Homeless and Unemployed

We just put the finishing touches on our house today. Fixing up a couple nail holes and taking out the last of our 'stuff'. We left a bottle of wine, keys and a welcome letter for our new tenant.

Even with a serious effort to purge of extra 'stuff', we still managed to almost completely fill up a 10' x 5' storage locker. The plan is to come home in X number of years and buy a 'tiny house'. We've done a lot of research and love the idea of living both clutter and mortgage free, so we'll have to really go through all of our stuff and decide what's important to keep, and what we simple THINK we need. The locker will cost us ~$120 per month, but we get 2 months free because we signed a year contract, plus we got a $300 credit from a $75 Groupon deal, so we don't actually pay anything for another 4 months or so.

We'll be living rent free over there and the rental income will nearly pay the mortgage, so we're pretty happy with the whole situation. Building equity back home while travelling and saving overseas is our best case scenario. Everything has finally come together. We signed up to take our TESOL course pretty much the same weekend that we moved into our new house, and so the idea to move overseas was a little daunting. It's been a bit of a hectic 6 months or so, but everything has seemingly fallen into place. We got lucky with a lot (Julia's parents bought our SUV and a lot of our furniture) and our house was rented quickly and was a better situation that we anticipated (mid month move in rather than March 1st). We were ready to have to pay the mortgage until as late as May 1st, as we were told that the rental market was tough right now.

Julia finished work a week ago and I finished this past Tuesday. Within the space of a week we both became unemployed, homeless and gave up both of our vehicles. It feels fantastic.

We each have 2 suitcases, a carry-on, personal item and of course I'm bringing a bicycle. That's it, and we couldn't be happier.

Two feet and a heartbeat

I totally ripped the title of this post off a Youtube video about some guys that hiked the PCT, so please don't give me any creative credit for it. It does, however, describe this post accurately. There's SO much that goes into a successful PCT Thru Hike, an incredible amount of time and energy has already gone into it, but at the end the day, what gets us from A to B to C to D to Manning Park, is our two feet and a heartbeat (ok and maybe a few other things). Because of this, your feet must be taken care of like they're your first born child (or second in the case of our parents). You'd be hard pressed to find a PCT hiker that didn't experience a rash of blisters in the first few hundred miles of the PCT. The combination of the dry heat in the Southern California desert, your ever expanding feet and the fact that just like the rest of you, they haven't become hearty and weathered enough to withstand the daily abuse you're putting them through is THE recipe for blister proliferation. The best treatment for blisters is PREVENTION! Or at least to the best of your ability. I mean, at the end of the day, you just can't always prevent the inevitable. Julia and I think we may just have THE perfect recipe for blister prevention. Check it out.


The first line of defense will be daily (and probably multiple times a day) application of BodyGlide to the areas of the feet most likely to be affected by blisters. We've both used a ton of this stuff in the past, training for and racing triathlons and running events, so we can definitely already attest to its efficacy. You could probably use any non-greasy "lubricant", but we know and trust BodyGlide, so it's going to be our go to solution.

 After our feet are sufficiently lubed up, we'll slip on these little treats from heaven. We found the Incredisocks this year and have absolutely loved them from day one. They are incredibly comfortable, NEVER tend to smell (though I'm sure they will after a number of days on the PCT) and they have seemingly lasted forever. We'll expect to go through a half dozen or so of these. We got a couple of the other style that we can wear to sleep or in town, or even hiking. They've all be awesome in testing.


The Brooks Cascadias are the most popular trail runner on the PCT. They have a very generous, roomy toe-box that will accommodate your swelling feet, VERY important in blister prevention. They're also some of the most durable, breathable and generally comfortable shoes you can find for anything done on a trail, running, walking or hiking. We're planning to go through about 6 pairs each of these (1 per 500 miles).


Sounds pretty full proof to me! I guess we won't know though until we're out there in the desert heat, pounding the dirt for a couple weeks! If you're following along in July or August, I'll throw up a YouTube video review of how the plan went. Fingers crossed.