Doing this thru-hike is a largely self-indulgent adventure (but hopefully inspiring!). In the spirit of giving something back, we decided to use our adventure and this blog as an opportunity to try to raise a little money to help fight cancer. We’ve lost close friends and family (notably Rose, Georgia, and Tim) to this disease. We set $2185 as the goal to match up with the amount of miles on the AT this year. Here’s the gofundme website:

http://www.gofundme.com/7g9mqc

Note: gofundme does take a small cut but other than that 100% of anything you can give is going to the American Cancer Society.

It is officially our last day of work!  (Technically, I will go back in November, but right now it is the last day for a good long time.)  And, wow. . . .what a feeling!  It is very sad to say goodbye to everyone for the short-term.  My job has been like a second home/second family for almost 11 years. It is an odd mix of sadness, guilt (for leaving) and excitement for what lies ahead.  I didn’t get razzed like Joel, but they do have a sweet map of the AT hung in our office to follow my every move!

I think it will be a struggle (at least until we start hiking) to get used to not having a routine. Employment has a way of necessitating routine. And, I love me some routine!

I guess though that we will be very busy with all of the dehydrating and training hikes that Joel has planned,

It’s my last day at Lutron,  so some much deserved razzing is occurring…

This good stuff is courtesy of Ben Bard (from some Holler in West Virginia)