It's probably worth taking a moment to explain the rather obscure origin of the name this blog bears.
When I was an undergrad, I spent a season on the sailing team, mostly as a 'crew' (the jib-handler) in a two-person sloop called a 420. One of the duties of the crew is to hike out -- that is, to lean as far out over the windward gunwale so that your weight counterbalances the force of the wind on the sail and keeps the boat from tipping too much.
I sometimes sailed with my team captain, a gregarious guy named Chris. One day, while sailing together, we got slammed by a sudden puff of wind and the boat listed precariously. I jumped up on the gunwale and starting hiking out, and Chris, worried that we were going to capsize in spite of my efforts, yelled, "Hike harder!" When he realized that he'd unintentionally punned on my surname, he started using the pun regularly. And so, in Rudyard Kipling fashion, I acquired the nickname "Hike."
Giving me a hard time
Incidentally, people still pun on my name. Most recently, I took a lot of flak for an article I wrote on erectile dysfunction. Most of the comments that Washington Post readers subsequently posted referred not to the content of the article but to the amusing connection between the subject matter and my byline. For all I know, the editors who assigned the story to me were laughing gleefully when they did so.
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