Interview with Fancy Man

Fancy Man (Justin) is a 45-year-old optometrist from New York City. He alternates between two months of working and two months of traveling around the world. Fancy Man was hiking with a six-person tramily. The interview was conducted at Partnership Shelter on the AT in Virginia. 

Fancy Man and his fancy collapsing trekking poles

What was your motivation for hiking the AT?

I didn't even know about thru-hiking until the middle of March. I was researching car camping because, since Covid, I've been working for two months and then traveling for two months off and on, rotating that back and forth. So, I was supposed to take a car camping trip from Florida and drive back up to New York. And somehow, on my YouTube feed, popped up thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. I didn't even know people thru-hiked, let alone that trail was right here. So, as soon as I saw that, I booked a ticket from Penn Station down to Gainesville, Georgia. And that was March 18. May 1, I was on the

trial. It's awesome. 

What would you say has been your favorite part of the trail? 

My favorite part of the trail is definitely the tramily. I got lucky and met these awesome individuals. Since day one, I met Guitar. And I'm happy that the tramily is all back together. Because if you're out here and you want to be out here solo, that's great. But if you're out here looking for some awesome people to have great fireside conversations with, we got lucky, and we got them here.

What is the story behind your trail name?

So the reason they call me Fancy Man is because AliExpress has just the best deals on everything. I ordered all my gear on AliExpress, and it takes a month to get here from China. So that was one of the reasons I started May 1. So, I did get a lot of good gear, including a fancy pillow and an air pump. I saw an Instagram ad for a little air pump, and then I ordered all these backpacker meals and Mountain House lasagnas. And just everything. So, for the first week, I really did look like a fancy man. But now I'm just eating honey buns and pretty much whatever I can add hot water to and eat out of the bag. Hiker trash, basically. So I'm not a fancy man anymore. I do like a good fly every now and again [directly prior to the interview, Fancy Man sucked a fly into his mouth and ate it].