[Title Pending]

Well here we go. Our ride to Anacortes will be here in an hour, so I'll soak up as much World Cup as I can as I update this. Once again, Mike and Allison are generously making the trek to the Anacortes possible.

We'll likely sleep at the Marina in Anacortes tonight, since it's close to our official start point at the docks and warm food is a quick hop from the gravel parking lot where our tents will go up.

Dave is already making some adjustments with needle and thread to his rain booties, and his bags are about 55-60 pounds (without water).

My gear is about the same weight, and I'm fretting over which novels to take. I've been collecting light editions of some classics over the past couple months from Capote, Marquez, Dosteovsky, Forster, Melville, McCarthy, et cetera. Although they all fit, I need to throw a few out.

I also loaded a few novels as PDFs onto my itouch, but I'm not confident my eyes will approve.

Our fundraising was up to $700 after the first week of emails went out, but I have some insider information that there will be a good jump when I get an update from FHSSA next week.

We've received a few offers of food and shelter along the way from family and friends (and even a generous offer from a member of the record trading website where I frequent), which is pretty exciting.

Dave had a hard, but worthwhile day with his brothers and parents yesterday, so there's a lot on our minds beyond the difficulty of this next week: The Cascades.

I guess I'll sign off and get a shower, since there won't be too many of them this summer.


Piles of Stuff (click photos for detail)

Elevation Guide for Week One:

See you in a few days.