Facebook group (post now deleted, perhaps because it included real names) that seemed to prove anecdotally that two sets of hikers came upon Nobles campsite in early June 2018, saw his tent during the daytime, called out or at least tried to make content, and received nothing in return. This has led to reasonable speculation that, if those accounts are true, he was already seriously incapacitated by that time. Many are throwing out suggestions of poisoning by water supply, or an attack of rheumatoid arthritis, or something that would have immobilized him and thus caused him to starve.
However, my immediate reaction to that was: he was eating according to the autopsy. If he was eating and drinking, he should have been mobile to some degree. Secondly, if on the off chance he was gravely disabled, and immobile AND eating (because we know he was eating), his clothes and his tent would be..."soiled" would be a polite way of putting it, and there was no evidence to that. Thirdly, if he was suddenly rendered immobile, that makes the disappearance of his wallet, ID, and his credit card/gift-card (which we know he had from the hiking store), all the more strange. It does not seem logical that he, after safely hiking with wallet, presumed ID, cash, and card, for hundreds of miles and many months, that it goes lost when he was considerably more experienced as a hiker.
All true, of course, that none of that brings us closer to his identity. That said, @NickandNora4ever's mention of the recent Screeps post was very interesting. That Screeps player, after analyzing the notebooks, immediately began asking if MH was homeless or in dire financial straits. Because, to him, his notebooks suggested a backdoor application that used cryptocurrency on the Screeps servers (if I read that right). If more Screeps players corroborated that presumption, that might be something to look into. Maybe that $3,600 was all he had, and indeed, he was calculating calories and counting cash, as well. But, again, maybe not - I seem to remember a famous Sherlock Holmes quote about truth, "however improbable."
I'm hoping they use ED for Eating Disorder. I'm used to ED meaning something else when used to mention a male person's condition.
This annotated map/timeline appears simple at first glance but actually contains lots of good information and in a great way but looks simple because it's done well
It reminds me of how obvious it is we don't have any accounts or pics of him in the first few months, from Apr to July 2017. I feel this is a high potential area to find him.How a
Are you sure he was building an app for calories while hiking? I saw that he had a bunch about protein and calories in a short chuck in the middle of his Screeps specs is all. It did not imply the making of a calorie hiking app to me.
But we know he didn't snack much because he lost tons of weight and was at only 83 lbs. I think he knew he had to ration his food for some reason, maybe because he was too sick to continue or get to a rest stop and was hoping to recover enough.
Eating Disorder.
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