The Kick-off Story

One night last spring, Andy and I were on our nightly Skype (this is before he moved to the mountains with me) and I had just found a bucket list that I had made years before on my computer. I was reading the bullets off to him, and he was insisting that I make a list for him, too. Here, for your enjoyment, is what he came up with:

1. Spear a fish

2. Eat chilled monkey brains

3. Get pudgy

4. Learn how to make potato pancakes

The turning point came with the end of my list. Here are the last 5 items I had listed:

70. Crochet a doily

71. Knit/crochet a wearable sweater

72. Dress up in a mascot costume

73. Do a cartwheel

74. Hike the Appalachian Trail

Honestly, I have no idea how that last one got on there, but Andy got really excited about it. It turned out he had been wanting to hike that trail, too, but he had never had someone to hike with. So we started researching what exactly this Appalachian Trail was and within an hour we were plotting when we might be able to do it. Over the course of the next few months, we moved our hiking plan closer and closer to the present, and when I started designing our website we were fully intending to hike in 2013 (you’ll notice this still lingers in our email address). I’ve now read 2 books (and am starting a third) about the AT, a myriad of blogs, spent endless hours on sites like whiteblaze.net, and even (in a moment of surrealism) purchased one-way tickets to Bangor, Maine. I can use terms like “white-blazer” and “bounce box” fluently. And I know how to hang a bear bag PCT-style. And still I can’t fully wrap my mind around what’s to come. I do, however, fully believe that just about anything that happens out there will be both more memorable and more fulfilling than crocheting a doily, so at least that’s something.