My wife and I are planning to thru hike the AT in 2017

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Karen and I have noticed that the THOUGHT of leaving and hiking the AT in 3 years is very powerful. When the day turns bad and things go wrong we find our minds taking a strange turn and thinking about leaving this situation behind and walking out of this life and into another life where these current things and problems are not so important, where your needs are reduced to the real essentials and even those are sketchy, tenuous, and fluid, changing from minute to minute.Are we running away from things? Are we running towards something, some goal? Are we deluding ourselves and willfully not seeing the reality of our situation?

We MUST be crazy. I can’t even imagine NOT having a car key or a house key in my pocket because I DON’T have or own one! We will have a few items in storage somewhere but we are planning on selling EVERYTHING that we own to do this! A lesson in renunciation and a step towards saying good bye to this world, to family. We are learning how to let go of things. To let go of everything except the air in your lungs. This thought of living homeless for 6 months, as the reality of it starts to sink in, takes my breath away from time to time.

I’m thinking that stress is in our lives BECAUSE of the things we hold onto and let into our lives. Maybe we are just exchanging stress from things we have for the stress of simply living. Stress will always be there but I hope it will be a simpler stress, not a relationship stress. The stress of I must have a job to have a house/car/etc. versus the stress of where is the next source of fresh water. One leads to cycle that seems to lead to more stress and never getting stress free. The other, once you find the water in this example, means the stress is done, over. At least until the next time…..

Speaking of things….
Back pack has been purchased and today we go for a trail hike with our packs for the first time. And, true to my Irish form and luck, it’s a rainy day!!!

The luck of the Irish isn’t always Good. I believe in Karma. And Karma, She doesn’t like the Irish…

First Hike With A Back Pack, In The Rain…

Nine mile hike in the rain. Yeah! My hands swell when I hike. I’m wondering if hiking poles would help with that or not. My blood sugar was 121 at the start. It was misting and Karen and I took pictures of each other.

Then we got to hiking. I ate half a Cliff Bar. Then it started to rain. After an hour I ate the other half of the CliffBar and ate two thinwich sandwiches that we made. Since it was pouring rain I just ate as we walked and I didn’t check my blood sugar because I didn’t want my log book to get soaked. CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitoring) would have been awesome today! I plan to get a Dexcom in a few months.

It was cold when we finished and my hands were swollen after the hike. It took a while for my hands to warm up but with the swelling, sticking my fingers and getting the test strip out of the tiny vial, inserting it into the glucometer, getting an “ERR3” code, repeat, then repeat again, finally, on the fourth attempt the glucometer worked and my Blood Sugar was 116!

We got a hot decaf latte at Dunkin Donuts and 3 slices of leftover veggie pizza and 3 handfuls of Cool Ranch Doritos with another hot coffee for lunch. Took a nap and at 3:18 I had a Blood Sugar of 158!

My blood sugars have been wild during the daytime because of the season change to more humid weather. When that happens I need to remember to increase my basal insulin two units and then all my numbers go back to where they need to be and I stop the rollercoaster that I have been on for the past 2 weeks.

Getting there and getting it figured out!