At My Kitchen Table
Welcome to At My Kitchen Table, a conversational, interview-y podcast where I have a good yap with a guest!
When I was growing up, the kitchen table was the conversation center in a lot of homes. At my grandparents' house, friends and family alike were welcomed with connection as much as with drinks and food. In my parents' house, that tradition continued as my siblings and I would post up and chat with my mom as she cooked or baked or tried to read a book (with much exasperation as we refused to shut up). I found cozy similarity at my friends' homes with their parents, too.
Keeping with tradition, I create a space for everyone who visits my table, where we get to share a little bit of our journeys together - roses, thorns, and stems.
Interested in recording your story with me? Email me at atmykitchentablepod@gmail.com!
At My Kitchen Table
Guest: Chris Distler
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Teabags, I am so excited for today’s conversation with my dear friend, former co-worker, fellow avid reader, and COVID show-watching buddy, Chris Distler. Not only is Chris all of these things, but he’s also one of the earliest Teabags, making today’s conversation even more special to me.
Chris pulls up a seat at my kitchen table to tell stories of how he and his friend, Laurel, through-hiked the Appalachian Trail after college. An adventurer and lover of challenges, Chris talks about the absolute trust he had in his hiking partner, why the woods is where it was safe, trail names and the cast of characters he encountered on his journey, and what he learned about himself.
Pull up a chair or cushion to hear about trail magic, trail fuckery, the trail rules, the jarring surreality of Gatlinburg, TN, and how walking wet just sucks. Get cozy!
This week's indie author spotlight is on Chris Distler.
Zoo See Me! is the first book that Chris has published. He wanted to write a story that was fun and educational for children but also entertaining for parents. Zoo See Me! takes you on a journey through the zoo to see the world through the eyes of the animals. Exciting and hilarious for both kids and adults, there’s a favorite animal perspective for everyone! Visit zooseemebook.com for more information.
Intro riff by Dale Lytle (concert husband).
All content edited (I use that term very loosely) by Karen Shaak.
Intro riff by Dale Lytle (concert husband).
All content edited (I use that term very loosely) by Karen Shaak.
The indie author Spotlight this week comes from our very own guest today, Chris Ettler. Zoo to see me is the first book that Chris has published. He wanted to write a story that was fun and educational for children, but also entertaining for parents. Zoo to Z Me takes you on a journey through the zoo to see the world through the eyes of the animals. Exciting and hilarious for both kids and adults. There's a favorite animal perspective for everyone. Visit zooemebook.com for more information. Teabags. I am so excited for today's conversation with my dear friend, a former coworker, fellow avid reader and COVID show watching buddy Chris Disler. Not only is Chris all of these things, but he's also one of the earliest teabags, making today's conversation even more special to me. Chris pulls up a seat at my kitchen table to tell stories of how he and his friend Laurel threw hike to the Appalachian Trail after college. An adventurer and lover of challenges, Chris talks about the absolute trust he had in his hiking partner, why the woods is where it was safe, trail names and the cast of characters he encountered on his journey, and what he learned about himself. Pull up a chair or cushion to hear about trail magic, trail fuckery, the trail rules, the jarring surreality of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and how walking wet just sucks. Get cozy.
SPEAKER_00And I do wish we had been able to do this live. Um, and I will make it to Pittsburgh, but I was actually gonna try to sit at my dining table so it felt like a kitchen table, but I don't know if the co acoustics would have been as good in there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, and then you also have like the dog and you know, distractions and hold my whole house to go on mute, not to be bothered.
SPEAKER_00Do not disturb recording in progress.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. I cannot believe it's July.
SPEAKER_00I know how did this years cruising? We've been in Palm Springs two years now, which is also insane.
SPEAKER_02That is really nice.
SPEAKER_00The time is flying, it really is. I know the weather here has been good this this summer so far, like actually below 100, which relatively speaking is cool for us.
SPEAKER_02I know it just makes me giggle.
SPEAKER_00People don't lament with me at all, but I'm like, oh, we have a a cool 105.
SPEAKER_02Well, you have like a dry 105 though, right?
SPEAKER_00Because it's like yeah, yeah, but hot is hot when it's 120. You can't argue to anyone that that that the dryness helps.
SPEAKER_02No, I'm actually a little bit nervous about that because I'm sure you're aware, like Europe has had this massive heat wave, and I have a feeling it's gonna be pretty uncomfy, but you know, it it's Italy, so we're gonna power through all of it and it's gonna be fine.
SPEAKER_00We have some neighbors who were just in Italy and they said it was a lot warmer than they were expecting.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah. We saw video online of like stop lights and stuff that were sort of melting in the sun. I was like, this is terrible. This seems terrible. I like I confirmed with Ange. I was like, we're definitely gonna have AC though, right? Because that's not common.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Like are we going hotel or hostel?
SPEAKER_02Good stuff.
SPEAKER_00Susan has AC. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, anyway, I am so excited that you're joining me today. I have been so looking forward to this for a long time because we've been talking about doing this for quite a while. So, for the sake of the tea bags, could you introduce yourself?
SPEAKER_00Of course, and happy to be doing it too. I know we were trying to get a group one together for a while, and I still have hope that we shall. But in the meantime, happy to come on solo. Excellent. My name is Chris Dissler. I grew up in Connecticut on the East Coast. Um, I've never been to Pittsburgh, but I went to college in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Since then, I moved back home, lived in Connecticut, New York. I was in LA for a bit until I settled in Denver. Um and I was in Denver for 10 years, but it's where I bought my first house, uh, got my dog, Finn, met my husband, Ryan. And then two years ago, we finally left Denver and moved to Palm Springs. Um, so that's where we live now. I'm a data analyst by trade and met you, Karen, through my first formal job, office job, but professional hobbyist and adventurer by choice. So I do my day-to-day, my nine to five at my desk, and then I try to adventure and hobby however I can.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Which is actually the topic that we are going to be uh talking about today, because it's I think it's really interesting that you kind of finished your intro with that because that's kind of what I know of you. Like from the time that we met, you're that guy who's like super curious. And I would not have said adventure, but that's kind of it. You're very curious and you like to be challenged by things, is my perspective of you. And so I was thinking about it before you know we decided to do this. And you know, we're gonna be talking about you deciding to hike the Appalachian Trail. And of course, when I heard that, I was like, Well, duh, of course he did that. Because you have done like George R.R. Martin book club with work folks, and you built a squirrel feeder during COVID, and your sister was pregnant with her first, and you were like, I'm gonna learn how to knit booties, and so it's like you just find these things that you're like, Oh, I want to try that and I can do it, and then you do, and you're like successful with it. Yeah, I have you always been curious, yeah.
SPEAKER_00As they say, like the the jack of all trades. I think I'm a master of some. Don't need to be a master of most, uh definitely not all, but like I love the novelty, I love the challenge, and kind of like alluding to a bit of the topic today, like that really worried me about going into college and like picking a major. To me, it felt like picking a career. And I was like, Well, I don't want that. I wanna do all the things, I don't want to like pick one thing and do one thing forever. Um, and like generally with school and college and stuff, I always kind of felt that way. I was like, Am I gonna be able to do all the hobbying and have all the choices that I want to have throughout life, or am I gonna need to like grow up at some point? And I I don't know, maybe those aren't the same thing. But to me, it felt in a lot of ways like if I'm not able to hobby and do all the things I want to do, that it was a little like conceding something.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I like to keep that. I like to like challenge myself in in doing new things. And as long as it's a low-cost hobby, some hobbies can some hobbies can be pricey.
SPEAKER_02That is true. It's funny, I I really relate to that, and I think mine was a little bit more, there was probably a little more anxiety around mine because I tended to look at life as a series of doors that closed as as you got older. And so even as young as high school, choosing a college and then in college choosing a major, and it felt very much like, oh my God, is this permanent? And am I doing this now to the exclusion of other things that I might want to do? So I definitely relate to that feeling, though it probably came from a different place.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And my family in particular, like my mom's a nurse, my brother went into healthcare, he's a chiropractor, my sister went into teaching and then and then into nursing, but all very kind of intentional and very direct paths. They kind of knew what they wanted to be, what they wanted to do. They kind of had this target. And I was like, Am I supposed to have that? I'm graduating soon. Am I supposed to know what comes next? Um for me, it always felt a little different. And so I always enjoyed like not having a direct path and having a bit more like free time where I was exploring a lot of these likes, yeah, general like likes that I had, yeah, which was always like kept it fun and exciting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. What was your college major?
SPEAKER_00Math and computer science. And I was like, oh my gosh, am I gonna be just a math teacher? Like, what what are the options? Be a math teacher or a mathematician, whatever that means.
SPEAKER_02I don't know, but it does sound it sounds like a magician, but a math magician, yes. That would have been cool.
SPEAKER_00My advisor was like, huh? No, yeah. I truly thought those were options though. And then computer science opened it up a bit because that was when kind of like developing and coding was becoming pretty big. So I was like, okay, I think that's a bit more of a viable career path, but even then I couldn't quite conceptualize like what post-college life looked like and definitely didn't it see it being a career by any means.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So let's let's just kind of shift gears and talk a little bit about how the hike came about. When was that?
SPEAKER_00So I graduated college in 2009, and it was at a time where I had not fully decided what came next. I had done some interviewing and I had done like a light internship, but at the time I was working actually as a waiter at a retirement home in our in my hometown of Redden, Connecticut, and just started working there full time in the in the summer after college. I hadn't committed to anything yet, and I was just like, let me start working full-time while I kind of figure it out. But it was right around that time that coming out of school, out of college, actually, let me backtrack a little bit. Coming out of high school, I had a good friend Laurel Peak, and her and I were really, really close in high school. And coming out of high school, we wanted to do something adventurous together to kind of celebrate graduating high school, and we picked skydiving. So the two of us went skydiving in some little town in uh like upstate New York.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00She ended up going to Dartmouth College, played soccer there. As I said, I went to Gettysburg, played lacrosse a few years. Uh, and then came time to college graduation. And again, we got in touch and said, What's something else fun we can do and adventurous to kind of celebrate like our graduation? And she had mentioned, she called me up one day and goes, I know what we're gonna do. And I said, What's that? She goes, uh, there are people at my college right now camping in the soccer field. Um, and Dartmouth is in Hanover, New Hampshire. So she's up up in the northeast, up in New England. And she said, they're camping in the soccer field. And they said they've walked here all the way from Georgia. And so I asked them how, why. Um, and they were Appalachian Trail through hikers. And so she talked with them a bit, and they sure enough had camped and hiked their way from Georgia all the way to New Hampshire. And she said, This is what we're gonna do. We're gonna do the Appalachian Trail. And I was like, Okay, uh, all right. I think I had camped outside one night in my life, liked hiking, liked being outdoors, but never had done anything of that duration. But basically graduated from college with this very loose plan, knowing nothing about what the Appalachian Trail was, that we're that's what we were gonna do. So that was kind of like entering the the post-college world with no career aspirations, but this loose plan to hike the Appalachian Trail. And that kind of began began a bit of like the planning and research around like what that actually meant and like what we had committed to.
SPEAKER_02So what was it? I mean, did you literally just say yes, like on a whim? You were just like okay, or when you thought about it, what was it that drove you to say, yeah, I'm gonna do it? Because that's a commitment. That's not just like a hey, let's go skydiving this one weekend. You're now committing like a chunk of time, and and there's like a physicality, of course, that that goes hand in hand with that as well.
SPEAKER_00So I of course we had to do a little research because so and for the teabags, like if you're not familiar with the Appalachian Trail, it's as I mentioned, it pretty much runs most the majority of the east coast of the US from northern Georgia to northern Maine. Um, but it's 2200 miles. A lot of people do set out to hike it in one go, which usually takes five to seven months. So you need time, you need equipment, you need money, you need willpower, a lot of things. So we definitely did a little bit of research, or at least light googling for me to be like, okay, I think I think the the scale of this feels right, the challenge of it feels right. And my friend Laurel, who is just the best person and I trust so much, like was very much the the bandwagon, and she was like, I think we can do this. This will be a really good challenge. Like, I think we should do do it. So I don't think it took much convincing. And at that point, too, I was at truly looking for anything other than starting a job.
SPEAKER_01Got it.
SPEAKER_00And that was a big motivation. Another motivation again was kind of like I said, the challenge of it. I had um two-thirds, maybe we'll call it, if I'm being generous, uh of the way through college. I not by choice stopped participating in the lacrosse team, which was a real bummer. I and I took that very personally and I was not ready to be done playing collegiate sports. And it definitely did a number on my confidence and my like masculinity and my image. Like, I think it there was a lot of things that I probably shouldn't have let it take too much of a hit on, but I really just felt like I don't know, that was something I could do to kind of like prove my strength as a man and like my value. And it kind of got taken away from me. And around that time, I did lean in pretty heavily to working out and running as a bit of like a compensate compensation tactic, but it worked. I like I loved working out. I I really started loving running at the time. I was running more to get up get through hangovers than like actually running for sport, but I would wake up early on weekend mornings and go sweat and run. So it accomplished a few different goals, but I really just enjoyed that like being physical in that kind of way that wasn't necessarily for like in an organized sports kind of way.
SPEAKER_02Sure. And I want to do just a quick sidebar. And I know we've had not talked about this before, but because you were talking about running, you've also done marathons as well. When was your earliest marathon?
SPEAKER_00A handful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, I think I've two. I've run two full marathons. So post post appellation trail in my in my life. Um, when I moved to New York, I ran the New York City Marathon in 2011, um, which was really cool. Really, really fun race just to like be running through the shut the shutdown avenues of Manhattan.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00And then a couple years later, I ran the Honolulu marathon with my friend Tiffany in honor of her dad who had passed away and was a big Hawaii marathoner.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So that that running wasn't something you were you weren't training for anything that came later. But this was strictly just like uh, I just need to get feel more in control of myself and kind of prove stuff to myself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but even with marathoning, like people go, Oh, yes, so you like running. I'm like, eh, it's okay.
SPEAKER_02Like, but it serves a purpose.
SPEAKER_00It serves a purpose, and I I do think it's more of the challenge for me. And that was kind of the same with the trail. It's like, I don't love hiking, I don't actually like sleeping outside in the woods more than a night or two. But that paired with the challenge of it and the excitement, I think, is really what what makes me do these things.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, where like again, running, I think I don't think anyone should run 26 miles. That's just not good for your body. But I like running enough, and then the challenge is enticing enough that like together those two things convinced me to run two marathons.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00And you're since downgraded to halves and 10Ks.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And you're a bit competitive by nature as well. So for sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There was I definitely graduated, especially with the lacrosse uh being cut from the lacrosse team with a bit of like a prove them wrong kind of attitude. So definitely had something to prove to who knows who, probably nobody. But it resulted in me ended up doing a lot of, I think, fun and challenging things. Right. And having enough determination to kind of see them through.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Which, yeah, I think again, like kind of helped me in the end more than I expected it to.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. How did your family and friends react to you when you told them this is the thing I'm gonna do?
SPEAKER_00Well, they said the same thing. They were like, You've never, my dad was like, You've never camped camped more than a night in your life. I was like, Yeah, but you know, it'll we'll just do it. Like, it was just that simple to me. I was like, we'll have the equipment to do it. And if you can do it one night and then you can do it two nights, what's the third night? What's the tenth night? So a lot of my family and friends were like doing their own research to be like, you're gonna do this thing. And I said, Yeah, I think like with enough planning and prep, like I think we can figure it out. Yeah, like plenty of people do it. Funny enough, like a lot of the prep we were doing, like books we were reading and you know, materials we were reading online were really discouraging. And it was like, you have to have all this specific equipment, and like if you don't go out with a compass or like a knife, you'll die. And a lot of so a lot of it was very intense and a little like what's the word, like uh like deterring, deterrent of like someone just deciding that this was something that they could do. And so there were periods in the year leading up to it where we were like, can we do this? Like, are we preparing enough or like have we gotten all the right things? Like, we started with this really long checklist and we were slowly like acquiring equipment and stuff, and then occasionally we'd thought we like doubt a little bit of doubt would creep in where we're like, are do it's do we have the means to do this? Like both both like the physical, emotional, and like literally the equipment. Like, is our sleeping bag the right sleeping bag? And so there was a lot of funny like conversations and stuff leading up. And at the time, I think she was Laurel was still living around school. I think she was still up in New Hampshire.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And as I said, I was in Connecticut for the summer, but then winter came to New England, and I had no car and didn't know what to do. So I went out and lived with my aunt in um LA for the for the season or for the winter season. But by that time, we were like fully committed to starting the Appalachian Trail the following spring. So that would be um like springtime 2010. Generally, people hike it south to north. Uh generally, maybe I'd say most people hike it south to north.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Some people, south bounders, they call them, hike hike it north to south. And depending on where you start, there's guidelines around when you should start based on weather patterns. And like, you know, if you start south, you want to make sure you get to Maine early enough in the season where it's not too far into the fall and it's not snowing. Similarly, if you start in Maine, you have to wait a certain amount of time before like snow melts and it gets warm enough where you can comfortably without dying, sleep outside.
SPEAKER_02It's interesting because what I'm hearing actually sounds super healthy, like a healthy way to look at it where there's some planning and prep, and you are paying attention to things like that details that are gonna matter, but still with that element of, well, yeah, but if I could do it one night, I could do it two nights, and if I could do it two nights, I could do it 10 nights. And there's probably a little bit of you don't really know what you don't know. And so you're just gonna learn as you go, which I think is kind of a metaphor for life anyway.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and like that, like that was a kind of kind of a constant theme throughout. I was like, we can plan this thing to the T, and a lot of people do. And I think it gave us encouragement that like in reading some of the materials. Again, like people go north to south, south to north, people do it all in one go, people do it in segments. Again, people plan it out literally every night where they're gonna stop and stay. Yeah, and like have supplies shipped to specific things, and it you can do it very rigid and very organized like that. Or we could do it the way we did, which you're like, well, we'll just when we see a road, we'll hitchhike and find a grocery store. And luckily, the literature and like all the you know, hiking books are very good at this point, like it's documented very well, it's a very well-maintained trail. Yeah, a bit more about like the logistics. It truly is just like one long footpath. The only way you know you're on it are little white spray paint swatches that they call blazes on like a tree every couple hundred yards. A lot of people who live along the East Coast are probably closer to like an Appalachian trail trailhead than they probably realize, or they might have even seen like hikes with the white blazes. But that's truly how the only way you know you're on the right path is the blazes. And so the guidebooks now, you know, kind of tell you exactly when you're gonna cross a road, where what's on that road, you know, if there's a town X miles ahead. So you can kind of plan a little bit, which we did do. We for sure planned a rough draft of like how long we thought it would take or how long we wanted it to take us, yeah. Partially limited by like our finances, and you know, we couldn't be out there forever. So we're like, okay, I think we kind of like have a good pace. We have like some markers where these are this is where we're gonna restock for food. Um, but we wanted it to be a little loosely more loosely planned for sure than some people did it. Like we wanted optionality, both in like we didn't know how we were gonna go, so we didn't want to say we had to make it to this spot by a certain day. Cause what if we were getting tired? Like not as good as hiking as we thought we were. Right. So we're like, let's just keep it open where we can kind of stop where we want, we can stay an extra night in a town if we need to. So we decided to keep it a little a bit more fluid and loose in our planning.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Which I think worked out for us because like we were able to be a bit more flexible with where we stayed, what we ate. A lot of people do the true like ready to eat meals that are vacuum sealed and dehydrated, and they have the same meals in the same boxes shipped to every post office along the way. And they that's like how they do it is it's organized, it's neat, they know exactly where they need to be, what gonna be in the box and so on. Not that that makes people more likely to finish it. There's still a lot of things that kind of go into the totality of like whether or not you'll finish. It it's still at last I checked about like a one in five finish rate of people who attempt who set out to do a through hike.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Which is the start to finish in one go. One in five actually complete it.
SPEAKER_02That's actually not that bad. Like I I actually thought it would be a bigger gap than that.
SPEAKER_00I think based on because you've already if you're deciding to do a through hike, I think you've already kind of like it's not like one in five average people that's true could do it. That's true. Fair enough your your starting pool is people who thought they could do it. Like people who had who set out who scheduled who saved to do it and then didn't and so I think in that through that lens it's pretty good. Yeah yeah it's not like look around you and your neighbors one of you could hike the application trail. Fair enough or might not fair enough so in that regard I just like it it felt like an honor. Like it felt like being able to complete it in the way that we did felt cool like felt like we did accomplish something.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Spoiler spoiler we finished you did finish.
SPEAKER_02Okay let's go back to prep for a second though. So you're obviously reading books you're paying attention to you know how weather impacts how you want to do the trail but talk a little bit about what equipment did you start out with and did you decide I'm assuming you decided ahead of time that you wanted to do a through hike talk a little bit about the different types or different ways that people will hike the trail as well. So prep and how do people hike the trail?
SPEAKER_00Yeah I mean from the from the beginning I'll start with the latter first. From the beginning it was definitely a through hike. We were like we could do this in segments which there are such a thing as a segment hiker who is someone who wants to see all all the trail but doesn't care in what order. Some some of them do segments where they'll truly do it in order but they'll take weeks or months or even years off in between but they always kind of return back to the place that they stopped and continue. And so they'll eventually hike the whole trail but in segments and some people just are all over the map. They'll do a segment here segment there north south for us it was like the through hike was was the accomplishment the through hike was what we wanted to do. So it was always that so we were always kind of planning around that being the case. So okay and we figured that would generally take the shortest consecutive amount of time I was like I don't want to do half of it and then like plan with you over the next couple years we'll probably never do the second half. Yeah so I think we both were like this is our chance to kind of do the whole thing and kind of see it through equipment wise again pretty much starting out at square zero as far as camping equipment goes I leaned into my uncle Jimmy a lot. He at the time had done enough camping where he accumulated a decent amount of equipment and thankfully he lent a lot of it to me because this was one of the expensive hobbies I learned that I could potentially have so I didn't want or have enough money to spend on like my own backpack. So he gave me a backpack a sleeping bag a water filter pump so a couple a couple crucial things and to like stay warm when I'm sleeping cover over my head clean water to drink uh I think I got like a sleeping pad and my own hiking shoes. Now I feel like a child I'm like well my dad gave me well you were you were young and truly graduated with zero dollars. I had to going home from college I actually had to fill out a bill at a toll booth which I didn't even know was something you did because I had no money in my bank account and no cash. So I had to actually fill out a bill at the toll booth. Holy cow I'm coming up to and I called my parents and I was like what do I do? Are they gonna let me through how do I get home but thankfully over the summer I'd worked enough where like I I felt like we established enough of uh in my bank account to like and we and we had budgeted too like we generally again knew more or less what it was going to cost to do it.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00So thankfully by that time like we I had enough money to to hike it they do say it's cheaper than than rent so a lot of people that we met were just like hiking because it was cheaper than actually like renting an apartment but I didn't have a ton of extra money to do like all the best equipment. So again thankfully I I borrowed a bunch from my uncle knew nothing about it like the backpack fit well enough yeah sure yeah backpack the sleeping bag was blue like did I know what number of degrees it like was going to keep me warm through no I didn't know much about it. And that goes back to like me being a hobbyist is like I'll learn enough of these things to be to be dangerous in the sport or the hobby but like don't put me head to head with someone who's actually who actually enjoys doing that hobby as a part of their life because that's where I kind of cop out I'm like oh actually I know enough to be dangerous but not enough to like be invited to a club in this hobby. Which I learned very quickly that's like hikers can be pretty snobby and a lot of like early talks were about equipment and I learned very quickly that I knew almost nothing about the stuff that I was carrying. So that was like the major stuff. It was like tent backpack Laurel had a tent luckily in New Hampshire she did a lot more camping and hiking than I did. Again because the trail goes right through Hanover right by Dartmouth so just generally a lot of good hiking woods mountains up there.
SPEAKER_02I wasn't doing too much hiking in Gettysburg Pennsylvania which is funny because the trail actually is also very close to Gettysburg.
SPEAKER_00Also goes right near Gettysburg and actually stopped stopped there and saw some college friends who were still around so funny enough like went by more stuff that was closer to home than I realized the whole trail but but up in the up in New England New Hampshire Vermont Maine is again where it gets pretty mountainous and like some really just cool hiking up there. And so luckily Laurel had actually done some hiking and camping for the two of us and so she had a tent we both had sleeping bag we so we had a two person tent that we shared sleeping bags water filter so like the basics of like staying alive and then from there the guidebooks were a bit mixed. It was like you need a compass map knives bear mace clothes was interesting like a lot of mixed perspectives of how many truly how many layers of clothes that you need or how many different changes of clothes that you need. We started in April on April 1st and it can be cold during the day or especially at night so like you pack a little bit differently in for the beginning and for the end when like you're a little higher elevation and like on the kind of the cusps of the season. So we started with like more layers and uh like more like heavy coats but we knew that we'd be swapping this out throughout and so we had done enough to know that you know a third of the way through you might want to send some things home. You might want to have something shipped to you that you didn't need in the beginning that you might need in the middle. So we kind of had again some rough ideas of when we'd be swapping clothes and things went through three pairs of shoes oh God in terms of just wearing wearing through them. But we learned pretty quickly too that like outfitters love hikers love especially like these long Appalachian Trail Pacific crest trail like they they're like unofficial sponsors. They're like oh you want to wear my shoes and do the Appalachian Trail your sole or shoelace ripped like a couple weeks in we'll send you a new pair of shoes. And they're so good about that kind of thing to make sure that you know you're sporting the best gear you're happy with your purchases and you're doing this like kind of long excursion and you're truly outfitted in the way that you should be yeah and that did in fact happen with a pair of my shoes and with Laurel's backpack and the outfitters kind of jumped at the occasion to kind of send a replacement to us out on the trail which is really cool.
SPEAKER_01That is really cool. And then what about food planning?
SPEAKER_00Food planning is was just that was planning as much as we could to say generally we knew when we were going to be crossing roads going through towns or like near enough a grocery store where we should restock. And that was carrying generally carrying four to eight days of food at a time.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00But again everything we read was like you must carry vacuum sealed ready to eat ready to eat meals and I'm like really people do this whole thing and that's what they eat the whole time so we were kind of silly about like what we were buying but also one of my favorite things about hiking was what I call what I can best equate to like pregnancy hunger where like I wanted anything and everything. I had cravings like nobody's business and all I wanted to do getting into town was like get the exact thing that I'd been thinking about for like the last week. Yeah. So I didn't want a ready to meet ready to eat meal waiting for me at the post office that I had sent myself a month ago because that's not that's that's not what I want.
SPEAKER_02No I want onion dip I want Oreos I want these things that I've been like salivating about and thinking about yeah and you've earned those earned them yeah and that was the crazy part too is like as much as we were eating we were burning so many calories I lost 15 to 20 pounds in the first two two weeks wow that's insane I mean crazy yeah I guess too it's like especially when you're first starting out it's like your body's getting used to something totally different that it hasn't been doing probably some dehydration a little bit going on until you kind of even out a little bit but that still sounds like just an insane amount of of loss.
SPEAKER_00It was I mean we tried we definitely tried to eat balanced meals but we did we we were very much craving variety and like sometimes some specific things and so like I think the the whole send ourselves you know pre-planned meals and packages along the way very much didn't fit the way that I think I think I think truly and and you kind of alluded to it earlier hiking something of this duration it's your life becomes super simplified. It's like wake up walk stop and eat walk eat sleep and all of that become like starts bearing a different level of importance and meals for us became so fun. It was like this is what we look forward to more than anything during the day is stopping and eating. People like were baffled the things that we would pull out of our backpacks at again they're eating their stupid fucking ready to eat eat meals exactly we pull out like a full like buffet of we're making like rolled up burritos. We were like eating beans on our little stovetop we have a ready to meet ready to eat Lipton rice thing that we heated up we have like canned chicken and now we're like roll literally rolling tortillas putting them in tinfoil and putting them on the fire and people are just staring at us like you've made it this far carrying that and we're like well we know like you know you come out of town with a full backpack like you know you're gonna be leaving town after you've stocked up with a really heavy pack anyway. Like what's a few more pounds and we'll just make sure we have like a like a hearty feast the first night. Yeah. And then it's like a win-win it's good for us. It's like a great re-energizing meal and we've killed a bunch of weight in our pack.
SPEAKER_02Exactly and also all of you motherfuckers can smell it and you're jealous.
SPEAKER_00So that's why you're truly just jealousy. I was like you guys eating your stupid ass meals and we are feasting over here. Way to pack light though guy there you go like for us it was like every every stop we'd we'd get a new like dry cereal that would be like our snack. So we were like rotating through all these fun things. So we just had like a fun variety of choices and things that were always kind of rotating that made the hike feel different. I was like I have to imagine for the people who not to knock on them but like the people who do the drop boxes like probably had such similar days and weeks back to back that it probably did become like a little bit draining and droning where you're like oh I can't even how long have we been out here? Yeah where ours like we're split up based on the things we were doing or talking about or eating yeah that like made each section feel so different from the last.
SPEAKER_02I think what's interesting about that too is it it also sounds like a very again my perception of you it's a very crisp thing to do because there you almost have this quality of if it's not joyful why are we doing this it's like yes there's a challenge to it and you love a challenge but it's like how can I make this fit what I want it to be like I want to get something out of this other than just meeting a challenge.
SPEAKER_00Yeah and that to go back to something I said earlier about like the the kind of the hiking snobs it was interesting because there was this group of people that were like hike your own hike and it was like so free to be and everyone was just like out on the trail. And then other people were like oh you step foot off the path you're not a through hyper anymore like you're not carrying the right thing or like I don't know they had just so many unspoken rules and it was so much about what you were carrying and how you how you did the hike I was like you guys are so lame I'm like I don't even want to be near you guys. Again they're asking me about my bag and I'm like I have no fucking idea I don't know how much this sleeping bag costs I again it's blue that's the about the extent that I know and I sleep in it all the same as you do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so that we got frustrated with those kind of people who again they're probably the same kind of people who wrote the guidebooks that like deterred people from hiking. I was like there was a guy that we met out who his his we'll get to trail names but his his trail name was chewy because he truly looked this mountain man. So I I think it was after Tubaka is what he was called Chewy. Yeah but like long scraggly hair and beard and he had literally made sandals out of duct tape and because he didn't have enough money to buy hiking shoes and he was just out hiking in his in his duct tape sandals and then we walked with him for a few days and then he had to get off the trail because he ran out of money. So he's like I think I'm gonna go work at the the Renaissance fair in PA and I'll get make some more money and then I'll come back out and we were like go for it Chewy like that's awesome and don't listen to this loser over here who's making you feel bad about like not carrying the right equipment or whatever. It was so stupid. And Chewy was out just like having the time of his life. That's all right so it was a very mixed bag and definitely people we walked by were I was like that just seems not the right way to do it.
SPEAKER_02But at the same time I was like hike growing hike have a girl I know right well I think it's again what's interesting about that is whether you're doing something like what you did or you're just somebody who likes music and likes going to concerts or there are gatekeepers across every single fun thing. They are fun killers and it's like if that's what matters to you cool but also keep it to yourself like stop ruining everybody else's good time just because you have these rules that you set up for yourself. It doesn't mean everybody else needs to follow it that way.
SPEAKER_00I don't like it and no I don't think anyone does and to I don't know to me it just wasn't the right environment where again everyone was out there for so such different reasons that to think that like everyone out there was a professional hiker with all the best gear was just like such the weirdest misconception. Again there were people out there because they were homeless people out there because they had just gotten divorced people who didn't want to go into the real career world like people who were out there doing it with spouses or girlfriends who then later on they weren't together. Right. Lots of crazy stories but like totally random and varied reasons of why people were out there and that like everyone was a professional hiker and had all the good gear and trained in exactly the same way was so far from accurate.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Because I think the rest of you are out there for reasons. You're finding yourselves you're proving things to yourselves you're learning things.
SPEAKER_00And it was very beautiful at the end of the day like sometimes we uh we would like forget sometimes to like look up because we walk in and sometimes we'd look up and then we'd trip on a route and then it would like completely ruin our day. So we were always so torn between like watch your feet and watch where you're going like oh shit there was like a a vista that we almost totally missed because we were so engrossed like looking at our feet. But it was really beautiful like especially the mountains down south and up north like it kind of generally the topography like very high mountains and lots of steep inclines and and ascents and things at the extremes of the Appalachian Trail. The middle of it from like northern Virginia to New York call it has its mountains but they're very mild compared to the mountains that are down south and up in um New England. Yeah but some of the views and stuff I had never spent a ton of time in what I'm calling the south so that's like again northern Georgia Tennessee Kentucky Virginia like I had never spent much time there let alone like in the woods hiking and some really beautiful mountains um they have mountains down there that they call balds because they they're not maybe maybe it is because they're above tree line but the majority of the top of the mountain just has no foliage whatsoever. And so like you're hiking through the trees and suddenly it's like just this massive meadow on top of a mountain and that it just gives you like the most incredible views and you just feel like Fraline Maria like spinning your hands in the feet in the meadow on the mountain which we did obviously but like there was just something so unexpected that I wasn't expecting to see down there. And I was like this this is pretty beautiful down here. Yeah it's not all it's not all rednecks and um so that was surprising and then I had done enough driving and hiking in New England to know that like once we got up there like the mountains were were beautiful and I visited Laurel at Dartmouth a few times. So I knew what to expect once we got up there and that also didn't disappoint um some of the best kind of hikes and views that we had the whole trip were up in New Hampshire and Maine.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So before we get into some of the types of people let's talk a little bit about just the fact of your hike itself so you and Laurel you set out together are you running into challenges with each other are you on your nerves ever are you know pretty like shit was copacetic the whole time are you always walking together like how did that all work for you?
SPEAKER_00A bit of a mix towards the beginning it definitely was like her and I have to figure this out together. Let's like not split up too much. Let's make sure we're like supporting each other to make sure that we're good like getting in a good groove by the middle and end it was very dependent on the day um where sometimes we would walk literally side by side or you know like ants on the trail. Other times one of us would stop to pee or something and then we'd the other would keep walking and then we'd spend most of the day walking sometimes not even like within view of each other. But we knew generally like when when we'd be stopping for meals and stuff. Beginning though, we we truly didn't know what to expect and we we said at the beginning we were like let's just talk a lot about this like how we're feeling each day like what we're thinking how we think it's going because we really thought like that was the kind of the most important part was this first week where we had to really kind of get in a good groove. And they do say that is true because you're now carrying this 40 to 50 pound pack. Yep totally different I mean I trained when I was in LA over the winter I bought a weighted vest and I would put on this 20 pound weighted vest and I would walk up and down the hill to the beach at my aunt's house and that was my training. I was like just I don't think I need to be strong in any particular way it's just like the feeling of weight on your back and your calves maybe but we flew into Georgia or sorry into Atlanta and then there's a hostel down there that's pretty near the the southern terminus of the trail Springer Mountain is the southern point of the of the hike.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00And so there's a hostel nearby and they they do a whole you know travel package. They'll come pick you up at the airport you stay at their house for the night they take you on a like a stocking trip to the grocery store so you can like get your last kind of goods and things and and pack they have a scale on their front porch so you can weigh your pack and everyone can compete for who both has the heaviest bag or the lightest pack. Some people truly as create doing such such crazy things as like cutting their toothbrushes in half to save half an ounce or like the scraper for your pot that they sell at EMS is too heavy and so they cut a credit card in half and that's their pot scraper. And we were like all right I think I think we already overpacks but uh they took us to the store we stayed at the hostel we spent the first night kind of like packing our bags putting them on the scale I think we were both like in the 40 to 50 range pound range. Yeah so we were like okay I think we feel good about this they drop a group of like 10 of us off at the terminus this first first bit of trail fuckery as we called it they they drop you off the the trailhead is at mile one of the hike so your first thing you have to do is walk a mile backwards oh no I was like are you fucking kidding me we haven't even started and we're at mile negative one you're gonna make us walk a mile backwards take a stupid picture with the plaque it's like can we just go right like the other eight people went left was like can we just go right call it a wash like we'll round to 2200 miles we don't need to we don't need 2201. But you did it but we did we did we made it official we stepped on the rock the plaque was on took Picture.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The first day, uh, so another thing to know about the trail is that every five, 10, 15 miles kind of spread out, there are shelters along the trail. It's a pretty well-maintained trail. If you've heard of the other large hiking trails in the US, there's the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide. That's the order in which they're maintained, from what I've heard. Um, there's section every section of the Appalachian Trail has an Appalachian Trail Conservancy that owns it and maintains it to make sure that the path is clear, there's nothing in the way. Like the blazes are strong so people don't get lost. And also along the way, they built shelters. And so they're two to three-sided shelters that are pretty much just like a raised platform where if you wanted to sleep under it instead of setting up your tent for a night, you could. So it's like an alternative place to camp. A lot of people do intentionally end their hikes at shelters because it's like you don't have to set up your tent. You can like mingle with other hikers. The shelters that were nearer to trailheads, we learned to avoid because that was a lot of like day hikers, and people would come in for the weekend and the shelters would be full. And so we would try to like avoid those that were like a little too crowded, but a really good alternative for sleeping if you didn't want to set up your tent or like a little bit of variety, or like wanted to be a little more social.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So there's a shelter seven miles in, and every book we read was like, stop at that shelter. Like, you're gonna seven miles on your first day is plenty. You've had enough on your legs, on your back. You do not need to do more than seven miles on your first day. What do you think we did?
SPEAKER_02You did not stop.
SPEAKER_00We got there like noon, and I was like, I can't stop. It's lunchtime. We've we have we have a whole half day ahead of us. And like, how are we gonna finish if we're cocking out at seven miles on day one? Of course. And so I challenged her, she challenged me, and we're like, of course, we're gonna keep walking. So everyone else got comfy, undid their packs, massaging their feet, doing all the things that we should have done, and we hiked on, knowing that where we had to get was another seven miles because it wasn't a shelter, but it was a stream. And so the shelters are conveniently built by sources of water so that you can, when you're camping at the shelter, you can go get water. There was not a shelter coming up soon, but there was a river. Or so we assumed, because our trail book said said there was a river. There was, in fact, a river. I'm not gonna like make you think that there was no river and we died. But this the latter seven miles were brutal. And we a couple miles into that seven-mile walk, we were like, we definitely should have stopped. We're so sore, starting to cramp a little bit. Like this seven miles is just dragging compared to the first seven. And then we're going up this like final descent, just like hoping that water's nearby. Laurel's a bit ahead of me. She starts like going down the other side, and she's like, I can hear the water. I'm like, oh my God. So I just start like not running, but like kind of shuffling up the hill to the last bit. And then I crest over the hill and I'm like, oh, smooth sailing downhill to the river. Start moving a little bit faster, and both my hamstrings completely cramped and locked up. Oh no. And I was like one of those goats with the stiff legs and just careened down the path, like stiff-legged. At least I had my hands free, so I like generally was okay, but just like tumbled down this path.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00Laurel's like, You good up there? I was like, Yeah, I'm fine. I'm just gonna like eat some fruit in my bag, get my legs working again. I can hear the water too. So, like, I know the end is right there. So, like, I'll be fine. I'll just I'll meet you down in a few minutes. And sure enough, I just like laid on the trail, got my bag from under me, like munched some dried apricots or something until like my legs could bend again. Oh my god. And then we got to the river and we had like a lovely night camping by the river. But we obviously that was like a reflection night where we were like, okay, let's not overdo it. Let's like be true to each other about how we're feeling and what we need to do each day to make sure that we're like staying safe, staying healthy, not cramping, and all that good stuff. So a hard lesson on day one, but we made it through, and ultimately, like I think it did help kind of like us understand what we each needed to do for each other at various points. And to answer a question you asked now, like many minutes ago, I don't think I could have done it with anyone other than her. I think her and I, the way we kind of got along, like things we just discussed and like liked kind of friendly debating about and talking, it was both like the encouragement and the friendship and like just the closeness that I think we both needed to be able to do something like that, where I truly don't think I could have done it with any other person. And again, we had things to talk, enough things to talk about where we would talk sometimes just all day. Other times we would just like pick songs and sing songs and like walk. And that was for the bears. They told you uh make make noise so you don't scare the bears.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And other days again, we would just kind of like walk in silence, sometimes near each other, sometimes not, but it was it was always a little bit different just depending on how we were feeling. Yeah, um, very rarely did we fight or like get into any sort of arguments, and it it tended to be around towns when we were like suddenly out of the woods and like near a lot of things and people is when we would like start to get really anxious and agitated, and we we noticed that we noticed that pattern right away. We were like, we we don't argue at all unless we're like suddenly like around cars and like it's we need to make decisions around you know which store are we going to here or there, and suddenly we were like all jittery, we're like we need to go back, get back into the woods, like the woods is where it's safe. But that's when we noticed we were like the most agitated. It was so interesting. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Did you ever I mean, obviously, you noticed the pattern. Did you ever figure out what drove it? Like, what was the anxiety about?
SPEAKER_00I think just honestly, just like it being so different from this life that we had now established, which was so serene. And there was definitely something to say about the simplicity of it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Of like waking up, not really caring about anything. We had phones with us, they were never on. We would like turn them on in town to like check in with on home or something with with home or people.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But it was just such a different list of things that were our priorities. And on top of that, it was we were just in the woods. So it was like so quiet. We'd occasionally we saw more people than I think we expected, because there's a lot of crew hikers, section hikers, weekend people out and about. So, like the closer you got to towns and roads and things, you would see a decent amount of people, but definitely not a lot by any means. So it was like generally pretty quiet. And so when we would need to go to town and suddenly we were in a store or in like a fast food restaurant, one of like the worst places I could possibly think of on earth is a town called Gallenburg, Tennessee.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, that's where yes, it's awful.
SPEAKER_00Dollywood is, yep. Um, among other things. Yes, and it was so chaotic of a place. I I I would maybe find some things that I liked about it now, as if I were to visit there today and as a tourist. In the moment, it was like the worst possible place on earth. It was like a city of a circus, and the freaks that were there. And it was just so jarring to like the life that we had been living the last two months.
SPEAKER_02That makes total sense to me.
SPEAKER_00We were so shocked and shaken by like that. I was like, we gotta get food and get the hell out of Dodge. We gotta get back on the trail, take a bus, get us back out into the woods where it's safe.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I will. So I'm gonna take a sidebar here and I will tell you. And so now all the teabags, particularly the ones who know me in my real life, are gonna hear me say it right out loud. I have so many friends who love that place, and they're like, Oh my god, you know where you should go? There's this really cool place in Tennessee. And I'm like, okay, let me stop you there. It is the absolute worst place we've ever been. I loved the Smokies, like driving out into the Great Smoky Mountains, and we did a little bit of hiking in there too. Absolutely beautiful. But Gatlinburg is like what happens when you pick up an entire beach boardwalk and you plop it in the mountains. I don't want to go to a Ripley's believe it or not, in the mountains. Like, what are what are we doing? It was just so tacky to me. I absolutely hated it. There I just said it, it's now gonna be out in the ether, and everybody's gonna be like judging. I don't care. I love that place.
SPEAKER_00And like, no hate to the Jersey Shore, but like as even if you're in an intense boardwalk place on the shore, one whole side is open. You got the ocean. It's like a little bit less in trapping. We're like Gatlinburg, you're in it, you're like in a valley. I think you're literally trapped by mountains. So it's actually hard to leave Gatlinburg.
SPEAKER_02It it truly is, it truly is. Well, I'm really glad to know that I'm not the only person who didn't appreciate that place.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So yeah, that was like again, those kind of things that kind of took us out of the trail moment.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We thought were gonna be things that was like a little taste to home and something that we'd really enjoy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And we found that like the bigger the town, the like the scarier it was. And we were really kind of used to this very much more calming, yeah, quiet life.
SPEAKER_02That's really interesting. Because my one of my questions was actually gonna be like, especially when you first started, was it scary? I have never camped, I don't sleep outside. And so there, because there's a part of me, even now, like as a fully grown adult, I'd be like, nope, uh, find me a hotel. I'm I'm not about that life. I don't like bugs, I'm afraid of everything. And so, yeah, was that scary? But you're like in a spot where you develop more fear of the what is disrupting your peace, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Um, there was, I mean, to not sugarcoat it, there there have been I don't know where to start with this actually. Generally, I was we were not scared in that sense. I think there was things that we wanted to make sure we were mindful of. You're camping in the wild, there's wild animals, there's bears. I was carrying bear mace that my nana gave me to make sure that I was really ready for the bears.
SPEAKER_02Nanas always want to make sure you're protected.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my uncle had given me like a pretty hefty knife. And I was like, I've never carried anything like this in my life, but now it's like tucked in a strap on my calf, like Indiana Jones out here, right? And I was like, not that I would know what to do with either of these weapons if if I was attacked by a person or a bear.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00So the thing I was not gonna trigger earlier, there have been people who have been murdered while hiking the Appalachian Trail.
SPEAKER_01Fair.
SPEAKER_00People who people who are out in remote parts and some crazy person's out there and comes across their campsite and murders them or kidnaps them.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So that has happened. So I'd say, and I'd say that to me personally is scarier than bears of some crazy person coming across you on a trail. So, like, I was more worried about something like that happening, and I generally don't have a good opinion of the South, as you may have guessed. So there was more about that that I was worried about. I was like, we are in the deep Christian South at the time, a closeted gay kid and a Jewish girl. I was like, they are gonna eat us alive if they come across us.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I was more worried about that of just being in like a place that I was unfamiliar with, less so about the woods, more so just being really far from home in a place that I generally was not comfortable being in. Right. And we had some not like dangerous or truly bad by any means, but like some run-ins with some people who we could tell were just like not good people, even people who like we hitched rides with into town, some people who were like openly drinking in their truck, and we just like hopped in with them to bring us to town. And some of like the conversation, I was like, Oh, let's just like nod along and get to the store, quickly get out of the car as fast as we can. And I was just like, This is not a good sitch, but nothing again, everybody. Nothing ever really dangerous, or like where we ever felt like we were in trouble by any means. Yeah. Just like again, some weird happenings and past things where once we were, you know, out of the truck or like out of the shelter, we were like and far enough away, we said, okay, I can now we feel a little bit better. You can breathe a little bit, like we were uncomfortable at at worst. And then the closer we got to the northeast, where I was more familiar with the area, definitely felt a little bit like more comfortable just being in the in the places geographically that we were.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The camping outside thing, I never like thought too much about. Like it is a weird thing. And they like to be out in a tent, sleeping, sleeping on the ground, and then to have this bag of food that they say to make sure to hang with a rope 50 feet from your campsite. So if the bears are gonna go after anything, it's the bag of food and not you in the tent. Like that would that might deter more people than most from camping, right? More than one day, especially. And I guess we know I don't know, in that being with someone that definitely helps. There are people out there alone that I would have never done anything like that. I've never even camped alone. Yeah, let alone done something of that duration by myself. And there was definitely some people out there that I was like, you're a badass. If you're out here by yourself, like sleeping alone, no one to talk to, and like occasionally coming across people at a campsite or at a shelter. I was like, that's pretty badass. I don't think I mean I know I wouldn't have done that, I would never have done it by myself. So that was like a there was a level of security that I definitely felt with Laurel. She's also D1 soccer player. I was like, if anyone's protecting us in the woods, it's Laurel.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, she's gonna toss those hands.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00She, I said I lost 15 pounds. She somehow was gaining muscle, like during this walk. We would come across people on the trail, and people were like, Do you do something professionally? Like you must play a sport or do something. And she looked at me and she's like, You look like a skeleton. My body's like in distress and is somehow like I'm massing muscle and fat so that I don't so that I survive out here.
SPEAKER_01And you're like wasting superpower.
SPEAKER_00It was so just interesting how the two of our bodies kind of responded to it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, but she definitely would have protected us, if anything. I had my bear mace, but she would have punched a bear.
SPEAKER_02Love it. But understanding that there's some, you know, wariness and you do have to be mindful of other people, but you also encountered quite a cast of characters along your travels. And and also I like before we dive into that, which I do I want you to talk about because oh my god, like trail nicknames and the people that you encountered, I just think is so fun. It's such a fun part of your story. But I also want to make sure we touch on the fact that all throughout your journaling, right? Like through like basically from the start.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I started a journal, I brought a journal to make sure that we were kind of documenting the travels and the tales. And I don't know if I intended to write every day, but man, is walking boring. So, like, and we would walk and then we'd end hiking at like four or five. We'd have dinner, and then we would just be like laying in our tent. And I was like, okay, now what? So I was actually I was carrying books and I was reading a lot, and then pretty soon realized I was like, I should just write every day. We're gonna have time, and I might as well just kind of jot everything down. Somewhere along the early days, I was like, Oh, if I write about it, I can recall it later better, and I could, you know, retell stories or maybe write a book down the road or something because that was always like kind of something I wanted to do post-hike was like share just funny stories. There's been plenty of books written about the trail, but I thought mine could be a funny one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and not a deterrent for people, not a deterrent.
SPEAKER_00That that actually was what I wanted the theme of my book to be is like I want people to be excited if they come across this thing and want to do the Appalachian Trail, they shouldn't be scared because everyone has made it seem like this impossible thing. Like, yeah, it's hard and you do need to plan a little bit, yeah, some more than others, but like it's doable, like plenty of people do it, so don't like discourage people from the get-go. But it definitely did that. It definitely was like a good, you know, way to keep occupied while I was hiking. It was a good way to kind of note the funny things that happened. And I I I read it actually through for the first time last year. I transcribed the whole thing into and and typed it on the computer. So I was able to kind of read it, start to finish the whole way through and type it, which is great now for referencing it and just like to be able to read read through it. Man, we you could tell we were losing our minds. Some of the entries were like, today I saw a guy with a weed whacker, and I was like, was that the highlight? And the day got like a thumbs up. I was like, was it literally seeing a man with a weed whacker that like made this a good, exciting day for us?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And that's as simple as it really was. It was like, I ended up keeping pretty good documentation. So like every day we I wrote what we did, I wrote what we ate, I wrote what the weather was. Every day got a one, zero, or negative one rating. And so it was like, I mean, obviously, I'm a data nerd. So it was like really cool to kind of go through it now and like see the the patterns of like what I thought was the good day. Yeah, and it was truly something wacky that we saw, or like something normal that we thought was wacky, or like a really good meal that we had, and that was like the theme, and that resulted in a good day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Luckily, we were right in the happy place of enough rain where streams and places that we were supposed to get water had water and not so much rain that there was like multiple consecutive days of rain. That's probably the biggest thing that would prevent people from finishing or has gotten people to stop stop hiking, okay, is like days and days of rain where everything is wet, you cannot dry things out, and you get all blisters and rot on your feet. It's just like if we had had it was like I think two separate times where we had two days of rain in a row, and I was like, yeah, I think a third might put me over the like better not rain tomorrow. I think we're done.
SPEAKER_01You go a little insane.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and luckily it didn't. And on the third day, we you know hiked in the morning, had lunch in this sunny space where we laid out all our stuff, and then we were dry after that. And I was like, if you couldn't do that and didn't have the means to dry stuff out, I would you would go absolutely crazy if and at the very worst, like you're you you would start deteriorating your body. So I was like, I could see that going horribly. And that was again, most of our my thumb down days were days when it rained.
SPEAKER_02Makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Um, no, no good food or anything could turn that around. It's just like walking wet just sucked.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, but luckily, again, it was very few and far between. Even the first day of rain was like a week or so in, and we happened to be camping with this father and son pair. And we were trudging through the rain, and we got to this road, and the dad was like, If you call us a taxi, I'll get us uh both uh hotel rooms for the night. And I was like, Don, deal. So I like pulled my blackberry out of my bag and I'm like, get me the hell out of here. So like we called this taxi, it picked us up, brought us to the town that we knew was like a short bit away, and he got a room for me and Laurel and him and his son. And so the first rainy night we didn't even spend outside. We spent in a hotel room, like shaking our things out, drawing everything out, so like the next day we were ship shaped. So we had both like good luck with the weather and just like some good companions and good fortune and in like kind of times when it could have been really frustrating or upsetting, and like certain things that happened that kind of kept us on on a good path and like a good a good mentality about it. Because like I could see a few of the a few things like that adding up if they were close enough together where you were like, this isn't worth it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Talk a little bit about trail names.
SPEAKER_00Trail names. So as is tradition, when you're out on the trail, whether for a short bit or a long bit, you you get give yourself or preferably get assigned a trail name by some thing that you do or say um that hikers pick up on and don you this title that you now have to carry throughout the trail and the rest of your life. Um if we had camped at mile seven on day one, we probably would have given been given a trail name.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00By the by our our hiker peers that were also camping at mile seven.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Because we in fact surpassed that and camped together alone on the side of a river, no one was there to give us a trail name. Not intentionally by any means, but like that kind of happened over the next couple days where we either like weren't around people or we like just weren't doing anything notable or silly enough where someone was like, Yes, that's your trail name. There was a guy who was like putting out a fire with his foot and they called him Hotfoot, and like that was his name for like the next six months. There was someone who was like always a little bit behind, so they called him Dilly Dally, like it could be literally anything and everything. The the the dad that got us the hotel room, his name was Thomas Thomas. I don't usually trust anyone with two names, let alone the same first name.
SPEAKER_02No, that was for real his name.
SPEAKER_00His name. So whether this was a nickname earlier, but he was called T Squared. And so some of it's like you know, more related to your the way you look or your actual name. Other stuff did some dump thing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00There was this guy that we hiked with that we really weren't a huge fan of. Um, and we saw him occasionally, but he ate a bunch of Snickers bars. So what do you think his trail name was? Snickers? Snickers. But yeah, there was like anything and everything under the sun. So like we had been a week or two in and we still didn't have trail names. And so we were introducing ourselves as like, oh, I'm still Chris and like still Laurel. And I was like, oh fuck, if we say that like one or two more times, that's gonna become our trail name. Exactly. So I was like, we got to do something about this. So we like had a powwow at one of our campsites together, her and I. And we're like, we're just gonna we're gonna give ourselves nicknames or trail names. So Laurel, again, having gone to school up in the northeast, she loves moose. Like she lives lives close to a mountain up there called Mount Moose Loch, which is on the uh Appalachian Trail, and actually where Laurel ended up getting married a couple years later. And so her trail name was Moose. Okay. And her last name was Peak. And I was like, come on, nothing with Peak. This is a shoe-in. She was like, no. Uh so she was Moose. And then I had mine was less linear in terms of how I arrived there, but I was just kind of trying to think of something funny that no one else would have that trail name. Maybe I was watching Napoleon Dynamite a lot before the hike, but my trail name ended up being Tetherball.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00So Moose and Tetherball out on the trail. That was our blog that we ended up keeping.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's so cool. And then talk about you gotta talk about ponytail Dave.
SPEAKER_00Ponytail Dave. Um, the last note I was gonna say, we did we did end up passing a tetherball pole about halfway through the hike. And I was like, okay, well, it this wouldn't have meant as much if I had just been tetherball randomly. But I was like, we stopped and we played tetherball for like two hours. It was like in some like the yard of a library or something.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And we just put our packs down, set up the camera, and just like filmed ourselves playing tetherball for like an hour and a half while we had lunch, and it was just the best. And I was like, okay, now I can at least point to that and say, truly tetherball now. I have lived up to the name, it's not just a name, it is the embodiment of me on the trail. Love it. Um, so that that was I'm glad that that can't kind of came to fruition. But yeah, ponytail Dave. He was a propane salesman, actually, I think from Pittsburgh.
SPEAKER_01No way.
SPEAKER_00PTD, I think he's in your neck of the woods. I think it was Pittsburgh. So he another thing about so he was just like again, like an older guy, I think he was maybe 50, 55, that we met about a month in in a town called Damascus, Virginia. It's the first town you hit in Virginia, and it's a big, a big trail culture town. A lot of a lot of towns that we walk through in the south. I have a few tangents here, but they're all good. Yeah, good con good context. A lot of the towns in the south, the trail still goes directly through a lot of towns, and these towns just love the hiker culture and they like kind of live around the hiker culture. They have restaurant specials that are like two to three dollars where you can get a full plate for if you're you know doing a through hike. They do they have hostels where you can do work for stay, work in the kitchen or plant some flowers, and you get a like a free meal or a shower or like a bunk for the night. And they just love hikers and stories, and it's just such they're such communal towns. Damascus is like this just massive hiker town. They actually host an event every year called Trail Days. And a lot of people, if they're within a couple hour drive of Damascus, even if they're ahead on the trail, we debated doing this. They go back, they get the little hitch a ride back to Damascus for trail days, and it's just this big, you know, weekend of celebrating hikers and being in the outdoors and stuff, and then they'll get rides back to where they were on the trail.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So it's just like a really fun town. Everyone likes to celebrates, you know, being a month in, about, you know, a couple hundred miles. You've now gone through three states. Virginia would be your fourth state now. You're on, like, so every time you're like crossing a line, it's like a big celebration. So we got to Damascus, we like restocked, we're getting like a good meal, and we shared a booth at the restaurant with Ponytail Dave. Just this older guy with the beard, chit-chatting. He wore this like kind of like mesh cowboy hat that had flames up the side. And he told us his story of why he was hiking and his brother um had passed away, and he was carrying a framed photo of his brother in his bag. So, meanwhile, there's people cutting their stupid fucking credit cards in half. And we're carrying food, and Ponytail Dave's carrying, you know, his picture of his brother. And so there's no like right way to do it, to do any part of the trail. And it was just such a cool story, and we had an awesome, awesome dinner, and we were like, maybe see you down the road. And we said that like somewhat facetiously, but also somewhat realistically, because it's 2,000 miles, but it's one long trail. And like, if you stay on the trail and you walk a certain pace, you'll see someone again that you saw earlier actually leaving Damascus. I dropped a my baseball hat. It was like clipped on my bag or something and it fell. And I was like, Oh damn, that sucks. The next shelter we got through, there's these journals, so you can kind of write your name and write, you know, passing through Moose and Tetherball. We'd like to write fun like song quotes and hiking trails in the little journal. And so every time you like went by a shelter, you could look in the journal and kind of see who had passed there recently. And so, first shelter we hit, I was like, Hey, it's tetherball, drop my hat. If anyone, if anyone saw it and grabbed it and you're a fast hiker, find me up the road. And it's like that simple. It's like you might see me again, you might not, depends on how fast you're walking. In that same time, we got past like a baton, somebody's croc that had that had fallen on the trail. Oh no, so we were carrying someone's croc. His trail name was Mexico. We were carrying Mexico's croc. Sure enough, like a couple weeks later, we're at a campsite, and some guy like runs in and he was like, Tetherball here. I was like, I'm tetherball. And he pulls my hat out of his backpack. Reunited with my my hiking hat.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, that's so cool.
SPEAKER_00So it's just like this one long stupid walkway where like if you your odds are you're gonna see someone again. If it's like just not odds are, but like the the odds are over zero that you'll like run into someone again based on how you're walking. So anyway, ponytail dave again. That was like May 1st, I think was like exactly month one for us when we hit Damascus. And so now it's like a couple months later, we're we've gone through, let's see if I can name them all like Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York. And it does cut through the corner of Connecticut a little bit. So, like while we were cutting through the corner of Connecticut, we had my parents come pick us up, bring us home for like a nice, you know, a couple nights at home, a couple meet good, really good meals. We took what's called a zero day when you don't hike any miles. And so we took a handful of those throughout the trip, not many, but we took one in Gettysburg and we we met some of my friends there. We took a day off and just like hung at their house, like went in the pool, ate a bunch. Again, it's all about what are we eating that we couldn't get on the trail. Right. Like, let's be off our feet. So we're like in the pool eating ice cream. And then our next planned zero day was in Connecticut. My parents came and picked us up, had an awesome couple days at home, and then they brought us back to the trail so we could, you know, step right on our feet where we left the trail. So no trail snob said that we never that we skipped any.
SPEAKER_02And that's like was that like important to you for that reason?
SPEAKER_00Or did you just like it was just a thing that you we were just like playing along with the thing. Like there was there was like one time where we ended up rejoining somewhere, like the we hitched a ride and then they brought us back to like somewhere slightly different. But there were other days where we literally got lost, or like one of us would look up and like we were like, Have you seen a white blaze in a while? And we realized we had just been like walking with our head down, and so we drop our packs and we both would like go one of the ways down the trail until we saw a blaze and then come back and report to like make sure we were on the right path. So we might have like skipped them skipped some yards here and there, but we also gained yards by like getting lost or like clearing off trail right every now and then. So I was like, again, we averaged at 2200 or whatever the distance was. So yeah, it was less about I was like, Ma, just bring us back to where we generally got off the trail. But we would get we got back on at that particular junction, like you know, we said bye to my parents and started walking north again, as we do. And then we passed, we crossed another guy, and he he looked at us, and maybe it's just like our the you know, a guy and a girl walking together, but he was like, Are you guys moose and tetherball? And like how it just I don't know if I could like tell you how funny it is, or maybe you could maybe it's funnier for you to like picture being in the woods and some random person comes across you and is like, Karen? You had it right, and it but that was so normal for us that we're like, why wouldn't these people know our trail names? Like that's right, the tale of Moose and Tetherball that we've left in the shelter books for the last 2,000 miles, right? And so he goes, I have been walking a bit with ponytailed Dave, and he's been he's been seeing your names in the shelter books for like weeks, and you're continually like a day or two ahead of him, and he's like trying to catch you, and he like can't. And we're like, Oh, we just took like a day off in Connecticut, like, where is he now? And so he goes, Now he's he's ahead of you guys now. And so we're like, Oh my god, we gotta catch ponytailed Dave. And so I think it took a couple days, but um, sure enough, we're just like walking along. I think we might be in Massachusetts now, or like walking, and suddenly we see this flaming cowboy hat down the path. Oh my god, Dave, and we're yelling his name, and he turns and we run at each other down the path and have the most like emotional reconnection and embrace. Oh wow, for someone that we met for one night two months prior to that, yeah. And we were like, Holy hell, like how you doing? How'd you like? What have what have you been doing the last two months? Yeah, and we just had like the funniest like little reconnection, and then from that moment on, it was a tri we were a trio and we walked. I think we there was a few times we split up, but for the majority of the last month and a half, we walked together and we actually summited on the same day, so we finished on the same day.
SPEAKER_02That is so cool, and what's really, really interesting when I'm listening to you talk about all these different aspects of this hike is the fact that I would imagine that because of the simplicity, because you're scaling down your existence, there has to be something about the connection with other people almost being deeper in a way and and more meaningful. Like, and I think that's a kind of a really good example of that. But I'm sure it happened with other people too, maybe not quite to that same degree, but because you're all kind of out there in the same boat where everybody's existence has gotten smaller in a really noticeable way.
SPEAKER_00For sure. There was definitely a bit of kinship, especially the farther you got. So, like knowing that people were dropping like flies in the beginning, and that when you saw someone two and a half, three, four now months in, yeah, that had started in Georgia, usually like plus or minus 15 days to the day that you started, right? You knew there was an immediate kind of bond and kinship that like you knew what they have just gone through. You pretty much have done the exact same hike.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Again, whether you started a week later or earlier than them, you each have hiked now a hundred plus or minus days to be at the spot.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So there was definitely a bit of like closeness right off the bat for anyone who we recognize as kind of a through hiker. And so Ponytail Dave, we were with a bit more, and then there was also another group of like six or so other people where for a period, a couple weeks at least, we had like a 10-person little click.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_00And we wouldn't like hike in a line altogether. Some days we would, which was fun. And then other days we kind of knew generally where we were stopping, and so we we could at least camp together. And that was like such amazing community by that point. Not that we like didn't want or need that in the beginning. It was just like there's so many people. I don't know like how serious they are. Sure. I don't know. It was like a lot sillier at the beginning. Everyone's like, Oh, yeah, we just start now, this and that. Like by the end, you're like, okay, this person has walked 1500 miles. Like, we know they're legit. That sounds like we were being judgy, but like it just helped us, I don't know, feel on the same page a bit more. And so we loved at that point like having a 10-person campsite where we all like were kind of waking up together and then hike sleeping at the same spots. And so we kind of knew where our days were beginning and ending.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_00Let me think of some trail names in that group. So that was the Dilly Dally that I mentioned earlier. His wife was Cubby because she was from Chicago for the Cubs.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um, there was Lola and Sunrise, were another married couple. Uh Ridley, I forget what Ridley was about. Ridley and Panther were another duo. So I don't know. I don't know if I remember the stories for any of these, but that was like kind of an Inferno was another girl, a girl who was our age at the time, like early 20s, who had done the whole thing by herself.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow.
SPEAKER_00Um, so I think she too, especially liked a bit of the camaraderie and um companionship.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_00Fellowship fellowship, if you will.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Yes. There is there is a fellowship element of this.
SPEAKER_00Very much so. Yeah. Yeah. Mount Mount Doom and Maine that we were walking to.
SPEAKER_02As you're sort of journaling and your blogging, you created trail rules. Is that right? They were your creation. These are not things that people told you along the way. This is like things that you developed along the way. Is that right?
SPEAKER_00Things that we developed. Yeah. So we had again, I started a blog, not knowing exactly like what I was gonna do or how I was gonna keep up with it. Occasionally we'd go through towns where we would like make sure to stop by the library. So Laurel was like checking in on some emails. I would, if I had enough time, watch an episode of Lost because the season six was on and I didn't want to get too far behind. Right. Or I would like do a like quick little entry of of the blog. So it was like every three weeks at most, if but usually farther apart. So there weren't a ton of entries, but I just thought it was really funny to kind of share some of our perspective of like things we were learning along the way. Some like serious trail rules, or a bit more serious, some a bit more silly. Um, but just like things that we would sometimes learn the hard way, like eating truly all you can eat at a all you can eat restaurant. Uh-huh. Felt great at the time, but did not result in like a great next couple days. But other tips about like where you could get, you know, free stay, which was really leveraging and abusing religious folk because they just like love to give away free shit. So like you'd find a good church, you're like, I'm gonna stay the night. You oh, you got free meal too, I'll take that. And then we'd swing by the library and get free toilet paper from their bathroom. Like we we were literally scavenging scavenging these businesses and people's homes to try to like stock our bags to save a little bit of money.
SPEAKER_02I love how how Trail Rule 18, by the way, was never go to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I love that it made the list.
SPEAKER_00It had to make the cut. And it was like just in case the trail looped back, we were gonna skip that stop. Let's see what else is in here that's fun. Um, don't turn down a chance to slack pack. So slack packing is a really fortunate event if you have the opportunity to do it, where some willing and able person carry not carries, but shut shuttles your bag and all the heavy things to the place that you're gonna be done hiking for the day. And so we had a good opportunity to do that two or three times where we were with a group and they had like kind of found someone who was who they had coordinated to do some slack packing with. So you keep your backpack, but just bring like lunch and water. Yeah. And then you're just flying. You go from a 40-pound back bag to like less than five pounds. You just feel light as air, flying down the path. You're even jogging sometimes. And some of those days we were doing like 25, 30 miles a day. Holy crap. Which just like felt great to not have the weight. It felt great in terms of like knocking out a huge chunk of trail. So don't turn down, turn down a chance to slack back. The snobs would say, You have to carry your bag the whole way, but whatever we didn't.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you have to carry your bag.
SPEAKER_00You're gonna carry my bag 30 miles, go for it. That's right. Well, were you gonna pick on our asset?
SPEAKER_02Oh, no, I just wanted to know. So, what is the trail always wins?
SPEAKER_00Uh I mean that number one with a capital T for trail. Yeah, it's like you gotta respect the C. It's I think we learned early on that we tried to shortcut. We like we tried to do some things that we thought were like normal but not trail normal. I think I would equate the thing I did on the first day of like getting overexcited and running down the trail. Like that was trying to like that. That was the trail saying slow the fuck down. Yeah. You're like getting ahead of your your boots, just like take your time. And so, like, I think the trail kind of put us in our place a few times where we like thought we were doing something sneaky or like you know, having good juju, and this was happening, and then it would like something would happen, just remind us like the trail is king out here. Like, we have to watch where we're going, we have to like be smart, we have to look out for things. It's not just like two people out skipping in the woods. So, like, we have to like respect the trail. Yeah, and so I think that was like our our main mantra the whole way was just like respect the trail. Like, that's really all it is. It's like you're out, we're out here, we're guests on this. It's like be mindful of ourselves, how we're how what we're doing out here, what we're saying, how we're being. And it was just like that. I mean, obviously that's a more serious one, but it was like the root of what we're out here. We're not out here to like fuck around and leave things worse than we found it and shortcut things. So we're like out here to so it meant something at the end.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And then the other one I wanted you to put a little explanation behind was be the first one to trail magic and the last to leave.
SPEAKER_00Oh, we haven't even talked about trail magic.
SPEAKER_02We haven't.
SPEAKER_00And trail angels, and so this again gets into maybe we should have felt a bit more of a pang of danger. Say you're out in the woods, far from home, you come across a cooler, you open said cooler, and there are drinks and sandwiches. Are you wary? Do you partake? What are your what are your thoughts and feelings?
SPEAKER_02I mean, I think I would not partake, I would be very wary. And like it's a trap, maybe. Well, 100%. And I've watched those movies and I've played video games. So to me, yes, it's a trap, but also I'm not in the middle of the woods starving potentially because I've just been burning a ton of calories. So I like me sitting here right now talking to you, I'm like, absolutely not. Keep your hands out of that cooler.
SPEAKER_00Well, we were like trail magic, cooler, sandwiches. And it was like the best thing ever to come across something that somebody left on the trail.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00Presumably a very nice, noble person that's not giving us poison drinks for sandwiches.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00And it's just for the hikers and the taking. And so that was at the core of it, just trail magic. It's like things that people would do to help out hikers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You could call, like, you know, someone offering you a free night. They're a trail angel, and that's trail magic they're offering you. It's just like nice, selfless things that people would do to kind of support hikers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00At the simplest, it's like something left on the side of the trail. There have been whole barbecues going on where it's like near a trailhead, someone will have a full-on tailgate. They're making burgers, coolers of beer, yeah. And they're just happy to have any hiker come through, stop for a burger and a beer and hang out and talk. And they just want to share the food, share this, have them hiker share stories.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so when we did come across those things, there was always a little bit of nagging at us, like, oh, we got to stay on schedule. We can't like linger. Like, we don't have a timeline, but like every if we do too many, you know, extra stays here and that, it's going to take us 10 more days, and that's 10 more days of food we need. And so we were always kind of like battling of how fast should we be moving? We don't want to like make it seem like we're out here to set records. So we want to like kind of enjoy people's company when there's company to enjoy. But when we came across something like that, it was so special and so meaningful to kind of take our packs off, really kind of sit down and stop. And if you did come across it luckily early enough in the day, you would just hang out and you would kind of like alter your plan for the latter half half of the day so that you could kind of hang out longer than you would normally intend to. Yeah. Just to make sure you were like getting sustenance the way you could as much as you could, and just taking a break and staying sane, enjoying the social, socializing of it. So you you would want to hang out at those places. Yeah, other otherwise like trail angels were just the the the good Samaritans along the way uh that offered you rides, um places to stay. Some of them self-labeled trail angels so much. There was one lady who likes helping hikers so much that she they let they let this hiking guidebook print her cell phone number in the guide in the guidebook, and she's like, Call me if you're passing through town. So we're like, I don't feel bad calling her because she told us to. She said. So we we called Trail Angel Mary and she came and picked us up, brought us to the store, did our laundry, and then brought us back. So um, some people are very committed to it and like kind of make it a bit of their personality. Others very much happen stance, and like someone who happens to pick us up, and then we end up spending the whole afternoon with this guy who picked us up on the highway. I'm not gonna remember the number, Route 78. Does that cut through like southeastern Pennsylvania?
SPEAKER_02It cuts through parts of Pennsylvania through Hanover.
SPEAKER_00Goes by a big um, what's the big sporting goods store on the hill?
SPEAKER_02Cabela's is what you're thinking.
SPEAKER_00Big Cabela's, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00The trail goes right kind of by there. We actually ran across the trail crosses that highway.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Yeah. And we so that's actually that's northeast of Hanover, like by by a bit. But yeah, 78 actually starts at like 81, like near where 81 and 83 are. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I know. There it the our drive, my drive from Connecticut to Gettysburg is coming back. Yes, yes. But this guy stopped on the highway, picked us up, brought us to his house. We showered, did laundry, and then he brought us to he belonged to like this speakeasy firehouse club where like it like was a functioning firehouse, but it also had a a full bar inside. And so we went to the he brought us to the firehouse and knocked on this little window, and this like shutter came across.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then he brought us in, and it was a bunch of his buds from town. Port Clinton, I think the town was called.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Yeah. That's amazing.
SPEAKER_00And it was just like a bunch of buds sitting in the dark with some light coming in the windows, serving beer. They had like a bowl of chili behind the bar that they were serving, and we just like wined and dined. And like then he brought us back to the trail. He too, we were like hugging and crying. And I'm like, I just met this guy two hours ago. Yeah. But he like took such good care of us and was like so just invested in the rest of our journey that John from Port Clinton was like now on our list of trail angels that like helped us along the way.
SPEAKER_02It's really interesting in how, like, for me, it's testing the boundaries in my brain of how I trust or do not trust people. So it's like you're saying things that make total sense. And in that context, again, it's like you're you are building a community, though it's a sh for short periods of time, but those are short, intense bursts of connection that sound really amazing. But when I think about that, just in like a day-to-day life, I would be like, Oh my god, I'm never getting into that person's car. Like, I'm gonna end up on a documentary or their home, or their home.
SPEAKER_00There was some okay, so let me get into Fran from Bland.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So literally a town in Virginia called Bland. That's right. Who in their right mind would settle down in Bland? I can't imagine that. And we had stopped in Bland, a planned stop in Bland.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00And we went to the grocery uh to the post office because Laurel, that's where Laurel had shipped a replacement backpack. Okay. So her one of her straps had broken and she shipped a replacement backpack there. And so we uh went to the post office and the backpack hadn't arrived yet. And we were not planning on spending the night in Bland. And so we were kind of like debating what to do. Should we spend the night here? Should we forward it on to this town? And we might have to walk another you know week with the broken backpack, but like you know, these are our options. There's a woman in the post office in her bathrobe named Fran. So we learned, and she it's like literally something out of a like a horror movie. She's she goes, Little ones.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, no, she didn't.
SPEAKER_00Like, I overheard your troubles. Like, I can offer you a night at my house. I've just made a pot of chili. Like, come to my house. I'm like, this is all the makings. What you had me at chili. I was like, what'd you say now? And Laurel's like elbowing me. She goes, We can't go to this woman's house. I was like, she just made us a pot of chili. Did you not hear her? And so we we whispered and debated for like a couple minutes, and then we're like, We'll at least come with you while we figure out what to do next. And so we left the post office with Fran in her bathroom. We got we got in Fran's van. This is like this, actually, might be a nursery rhyme that I have to write.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00So we got in Fran's van and she drove us back to her house in Bland.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00And we had a nice chili lunch. We made all the jokes. Laurel's like, these are former hikers in the chili that we're eating. And we respect respectfully went outside and called our families and told us like where we were and the address that we were at. I texted my brother and I was like, we're fine. But if I don't text you in the morning, this isn't the address that we're at. Because we did, in fact, we did, in fact, or or worse, we did in fact decide to stay the night. Um, but we made sure again to like at least tell some people where we were. She was married, and while we're eating dinner at her house, her husband, who was a nurse and was working most of the day, came home and gave like the most audible eye roll and sighed. Like his wife does this all the time. He's like, another fucking hiker eating my chili, my brownies that you just made. Now there's these two dirty ass people in my living room in my couch, eating my food. And Fran's just like, more hikers. Oh my god. And so, again, as you said, it's this weird line of like, are we safe here? Like, it can we trust this person? She seems nice. Uh, is this food poisoned? Is she gonna kill us in the night? Right. We don't know.
SPEAKER_02Why is she not dressed in clothing?
SPEAKER_00Why is she calling us little ones? I was like, she's gonna eat us and put us in the chili for the next hikers.
SPEAKER_02Right, we are going directly into her oven. Yes.
SPEAKER_00So she cooked us dinner, we watched Star Trek. I ate a whole sleeve of Oreos, and then we fell asleep in our sleeping bags on her living room floor.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00I fell right asleep. Laurel told me the next day that she was like wide-eyed staring at the ceiling. Again, because she was a good Christian woman. And again, if she knew that a gay guy and a Jewish girl were sleeping in our living floor, she would have put us in the chili. But it wasn't until the next morning she dropped us off at the trail and then drove away. We were like, she was nice.
SPEAKER_02It was so lovely.
SPEAKER_00And then we like texted my brother, and Laurel called her mom. We were like, We good walking north.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00And then and then Laurel got her backpack at the next town. That's amazing. It's just it was such a weird, especially again, as I said, down south. Like, I it was just like a different amorphous trust was just like very fluid. Yeah, we were like, do we feel comfortable enough and protective enough of ourselves to trust this situation, this person?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00There was one time where we camped at a shelter and there were a couple guys there. I forget like exactly what they were saying, but I was like, We're too close to town. They had carried beer in and they were like pretty drunk. And we actually like repacked our tent and bags and walked another couple miles in the dark. Yeah. I was like, we're out of our element here. This is not somewhere I want to like close my eyes and go to sleep, and we need to like move on. And so it was awkward because they were like, What do you where are you guys going? And we just like quickly packed our bag, shoved stuff in our backpacks, and then like walked another couple miles.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But it was yeah. So again, never fear danger per se that we knew of. Saw a couple bears from afar. Um, but it was always just kind of like situations, just assessing, making sure we felt good about where we were at and like the current the current sit and how what our what our role in it was.
SPEAKER_02I love this so much. I can't wait until you write a book.
SPEAKER_00I know it's there's some good content for sure.
SPEAKER_02So much good content. Before we wrap and get to three good things about your week, I do want you to share what were some of the life lessons that you learned. And also, well, actually, before you even get to that, I want to know how long it actually took you. And sort of because you're you said on average it's like seven-ish, eight, eight-ish months, it normally takes. How long did it take you guys? And then I want you to talk about what are some of the lessons that you learned? What did you feel like you discovered about yourself?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, generally, like I said, it takes like the fastest. I mean, there's like speed records, but generally, if you're just hiking, some people could do it as fast as four months, some people do it longer, can take up to seven or eight months. We did four and a half, which again like wasn't intended for us to do it as fast as we did, but we just kind of like kept pace. We took a couple days off here and there, but we were like very comfortable, comfortably happy with like the pace and and the time that it took us to do it. And by that time, we were like pretty ready. We're like, again, neither of us did this because we like living in the woods. We did it to do it, and even towards the end, with the last day looming, you camp at the base of Mount Katahdin. Um, you see Mount Katahdin over two weeks before you get to it.
SPEAKER_02Is that is that fun or is it frustrating?
SPEAKER_00That's the worst. You're like that, we have to make it to that. And we knew that we were still a good like 10 plus days of hiking away from it. Yeah, but you get to the base of Mount Catahdin and you you camp the night, and then by that time, again, we were with Ponytail Dave, Inferno, and then the two of us. And Ponytail Dave's wife had met us there in the state park, and the she did the ascent with us in the morning. And so it's a five-mile ascent up to the mount top of Mount Catahdin, and we woke up, started the hike, and as we're walking, we're like, Oh my god, last five miles, like this is crazy. Are we gonna like cry at the top? Like, I don't know. Like, how do you how do you feel? And she was like, Laurel was like, uh, I don't know. I think I feel okay. Like, I feel like accomplished, good. Like, I was like, I don't know, maybe we'll cry, maybe not. And so we got to the top and we like touched the sign, and then we like looked at each other, and we're just like double high-five. We're like, okay, let's do that. No tears, no tears. Honestly, like it wasn't as emotional as I thought. I think it was definitely a challenge, but not, I don't know. I and again, reading through some of my my entries in my journal and seeing the amount of days that I gave a plus one to and a thumbs up. I think I generally just enjoyed it more than I expected. And it wasn't as taxing where like completing it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. I wouldn't even say it was the hardest thing I've ever done. So we very much felt so accomplished and so happy that we did it together. And then we watched Inferno summit, and then we watched Dave Summit, and he was a mess, and he had his picture of his brother, and everyone was then like crying and kind of celebrating together. And then, of course, we had to end with trail fuckery by hiking five miles back down.
SPEAKER_02You start with trailfuckery.
SPEAKER_00So call it 22 2206 miles with the stupid ass mile at the beginning and the five miles at the end.
SPEAKER_03Oh my god, that's it.
SPEAKER_00And then we we hitchhiked to the nearest town where my parents were waiting for us and they took us home. And so then it was over. And Laurel came back with us to Connecticut and we we spent the night and kind of like reflected on it. And there's a lot of times now where I think about the time we spent out there. And again, I'll say the simplicity of it. It was a really especially for two people who weren't quite ready to enter the professional world and have a lot of these concerns. By that time, most of my friends from school had moved to New York and started jobs, and it was all about finances and rent and all this stuff. It was just like a really nice, carefree way to live for five for five months.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And it just the the speed of it, everything slowed down. And it was like, oh, did you see that tree today? And that was like a big thing, and the views, and um, we appreciate it obviously so much. The companionship was great, and Laurel is still such a good friend of mine. I unfortunately don't see her as much as I would like. She ended up getting married, like I said, on the top of Mount Moose Lock a few years later, and then she now has a family out in Washington State. The last time I actually called her, she was on a trail run. So she's still out doing her thing. And we've talked about doing the PCT, the Pacific Crest Trail out in California. I debated even doing the Colorado Trail, which is just like a couple hundred mile trail in Colorado. And so we've we've neither of us have ever done anything like that, as much as we've kind of like dreamt about it or talked about how fun it would be. Sure. But the life for sure, I think both of us probably miss of just like simple things, simple cares. And I never even finished it being like, Yeah, told you mom and dad.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00You said I couldn't do it. And I did like there was so so little of that, even by like a couple weeks in. I was like, that's not by any means why I'm doing this anymore.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And it's for me, and it's for me and Laurel. And so by the end, it wasn't even like what I thought it was gonna be at the beginning, but it was just awesome. And I'm so glad it was it's such a such a small, I don't know, community of people who can say that they they did it, and I love that. And it just like inspired more of these kind of long, challenging things like marathons, like running up the Empire State Building as a race. Um, just like fun things that like kind of fit that bill again of like challenging, rewarding. Yeah. So I do I do think about it a lot. I'm like, do I what is this life I live now? Working on my screens and yeah, I need to go, I need to go seek solace in the woods.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah, you need to go find another ponytail Dave.
SPEAKER_00One day we'll be reunited.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you will. I'm gonna now I'm gonna make it my mission to find him. I wonder if he's still in Pittsburgh.
SPEAKER_00Go to all your propane dispensaries in Pittsburgh.
SPEAKER_02Do you feel like What were you gonna ask? No, I was just gonna ask, like, do you feel like and you kind of illustrated this already by you know, it became something different than what it was when you started, and you no longer were trying to prove anything to anybody else. Do you feel like you proved something to yourself? Do you feel like this did something for your confidence, your self-reliance? Like, what do you learn about you doing something like this?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, it definitely naturally does something with your self-esteem and confidence. Again, obviously that was a big thing that pushed me to do it again, was a bit of like, you know, show people that despite not playing collegiate lacrosse, I still can be an athlete in you know certain ways or you know, have the strength and stamina to do this certain thing. Right. So I think it naturally had that kind of effect where it obviously made me feel great. I mean, you can finish a 5k and you feel great. Like like this is just that on steroids. I was like, I I did this, you know, big hard thing and it was a physical feat despite finishing at 145 pounds.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, big strong man. So, so definitely, definitely that. And I don't know, it did, I don't know, fed into a lot of more ways about how moving out from that point. It was less about like me proving anything or like proving them wrong, as I said at the beginning about like what I thought was the main goal of this whole thing. And I think that did help me through through a lot of my life adult journeys and kind of other things that that came after that. I think the confidence in doing things for me and doing things the way that I wanted to do them, yeah, is has always been super important to me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I think leaving the trail with that on that kind of note was really helpful and kind of helped shape the next couple of years in particular.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. You had a really, really beautiful experience. I'm so just grateful that you shared it with me because it it is such a cool story. And as you're talking about it, I'm like, oh my God, you have to write this because I want to read it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So that was always kind of a goal to like share this a bit more. A lot really appreciate chatting with you too. Cause like I'm gonna definitely share this with a few folks because like it's the most I probably shared in one sitting about about this. And it is giving me a lot of inspired to get back in the in the writing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. All right, it's time. Three good things about your week rolling seven days.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well, I'm off work this week. They give us my nice corporate job, it gives me a summer break so that everyone can reset. And that's that's been really great. So I've been off all week leading up to the holiday. We were gonna travel, we're just doing some local, you know, staycation, home, home tidying stuff, which has been really great. I got a new uh Dutch oven for making baguettes, and so I've made into sourdough a few years after the you know the COVID sourdough trend, but yes, really love making sourdough. And um, I've connected with a lot of people at work about it. And actually, my boss, I got her into it, and so she's been sharing me the bread she's been making, and she recommended this baguette mold. Um, and I'm gonna try that out today, actually. Nice. And then a great one just happened yesterday where I was like, this is perfect timing. This is gonna be my third good thing. It's like the gooddest Samaritan I've ever been. Um, driving on the road in Palm Springs, I witnessed a fender bender happen, and I pulled over when they pulled over to to be a key witness in what happened to make sure that like, you know, everyone was being accountable for who caused it. And sure enough, the guy who caused it pulled over, but then was like, that wasn't my fault, and drove off. And I was fully ready to like start practicing my testimony. And Ryan was like, idiot, we have a dash cam that we installed last month. I was like, hell yeah. Got on the dash cam, sent the guy the footage of the the hit and run guy, and was like, Got him, your your case is locked. Yeah. And so thankfully, we have not had to use the dash cam yet, but like there's so many old crazy drivers here. They were like, we should get it just to be sure. So sure. Thankfully, the first time using it wasn't for our benefit or anything that happened to us, but it was a great use of the dash cam footy.
SPEAKER_02You got a great test run of the dash cam and all the good it can do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was like textbook. I'll be like, I'll do a dash cam commercial any day of the week.
SPEAKER_02That is a really great third thing, and also kind of like tracks with the theme of your adventurous spirit because yeah, put me on the road exactly.
SPEAKER_00I'm like, I want to be a bounty hunter, like a dash cam bounty hunter now. I'll just drive around waiting for accidents so that I can follow up with footage.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's so great. Well, thank you. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_00I was just gonna I was gonna thank you. This was really awesome and overdue. And uh next happy to do another episode in person.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, I can't wait. I it's funny. I was actually telling Kenzie, I was like, Yeah, I'm so bummed that we couldn't like figure out how to make this work live in Pittsburgh. I was like, I will totally come to Palm Springs, like we can definitely yeah, I was gonna say, my kitchen table goes everywhere, so yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Have table will travel, yeah. We'll film out here next.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Karen.
SPEAKER_02Love you, love you.