Every adventure begins somewhere

Every adventure begins somewhere and mine started when I was much younger. I read a travel book by Bill Bryson, my mother lent it to me and I devoured it. It was the writings of a man that decided to hike the Appalachian Trail, and all the small anecdotes that happened along the way. I really enjoyed the book, and thought maybe one day I'd do the trail. I never put much thought into it though, I was overweight, not the least bit athletically inclined and mostly just played video games and worked. That is until many many years later. This year in fact. January was the month, like many people still reeling from New Years Eve Guilt, I started working out. I previously had attempted P90X several years before (which lasted maybe 2 weeks) so I knew it was a bit too much for me. I decided to do the precurser program instead, Power 90. Boy am I glad I started there. Each workout was just the right enough of stuff, that I felt like I was doing something but not enough to kill me repeatedly. Each day I would get up and press play. Three weeks into the program my best friend who lives in Gainesville, Eric, came down to visit. We hung out in my girlfriends living room, chatting about life. By that point I had already lost 15 pounds and it was showing. Eric congratulated me on my weightloss, and we talked about how I felt more active. I jokingly said outloud that now that I was working out maybe I could try walking the Appalachian Trail like I always wanted to as a kid. Eric looked up at me, serious for a moment, and then said with a grin "Let's Do it." Now, Eric wasn't an athletically inclined individual either, in fact he weighed exactly what I did the day I started working out, 206 pounds. So we made a deal, if Eric and I got down to 170 pounds we would walk on the trail. He acquired Power 90 and started that Monday, following in my steps three weeks behind. We might have said if we lost the weight we'd do the hike but in our minds and hearts it was already decided. This hike would happen. So preliminary research was done. When would we do it, how long would it be, how much it would cost. The first thing we decided on is we needed at least a year, a year to save up the money, buy the gear and prepare our bodies. So April 2015 was the month we decided to take off. It'll be a six month hike, covering 14 states and two thousand two hundred miles of trail. We plan on passing every white blaze on foot. No hitching, or using Blue Blaze trails to take shortcuts. If we were going to do this, it would be the right way. On the trail, this blog will be used to tell tales and will contain the memories and ramblings of two best friends who decided to take a walk in the woods. Until then, I'll use this to document the way forward. Gear Purchases, reviews, P90X comments, anything to do relating to the trail or getting ready for it. Every adventure begins somewhere and this one began with a book.