Trek Dirty to Me: 75 days until I start walking to Maine...

Seventy-five days out from kicking off my first (of hopefully three) thru-hike attempts over the next three years, and I’m trying to get my ass into shape on the other side of the world. To be more precise, I am in Goa, India (not Indiana), 8,678 miles (13,966 kms) from Amicalola Falls State Park, Georgia, USA - where I will begin my walk to Maine along the 2,200 mile (3,540 km) Appalachian Trail.

Goa? India? Yup. Here is a picture of me from yesterday.

Official training attire

How and why I ended up here is a bit of a longer, less important part of the story, but I rang in the new year in the city of Chennai (formerly Madras) and made my way over here to Goa a little over a week ago (after some intense travel adventures and jet lag).

After an exhausting finish to my summer adventures: launching this website while traveling overland from the southern Balkans to the the Baltic, I packed up the rest of my Paris home and flew back to Indianapolis, Indiana, USA to start this next adventure.

Below is a refresher of my summer adventure.

Balkans to Baltic insanity

Anyhow, to catch you up:

Launched the website -> Traveled through eastern and central Europe -> Back to Paris -> Back to the US -> Lots of visiting friends and family throughout the US -> India

As you may or may not know by now, I will be attempting my thru-hike project of the Triple Crown of American Scenic Trails - Trek Dirty to Me - beginning with the Appalachian Trail. I settled on April 1, 2020 as my start date and have registered, booked my room at the Amicalola Falls State Park Lodge for March 31, and have given myself 180 days to walk to the summit of Mount Katahdan, Maine, USA.

That gives me 75 days from today until I take those first steps. Forty-five more days will be spent training and repairing my body in Goa…sometimes wearing that glorious beach shirt. When I am not physically training, I have been working on my hike plan, the logistics of Trekdirtyto.me, and cramming (a skill at which I became quite adept in university, law and business schools) as much information as possible and available through the Internet.

All of these absolutely thrilling developments will be shared RIGHT HERE! DAILY! Contain your excitement. I plan to share what I learn about the trail, my project and myself over the coming weeks. I hope you join me and find some enjoyment (or at least some levity) from this adventure.

-AJ

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