First Trip!!!

Our first go at a decent hike / camp is a couple days away!

We leave Friday morning (early) and drive to Algonquin Park, as we'll be hiking the second loop of the Western Uplands trail over three days.

The length of our trip will be a total of ~57km of hiking, the biggest day being the Saturday. We chose this because we wanted to "ease" into it on Friday, so we are only going to be doing ~14k or so and will set up camp and figure everything out with that! Also, the forecast for Saturday is looking to be the best of the three so we decided to make this our long day, and will go about 24km. The overall trip will be 3.8k longer than the loop itself as we have to hike a bit off the route to another lake where there were available camp sites. No big deal! The physical part is not our concern. All Saturday is going to be sunny and moderate temps, so I'm anticipating that to be a great day to really test as much stuff out as we can with the tent, cooking, water stuff etc etc etc. Like I said, we are BRAND new to this, so hopefully everything goes smoooothly! Sunday is looking to be rainy, so we may just get up and hike out as early as possible, or start making progress at least before the rain hits.

After the weekend I'll have some videos and pics to share!!

Expedition Packs

We got our expedition packs!

Awesome deals at Bushtukah last night, 20% off!

See the "Our Gear" Page. :)

The Challenge of Social Media

Lately I've been totally consumed with trying to figure out how to get more and more "followers" on twitter. This is something I want to start now so that in a year's time we will have a solid number of followers for our expedition. Even if many of them aren't necessarily "following" what we're doing, it still looks great in the eyes of potential sponsors and does allow people to follow us along. It'll be a grea tool for keeping family, friends and general followers up to date on where we are and what we're doing along this hike.

I'm still learning how it all works and the different strategies involved in getting people to follow you, but I'm STARTING to get the hang of it. I tweet AT supplement companies as I konw their products, can compliment them and they have a lot of followers, so if they choose to "retweet" my tweet, then I'm exposed to a much larger audience! That's been my focus so far. I'm up to 23 followers, not too bad, but need MORE! I want more like 1000 by the time we leave for this hike.

SO FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER!

It's begun!

Over the past week I've had two VERY important preliminary conversations.

The first was a simple phone call with Ray Zahab (www.impossible2possible.com). I wanted to talk to him about supporting his foundation through this hike. There are a number of causes that I feel "attached to" or that I believe in, however this one is definitely my favourite and it's been without question that I want to support i2P. Ray does an incredible job inspiring youth to achieve what they think is impossible through these one of a kind youth expeditions all over the world. Not only are the expeditions about accomplishing the daunting, physically and psychologically demanding task, though there's a very important educational aspect to it as well. These "youth ambassadors" as they are called, are learning about a variety of environmental / climate issues that we are facing, and relaying these experiences to their peers in classrooms all over the world. His work educates and inspires youth the world over to create positive change for our natural environment. Education, physical challenge and the environment, the perfect marriage of what I believe in.

You can follow Ray on twitter at www.twitter.com/rayzahab

I’ll be meeting up with Ray in the next couple of weeks to discuss some ways in which this hike can be used to benefit i2P.

A few days ago I sent Aaron, my boss and owner of Popeye's Supplements (www.poeyescanada.com) in Ottawa / Southern Ontario, a carefully written email about our intentions to do this hike. Aaron’s an incredibly supportive boss and I kind of knew in the back of my mind that he would support us, but there’s still a nervous feeling I get sending a letter like this. People who know me, know just how ambitious I am and how unsatisfied I am with “normal things” people value, and I guess that’s why Aaron wasn’t too, too surprised. I got an email in return reminding me I’m just a little bit crazy, but that he’s excited to help us make this a success. He’s out west right now, but we’ll get a chance to sit down and chat in the next few weeks about some ideas I have.

Having the support of these two men is an enormous help in making this a success. It would honestly otherwise be significantly much more challenging logistically / motivationally had we not had this support.

Awesome week so far!

PCT Mission Control

Well we've OFFICIALLY moved to our own little place in Hintonburgh area. PERFECT location for us. Near the Canal, near the Ottawa River Parkway and not too too far from Gatineau Park. This will be perfect for us to get out walking, cycling, running and hiking/camping as often as possible over the next year! We already love fitness and the area is perfect regardless, but with the focus being this PCT thru hike, we'll be using these resources as opportunities to practice the skills we'll need a year from now!


The place itself is great. We've got plenty of storage for our bikes (4) and other sports equipment, a beautiful new kitchen with tons of space for food storage and cooking! The house itself is old as, but we're super pleased with it so far! Apparently my great, great (maybe a third great) grandfather lived around here and was a wagon builder. My dad is all about the genealogy thing right now. :)

Anyways, the crowning jewel of the place is the sunroom off the front. Pictures don't even do it justice, but here they are nonetheless! This will be our space for planning and prep work! I can already picture all of the carefully planned and organized mail-drop boxes place along that front wall. :)

Uploaded - 11-03-22