The AT

I decided this weekend to set a date for my Appalachian Trail attempt. I've been talking a lot about it for a while now and even made a half-hearted attempt a few years back. And I'm using the word "attempt" pretty loosely there, all I really did was claim I was going to do it the following spring and that's as far as anything really went. I did some preliminary planning but there wasn't any follow through with anything and it didn't happen. My typical "I need/want to do it NOW NOW NOW" thought process without actually considering the enormity of what it entailed. It didn't diminish my desire to do it though, it only delayed it a bit.

Shortly after that The Shelbster was diagnosed with diabetes and Cushing's Syndrome, and that effectively postponed the trip for the next two years. The daily shots were bad enough on her, not to mention the periods when she spent days at a time on IVs at the vet. There was no way I could abandon her for 6 months and ask someone else to care for her. She would have loved walking it with me but without her insulin and other care she wouldn't have made it far, and I had no desire to watch her die like that.

I was seriously considering an attempt next Spring but I'm thinking that the health stuff I've had happen this year is more than enough reason to reconsider and wait a bit longer (and it's a good thing that I didn't try it those years ago given my health, I probably wouldn't have survived it). There's no rush on this and I definitely don't need to push myself right now. Slow 'n steady, and all that jazz. The wait will just make me savor it all the more when it finally does happen.

So the date I set this weekend was for the Spring of 2011. It sounds like a long way away, but it's only a little over 2 years from now. One of those annoying things that life teaches is that time really does seem to move a lot quicker on this end of the candle. That old saying that youth is wasted on the young is true. Two years will disappear in a flash.