On Your Mark, Get Set, Go!

Greetings from Washington, DC! This is May with the first Hannah and AJ update of the summer.

I spoke to them last night, they were about 30 minutes away from Charlottesville and very hungry. Expecting rest stop time on the bus trip, they did not pack anything to eat, and when I talked to Hannah she said she had not had lunch or dinner. Hopefully, when they set off this morning they had appropriately full stomachs. AJ says that they have approximately 50 days of hiking planned, which sets their arrival in Massachusetts/Connecticut somewhere in the middle of August.

That's all I know! More when Hannah calls me next!

On the way out

We are on our way out for the real deal long hike. Tomorrow, at approximately 7:00 am we will board a Greyhound bus and ride to Charlottesville, VA (over 13 hours!). We have been extraordinarily fortunate in finding support for our adventure once again, and will be picked up by at the train station and taken in for the night before setting out on the trail.

Our first day will be on the longer side, about 14 miles.

I'm going to sign May up as an author and call her from towns with progress reports, so with any luck, there will be news from the trail here about once a week.

In other news, I've traded packs. My Osprey pack had some good points (simple and light and slightly less expensive) and some bad ones (hurt collar bones, scarred my lower back, front pocket ripped). For the long hike, I will be wearing the Gregory Deva pack, the female equivalent to AJ's current pack. It is a lot fancier and has WAY more cushion. While it makes me feel like an old lady to say so, I really like the cushion and will happily carry a heavier pack (it weighs 1 pound more) to avoid exacerbating the slice the the old pack took out of my back and my still tender (even after a month of no pack!) bruised collarbones. Another thing I like about the Gregory is that it has a totally different shape: short and fat. Short and fat means that I can tilt my head back, something that was not easy with my tall skinny old pack (though, as in life, while tall and skinny was perhaps less functional, it was quite pretty to look at).

Now back to final preparations: learning about my new pack, finishing mail drop boxes, ad plotting the end of the route.