Last days

It's finally here. The day of reckoning. My feet hit the trail in less than 24 hours. The gear is packed. The food is stowed. I've spent my last night in my own bed (well on my couch). No more binge-watching TV. No more running to the fridge for a snack. No more PS4. No more comic books, no more cruising in the warm weather, windows down. It all changes.

I'm on my way to Harper's Ferry, where my journey begins. I'm meeting Jeff there, and we set out north. I'm excited to start my journey, and surprised that it's already here. I think that I'm going to point my life in a new direction with this experience. I'm so happy that I'm using it to not only find myself but to raise money for Extra Life. Extra Life has been such a rewarding experience for me, letting me give something back. I feel like it has filled a void in my life that was bigger than I ever realized.

When I set out, true to my geek nature, I'll be carrying a replica of the One Ring from Lord of the Rings. Frodo's journey to Mt. Doom carrying the ring has always been one of my favorite stories, and I can't imagine a better way to honor the feelings that I got from the series, than to recreate it (well, without all the Ring Wraiths and orcs and such). So I'm attaching the Ring to my backpack. Maybe I'll stash it at the end, and hope some other hiker finds it and takes it on another epic journey.

My next post will be from the trail -

Remember, it's about the journey.

Slacker.

I woke up this morning, and thought about it for a moment, and realized I hadn't posted anything since my post just before New Year's. Not that I've been sitting around and doing nothing, quite the opposite. Work has been busy, my personal life has been busy and that has been tying me up quite a bit.

Here's what I've been up to - mostly dealing with some final issues with my father's estate. My brother and I are selling the land he left to us, so I've been researching and prepping. I finally got it listed. I had to make a trip up there to go through some of the storage buildings to make sure there wasn't anything valuable in there. It's astounding how much just random stuff he had accumulated.

Another project I've started on is an entry to the Badger Sponsorship, a great program made by the founder of the site I write for Appalachian Trials. I have to create a 90 second video about why I'm hiking the AT and why I should win the sponsorship. It's tough to condense why I'm going to do down to 90 seconds or less and make it meaningful. Luckily, I have a friend that went to school for video production and is willing to help.

Finally, the action is heating up for the Chits and Bits Game Marathon! Donations are coming in all over the place and we're going to have a TON of great prizes to give away and we're just getting started. Many game companies are really stepping up to the plate. Tons of hard work on the part of my friend Rob has really paid off big time. I wish I could share the list with you all, but we want to wait and make a big announcement when things are closer.

So I'm still here, I hear the clock ticking away to my departure date. I can't wait to get started. The journey will be epic!

Looking back...What else did you expect?

This is my obligatory 2015 year in review post. It's been a year of change for me with some great times, and I'm going to take this opportunity to step back and take a look at them.

The year started off for me at one job, ended with me at another. Work has had its ups and down, as they say "It wouldn't be called work if it was fun". So true. But working lets me have the things that I like, board games, good times with friends, food and a place to live. So I suppose that's a good thing. I'm lucky to have a job that pays me reasonably.

The game marathon I host for Extra Life happened in April, and was an amazing success. It was the second year of the marathon, and a number of people helped me out in huge ways. I made many new friends, and we raised over $5500 for Extra Life and The Barbara Bush Children's Hospital. We have already started planning for the next one. It's very humbling to have an idea that was really spur of the moment pay off in such a big way for a great cause.

The reason behind this blog came about in May. Recapturing a lost dream has reinvigorated my soul and given me a lot of hope. Every day I think and plan and look forward to it. The hike will change my life, I'm betting for the better. It will reset my world view and when I'm done, it I can't even fathom the sense of accomplishment that I will get from it. It is refreshing to take a chance on yourself, even when the chance seems to be inconceivable to a lot of people. In the words of Andy Dufresne from The Shawshank Redemption, -"It comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying". 2015 is the year that I decided to get busy living.

The support I've been given by my friends and family have kept me going through some tough times. It's not easy some days, but I want to thank you all for being here, for following along with my random thoughts, my impressions, my whims. The greatest feeling of success and accomplishment for me is when people have a positive reaction to my writing. It has been my longest dream to be a "real" writer. Choosing to put my thoughts in written form is daunting task some days. But I'm always glad that I did.

Thank you and I hope you and yours have a happy and safe New Year. I look forward to taking you along on my journey in 2016.

Hiking Forward

I survived another Christmas, I hope that you all did as well. I spent the day with family (both real and "adopted"). Being around my family is always interesting, as inevitably the topic of "the long walk" inevitably comes up. I'm convinced that they all think that I'm certifiably crazy to walk away from my comfortable life and go live in the woods for six months. I get the same questions over and over - How long will it take? You're walking ALL the way? What will you eat? Are you going to have to poop outside? What happens when you run into a bear? I do my best to answer them and just smile. If I have to explain the imperative to them, they'll never really get it. It will be hard, it will be miserable, but I fully expect it to change my life. In some ways it already has. Committing to it has changed the way I look at the world.

Some more exciting news, I've been selected to be one of the 2016 hikers that is being promoted by HikeForward.com. It's a great site that will promote all my posts across the various social media sites that I will be using, widening the audience that I will get. I'm really excited about the opportunity. Scott, the guy behind Hiking Forward, has some great info on the site and his blog is a great read as well. Anything I can do to spread the word of my adventure will help to get some attention for Extra Life and the Children's Miracle Network. I hope that you will all stop by hikeforward.com and give Scott some traffic!

Inspiration

A friend of mine sent me a Facebook message this morning, to let me know that I had inspired her and another friend of ours to start running and exercising more often. That was a little surprising to me, but after I thought about it for a bit, it made sense. Often when I see that someone else is making a change in their lives, it makes me want to follow suit. The changes I've made so far are fairly small, but they will be much larger in about 8 months or so. I'm glad that I was a positive agent for change to someone.

There's a lot of times when I don't see the impact that I have on the world, I'm just one guy who spends most days thinking what I do doesn't make much of an impact. There are billions of people in the world, and I don't have children to teach, or much of a legacy to leave behind. I know that's flawed logic, everyone has a legacy, but it is my emotional brain that runs the show a lot. My work with Extra Life and The Barbara Bush Children's Hospital is the thing that keeps that emotional, negative part of me in check. I can look back and say "Well, I didn't get much done, but at least I did that." And every time that I add another dollar to the amount I've raised, or brought someone else to awareness of what Extra Life is, it's one more tally in the positive column. Every check mark there is one more fear that doesn't paralyze me in the middle of the night when I can't sleep. If my legacy is the Tabletop Game Marathon continuing to be an event for years to come, I will rest easy. If in twenty years, I can look back at a series of pictures of me waving the Extra Life flag at various points along the Appalachian Trail, that will mean that all my struggles were worth it.

Find something that inspires you. Make a change. If not now, when?

Pretty old school

One of the things that I've noticed in writing this blog on a (semi) regular basis, is how good it feels to flex my writing muscles. This is the most writing that I've done for a long time or in actuality probably ever. It has also awakened my desire to read, I've been reading two different books as well as listening to an audio book in the car on my commute. All these things make my mind hungry for more. As a result, I dusted off a novel that I haven't touched in over a year, one that I really hope to finish. As I re-read what I'd written so far, it drew me in once again, made me remember where I was and where I wanted to go with it. I started working on it again as of this morning.

One of the things that I'll have ample time for on the trail is thinking. I hope that I can turn that into more writing. I'm not sure how I'll accomplish that, a smartphone is not ideal for composition, and a laptop is way too heavy and fragile to carry. Maybe just an old fashioned notebook will suffice. Might be an interesting experience to write that way again. I can't remember the last time I wrote something down long form. Pretty old school. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Have you tried turning it off and then turning it back on again?

Having spent the week just outside of NYC in New Jersey, it was a stark reminder of how nice it is to live where I do. Everything I saw in NJ was road, strip malls, apartments or houses that had postage stamp sized yards. Even at night, the world was awash with light and color and sound. We drove home late Friday night and it was about 1 a.m. when I was getting close to my home in Gorham. I looked out the window and was immediately surprised at how DARK it was outside. There were no lights out the window except for the stars.

I can't imagine living my life surrounded by so much all the time. I would imagine that it is a draining experience for your soul. Nothing recharges my batteries more than sitting on my deck in the darkness and just experiencing the peace and quiet of my section of the world. Next summer will be a cleansing of my soul. I will be disconnected from the "real world" of television and video games and the constant bombardment of media. I submit that I will be the one in the REAL world. A world largely unmarred by technology and human hands. As much as I love my toys, I feel like I need to unplug as much as I can. I work in IT and everything needs a reboot every once in a while.

Curse you, New Jersey.

First of all, I apologize for the lack of updates. I was in New Jersey all week last week for work and it was an exhausting experience. I simply didn't have the energy or time to get any updates in. Basically, everything that could go wrong over the course of the week, did.

But I'm back now! So here I am. I went for a 4 mile walk today, which felt pretty good. I spent some time playing some games this afternoon, kind of getting back into the swing of my "normal" life. Now that I'm back and in regular mode, I'll get back to my regular updates, I promise. 

Mountain Division Trail

I just finished a nice 4 mile walk on the Mountain Division Trail, which runs close to my house. The MDT goes from Fryeburg to Portland, a stretch of 52 miles. Not much compared to the AT but it is a great place to walk and bike. I ran into 3 deer, which was a nice surprise considering it was about 10am and broad daylight. 

It was also the first chance I'd had to get some exercise in the past few weeks being sick and all. It felt good to get out there again. I'm still coughing like crazy but that will pass. 

I'm headed to Boston Comic Con tomorrow morning and from there down to New Jersey for work for the week. Working in a dry cleaning plant in August should be a blast!

Gear. Gear. Gear.

The past few nights my dreams and thoughts have been plagued by gear donation requests. I spent 2 hours yesterday morning and another hour and a half this morning researching companies and carefully crafting emails to them. Now I will start obsessively checking my email for responses. It's kind of my thing.

Here's the thing about gear for this type of adventure. It's EXPENSIVE. The lighter it is, the better it is. Every time I open a website and look at the gear, I freak out a bit. All I can see is dollar signs. Hence the haunted dreams. I'm really hoping that the fact that I'm using my hike to raise money for Extra Life will net me the attention of some of the gear companies. Many of them offer trail ambassador programs, in exchange for reviews, updates and photos from the trail. I should be good at that, right?

New job is good, it's interesting to be back at an old job. I believe I'm going to Boston tomorrow to a customer site, so that's kind of cool. The BAD part of the new job is that I'm going to bi-weekly pay and my first week is a pay week. That means no paycheck for another 2 weeks, which means I'm basically broke until 2 weeks from today. Puts a crimp in the old lifestyle.