Get Ready...Get Set...Go! And they're off!

This morning Jon and Iva Jo started on their journey. Paul, Jon's roommate from college, drove them down to the trailhead located at the Mexican-American border. Yes, on the other side of that wall is Mexico! Jon and Iva Joe were determined not to cheat an inch off the trail.



At the border is the Pacific Coast Trail Monument marking the beginning of the trail. Jon and Iva Joe registered their names on the hiking register found on the back of the monument, forever adding their mark to the history of the trail.


7:30 AM - May 23, 2006 - Started hiking.
2,627 miles to go!
Godspeed their journey.

Thanks, Sojourners!

One more thank you; thanks to our wonderful family at Church of the Sojourners. Although we don't have a picture of all of them, we feel like this picture of Alexina Lockie nicely encompasses all that Sojourners represents. We'll leave that for you, and them, to figure out. They were incredibly supportive of our ideas and of us in general. And yo, Potrero house, thanks for putting up with the smell of spaghetti sauce dehydrating, in the morning, in the night, the next morning... all day long, all day strong.

Thanks Ped's and Otto's!

We'd like to say a special thanks to our families who have been incredibly gracious to us over these past two weeks as we have made the final preparations to begin the hike... doing errands for us, making us meals, helping out here, there, and everywhere. I would like to give an especially especial thanks to her mothership Robin E. Otto who not only refrained from commenting as she watched us systematically demolish the house, taking over not one, not two, but three bedrooms, the living room, the kitchen, and a fair chunk of the garage with hiking paraphernalia, food stuffs, and boxes, boxes, and more boxes.

Thanks to N.T. Wright and Pablo!

Good ol' Nicholas Thomas Wright, Bishop of Durham and Jon's favorite theologian, visited San Francisco last Sunday. IvaJo's dad, Paul, got to go see him...and he brought back a little inspiration for the hike:
Read it and weep, a signed copy of his new book:
"For Jon and IvaJo, have a great hike! --Tom Wright May '06
Thanks Rev. Wright and thanks Pablo!

Dan, the Man, Your Host on the Trek

So we're going to give this blog thing a try. Our good friend, Dan Meyer (Guiness World Record Holder...no kidding--that's where this picture came from:http://www.paperclipchallenge.com/index.htm) has offered to host the blog. He will post our pictures that we send to him (Mountains, mountains...oh, is that a mountain?) and publish the interesting parts of our journals--the parts that sound like John Muir (editing out things like "My back hurt today. Oh, is that a mountain I see?").

And Dan has promised to make this site interesting to all you good folks. And funny. He said it will be funny always. Thanks, Dan.

Our Sherpa

We've been over our heads in preparing food boxes for our 15 check points along the trail. We leave Ukiah on Sunday and we're on the trail on Tuesday. We've started to have second thoughts about the whole thing...and then we thought of it: this will be a breeze if we just had a sherpa.

Here she is... and you thought we were going to carry those heavy packs by ourselves!