Anyway, last night my husband was keen to attend a lecture given by two hikers who had crossed The Continental Divide. The Continental Divide Trail goes from Mexico to Canada, crosses 5 states and is only 70 percent completed. So 30 percent of the time, you are just wandering about with a compass hoping for the best. The lecture started at 7:30 and my husband and I wanted to make a night of it and grab a quick dinner beforehand and I will just let you know that I planned an outfit. That is how excited I was about my evening.
So, I had gotten a babysitter a week in advance and planned my whole day around having everything perfect so that our new babysitter had the minimum of work to do when she arrived at the house. I needed her to focus all her efforts on bedtime to that the children would be asleep by the time we got home. I threatened everyone within an inch of their lives if they did not go straight to bed and I hopped into the car with my most fabulous scarf, boots and a silver cross body bag. Dinner went well until our first call from the babysitter. She told the boys to go to bed and they said they did not want to go. This seemed to me a solvable problem as she was bigger and had more authority, but I will stop all this as I am boring myself and will just say to you that we had received five phone calls by the time we arrived at the much anticipated lecture and I was so worn down that I just felt like we needed to go home. Nothing like sitting through an event that you had really looked forward to attending while the phone buzzes with calls from the babysitter and your ability to listen and involve yourself is tainted if not ruined.
Anyway, while I am clearly not cool even if I was wearing a great scarf and a fabulous cross body bag, Iris and Will, the speakers were so cool that I could feel the breeze in the back row where we had to sit so that frequent calls from the babysitter did not annoy the VERY SERIOUS hikers who were in attendance. Literally, we were the only people there without previously earned trail names. Trail names are things you earn on serious hikes and mine would be "Bitter Mummy" just so you know.
Anyway, Iris and Will met on Instagram two years ago, and Will had apparently already done the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Coast Trail. They quit their jobs and decided to take 6 months to do this hike. They assembled these massive boxes of food that they mailed to remote post offices to be picked up when they arrived. They camped by the side of the road, got some sort of awful water poisoning from drinking out of reservoirs, hitchhiked to a doctor's office and then hitchhiked to a Walmart TWO HOURS AWAY to pick up antibiotics. They talked about trail magic and people who helped them when they ran out of water. Iris went through 6 pairs of shoes and even carried mascara in her pack. They hiked 80 miles most days, and had no cell phone reception and relied heavily on a compass. They went to sleep after the campfire burned out and slept late in their tents every morning. It was a tale of wonder which we did not get to hear the end of, because we had to leave and settle things with the babysitter and the children. That is just the way it went.
Anyway, I did get up at 4:45 yesterday and take a spin class and then ran afterwards. Today, I again got up at 4:45 and had a great swim!! 18 miler tomorrow to train for Boston!!!
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