The BIG BIG BIG BIG News……….. for those who have not yet heard……….

I’ll cut right to the chase.

Steve and I have moved up our departure date just a “tad”.

We are now aiming for March the 20th, 2014!

Yes, 2014!…….. as in NEXT YEAR!!………as in 317 short days from now!

Why?

Well, for starters, we both seem to be extremely impatient. Leaving THREE YEARS from now just sounded sooooooo far off. We, along with many of you, have short attention spa………oh look! a kitty cat….ns and we all would have had waning enthusiasm for our hike if waited such a long period of time to depart.

Steve and I are hard to keep motivated when it comes to dieting and exercising. It’s only been a month and we both have fallen off the wagon so many times we are both deeply bruised and battered. Pigging out on junk food is so much easier when you can rationalize “Well, I have three years to burn this off…”. No more. Now, we are less than a year from departure so every pound and every calorie counts!

Next, we have the “One of these years, the Mayans are going to be right!” factor and the world as we know it could possibly end. Who wants to spend three years accumulating gear for a hike only to have the world explode just months before we depart for the trail? It’s only logical that we would want to depart a lot sooner….JUST IN CASE.

Those of you using PC’s to read this blog will notice that our countdown clock has now been changed to reflect our earlier departure.

By this time next year, Steve and I will be swatting mosquitoes and will be arguing over who lost the map, causing us to become hopelessly lost, somewhere in the mountains of hopefully, Tennessee or Virginia.

We have moved our departure date forward into March due to my expected slow hiking pace. Allowing for an average of 12.5 miles per day, with 16 off days to rest, this would make a 200 day hike from Georgia to the end of the trail in Maine. Leaving in March will give us a little breathing room so that we have enough time to reach Mt. Katahdin before it’s usual closing of Mid-October.

The drawback to leaving in March is the likely possibility of SNOW in the mountains over the first 2-3 weeks of hiking. This will result in “Two Frozen Hiking Idiots” for the first few chapters of our book.

Yes, book.

Steve and I will be blogging from the trail, along with posting photos/videos, but we will also be compiling tons of material for a co-authored book that we will be writing about our adventure on the trail.

So, that’s the earth-shattering news for the Two Hiking Idiots.

Less than a year from now, my wife will be standing in a parking lot at the base of Springer Mountain in Georgia and will watch Steve and I hike off into the woods, at which point she will mutter to herself…

“They actually did it……….. the idiots actually did it………”