Catching up a bit!

Dreamer here,

Terri, cooking and dehydrating some of our favorite meals!

Even though it has been awhile since the last time I have written, that does not mean nothing has happened.  Honestly, real life has crept up and held me down with some amazing strength.  Have I had time to write, yes; however, the time I generally have is when I am dog tired from a day filled with the stuff of real life.  Can you relate?  Busy with family, work, home, friends, surgery and losing my father a couple months ago has been consuming my productive hours.

As far as Appalachian Trail planning goes, Terri & I are moving forward!  Hopefully, over the next few weeks I will provide some detail to our planning efforts.  For now, I will stick with generalities in order to catch up a bit.  We have been buying and testing all kinds of new gear, including: clothes, sleeping bags, pads, video camera, Charlie items and lots of odds and ends.  As I say, more detail to follow.

Various thoughts as they come to mind…

·      My father passed away this summer and serving as his Personal Representative has been much more (time wise) than I had anticipated.  Generally, everything is working out and life is beginning to return to normal, especially emotionally.  The best part is, my sisters and I have a great relationship that has only gotten stronger working through our grief together.

·      I have a new video camera. (Sony HDR-CX580)  I learned several lessons this summer while hiking the North Country Trail with Charlie.  One of them being, I had the wrong camera.  So, I have been spending some significant amounts of time learning to use this new camera.

·      I had knee surgery about six weeks ago.  Scope of my Right Knee to remove some loose debris.  It was a couple weeks before I could get back out on the trail, which almost killed me.  However, as of today, I believe I am nearing 100%.  Charlie and I are hiking between 5 and 10 miles per day.  Tomorrow I will be able to begin hiking with my pack on again.

·      Team TNT now has a Twitter account.  It is “@tntonthetrail”.  I have been making friends with other hikers out there in Whiteblaze & Twitter world.  In fact, Terri met with another 2013 AT thru hiker the other day.  Her trail name is infinity and she will be starting in the middle of March from Springer and will be hiking with a few other ladies.

·      Perhaps my largest purchase to date has been a new computer.  I have had MAC’s for going on 15 years and that has not changed.  My old MAC is four generations behind and it was unable (because the operating system was too old) to work with the video from my camera.  So, I don’t have it yet, but I purchased the new 13” Macbook Pro.  My plan is to spend the next four months getting to know it, so that when Team TNT heads out, the computer will follow along in our Bounce Box.  (A Bounce Box is a box that we mail to ourselves up the trail. ) Hopefully, every time we take a zero day, we’ll have our computer to download pictures and video, as well as other practical uses.

Like I said above, I am excited to begin sharing some of our new gear and clothing changes and look forward to offering more detail with the major items as we move further along.

~Dreamer

PS  If you are into listening to Podcasts, check out “The Trail Show”!  Lots of fun with four hikers who are all triple crowners.  (AT, CDC & PCT)  It is kind of like sitting around a campfire listening to friends have a good time.