For some reason slipping into the ‘teens’ means something, a mixture of excitement and panic rises and from now on… everyday is counted. Its like the difference between having to get up at 5:59am and 6:00am. For some reason as soon as you slip into the 5am numbers everything changes. You have to go to bed an hour earlier, you have to have all your bags packed the night before and the coffee laid out on the counter. It is time to have our bags packed and all our gear laid out. We are crossing our t’s and dotting our i’s over and over again (can you over cross a t?).
This is it, everything is coming together and it is really happening. We are making it happen. We have been actively planning and preparing for almost a year now. Writing sponsorship proposals, researching, finding and purchasing new equipment… choosing kayaks! Making list after list of things to do, research and prepare. Talking about dates, routes, timing, costs and expectations. There are so many little facets to explore and address it is impossible to express the extent of the logistics that have already gone into our planning process.
For instance, we need 75 different Nautical Charts to take us from Galiano to Glacier Bay. 75 charts that were researched, chosen, purchased, checked and now have to be folded and divided into the different legs of our journey. Or take our food, 4 months translates roughly into 120 days, times that by 3 meals a day, we get 360 meals for two people. Then consider the variety of situations we will find ourselves in… long days needing quick meals, the first week after restocking in a new town, the 2nd and 3rd week after restocking in a new town, rainy days, hot days, off days, town days… throw in a desire for some variety, condiments, snacks and beverages… it gets complicated! But it is all part of the process and… it begins to make it real.
The beauty of it is that I can’t think of a better person to be doing this with. You could say that we are well matched in that we are both over achievers, obsessively organized (in our own ways!) and literally come from the same school of thought when it comes to expedition planning and preparedness. After 6 years of friendship, including countless trips, a few shorter expeditions, 4 years of school, endless projects, 1 year of living together and now 1 year of expedition planning we have come to know, understand and respect each other. We have no secrets, we already know what we love and hate about each other and… we trust each other with our lives.
In the last month we have gotten together three times to plan and organize for our trip. Every time we shock ourselves with our progress (that’s where the over achiever/organized part comes in). This last time we spent the better part of our second day lounging in the sun, content with what we had accomplished and left with nothing else to do.
We are almost there… 19 days and counting
