Unfortunately, life happened and I needed to pull off the trail last week and deal with a personal matter. With winter coming early, it makes picking up where I pulled off quite dangerous so I will finish this journey at a later point in my life.
I will say this was truly a fantastic experience, definitely the hardest fun I’ve ever had in my life. I am thankful that I had this opportunity to not only hike the AT, but also to meet and speak with a large cross-section of Americans. I can state unequivocally that there are some amazingly kind and loving and generous people in the USA and I will definitely pay the kindness shown to me forward.
For the record, I have never been in so much constant pain in my life, and yes, absolutely, I would do it again. It was great living outdoors again, rising and waking with the sun, breathing fresh air, sleeping under the stars/moonlight, drinking spring water and seeing loads of different animals everyday. I look forward to coming back to the “real world” again.
An adventure like this would not have been possible without lots of help. I would like to thank Jason(ElJay) for doing everything on this blog except writing the posts, in addition, he also brought me some gear which allowed me to take and post pictures myself and brought some special socks which significantly reduced the number of blisters I was getting. I’d like to thank my father (Robopop) who provided me with weather updates(super important!), some much needed gear and timely words of encouragement and support (there were many days where I never saw another human). I’d also like to thank my buddy Ted who was helping me to manage my gear and was planning to hike with me for a few days as well (Ted, we’ll go somewhere warmer and flatter in a few weeks!).
To everyone reading, I hope you enjoyed the posts, pictures and learning some American history with me. For sure this is not my last adventure, I will eventually reorganize this website so I can share stories from my other travels because I think everyone should know the story of the night I was forced to straddle a man or the New Years in Japan when I was skipping down a street kissing everyone I saw:-)
Peace,
Freebird (John)