Kenny’s Sexy Orange Shirt | Adirondacks | June 2003

Shocked. That’s what I felt today. Truly shocked…

You see, many years ago (5, to be exact), I created a website called The Eicher Trail. This website was mostly a place for me to share my own stories and photos from various backpacking and canoe trips all throughout the northeastern United States. The site was good. Darn good. And as it got gooder, more people started showing up. They started sending me e-mails asking about what kind of gear I use. Asking what kind of gear I recommend they use (as if I had a clue?). I quickly started posting articles and reviews of my own gear on the website, accompanied of course by spectacular photos. “My people,” as I enjoyed calling them, seemed to like this. So it was suggested to me that I contact some outdoor gear manufactures and see if they wanted me to review their latest stuff on my website. To my utter amazement, some of the hottest tents, internal-frame backpacks and camp stoves started showing up on my doorstep in Queens, NYC. Stuff that I would never be able to afford. So, I kept my end of the bargain and took the stuff out for a spin on some short trips. Took some photos – some right in my backyard – and typed some articles. It worked! Not only was I having fun… not only was I providing intelligent, witty and useful information for my readers… but I was getting all this cool stuff – FOR FREE – TO KEEP. The Peak-1 Cobra tent pictured above is one of the tents I was sent.

Back to the being shocked part. The domain I had for this website was eichertrail.com and after my two-year run or so, I closed it’s cyber-doors down and let the registration of the domain name expire. There aren’t too many Eichers in this world and I doubted anyone would want eichertrail.com.

I was so wrong.

I don’t know why I decided to type those 11 letters into my browser this afternoon, but I did and LO AND BEHOLD: eichertrail.com LIVES! My research shows that it was bought by a company out in Oregon which specializes in both land and seacoast guided tours. Sure, their site isn’t as sexy as mine was, nor does it look at all professional, and yeah, their logo is kinda silly, but it just gives me such joy to see a domain name that I… dare I say… INVENTED come back to life as a new creation. These guys claim to have been around since 1994. Not sure what they were doing for a website all that time. I had the domain from 1999-2001. All that time, they could have come to me with an offer of $50,000 for the domain name. I guess I just should have known what a brilliant name Eicher Trail was at the time. Makes me think twice about ever giving up EicherDesign.com…