Date: 2004-12-21
To: Priorities
Miles today: 0.0

It has been difficult with Christmas coming up to get our minds on the holiday. Playing Christmas music has helped but the trail is never far from our minds. The holiday season is so commercialized and when we walk into a store all of the "stuff" that we see is so overwhelming. We have not bought much. So much of what we have purchased in the past just seems like we were buying it for the sake of buying something and I doubt if any of the grandkids really cared about anything much. So this year we are trying to be more selective. We would rather buy one thing they really like rather than several things that are just thrown aside never to be played with again. For our 3 children we will give money and they can buy what they want. For Christmas this year we will have 2 of our children here at home with us and we will meet my brothers and some of their families at my parents' home for dinner. That will be the highlight for me. Then after Christmas we can again concentrate on the trail. Although there has been a lot of planning involved in order to get ready to hike the trail, once we get on the trail everything should be simplified. We will have everything we need with us and anything else will be sent in a maildrop or picked up along the way. I hope the stress of daily life will be less. We need to arrange a way for our bills to be paid while we are gone. Hopefully there won't be that many since one thing I am working for is to get the house paid off before Mike retires. Still, there is the insurance, electricity, phone (do we have it suspended while we are gone?), car payment, my RN license to be renewed this coming summer, AAA membership, and all those other little things that you forget about because you don't deal with them except once a year or so. We have registered the vehicles for 2 years so that will not be something we need to worry about. I am going to try to pay ahead on payments and for the internet service I am going to pay for the whole year--I should have been doing it anyway. Well, anyway, there is plenty to think about. We have decided that the next time we will have a chance to get out and do another overnight hike is later in January. It may be cold but we hope it is so we can really try out our winter gear. There are days when we both say we'd like to be hiking if we had the time. Mike is the chairman of the board of the community center that a small group of people in the community has been trying to get going. It has taken much time because there is so much work to do--like raising money for a new roof and a Civil War Museum in one of the rooms (the building is an old elementary school built in the 1950's). We do not have any kitchen equipment and we need the furnace checked,etc. We have had new windows put in, a security system installed, and plans for the museum drawn up--all done with money received from a grant. We are fortunate to have someone with grant-writing experience helping us out with other grants.Less than 3 months and we will be out there for real and we are looking forward to it. We know we will make many mistakes but we will figure things out as we go. The important thing is we will be out there and experiencing what others only dream about or, probably more true to fact,doing something that a lot of people that know us think we are crazy for doing. So, for trail preparation, it is all suspended for the time being except for in our minds. Less than 3 months now until March 12,2005.