Chilanglés

Below the Good Badger called me young badger. Young(ish) bugger, more like. Anyhow, one Grant Badger lives in my apartment block and it would be nigh on impossible to support two badgers in one concrete building. There just aren’t enough hidey holes.

So as you guessed it, I’m here to post my first entry on the Appalachian Trials website. One of many to come, I hope.

I’m really excited about this trip that I’ve wanted to make for about 12 years, but at the same time incredibly nervous about an old injury. Take it slow, youngish bugger, take it slow. It’s better one is strollingalong than yellow blazing back to the airport.

I’m a pretty inexperienced hiker, camped a ton of times, but with a car. Also I did the El Camino de Santiago a few years back. You can’t class that as hiking though. More of a 5 week long winebar crawl with hot flat fields in between each drink. It was 500 miles though, so continuous walking at least is familiar.

As my video way down below shows, I live in Mexico City. A beautiful city that has such a nasty stereotype, it’s really not what you think. Not that I “get it” or anything, but it’s been my lovely home for nearly 4 years now. It’s actually a great place to walk in, is way less polluted than you’d expect, and you’re never ever short of things to see and do, the food …. I could go on for a long time about this.

So yeah, walking. I’m not physically prepared because of an injury a couple months back, nor do I own a lot of gear. Gear’s just not an option down here, no choice, crap and at high high prices, so most of it I’m grabbing from REI in Atlanta and Mountain Crossings in Neels Gap in the 2 days before I hit the trail. I feel strangely tranquil about the whole thing though. Weird considering what a stress-fiend I am normally!

I don’t have a schedule, I haven’t planned a thing in terms of mileage and daily targets. I don’t need to, and would never. It’ll all go out the window on mile 0.5 anyway. I’m going to really just go with the flow. All I know is I’m starting April 4th.

Anyway, I’m going into this as open minded as I can be. I try to keep expectations out of big things like this and I’m definitely not looking for anything specific from of this trip aside from completing a dream and getting real nice buns.

Anyway, this is me.