Sorry for the long time between blog posts. Amanda and I have been super busy lately with the end of school, helping our church plan a 1,000 person volunteer event, preparing for a 100 mile bike ride in June and taking care of World Race stuff.
First of all I am very excited to announce that our fundraising is almost complete! Currently we have $27,704 in donatations and pledges! This means that we are $1,896 away from our goal. I can't tell you how good it feels to have our fundraising almost wrapped up. It feels like a ton of bricks has been lifted off our back. So thank you to all of you who have been supporting us!
Also we have begun to wrap up our gear purchases for the race. I will openly admit that I am a gear junkie so this has been a pretty fun part of the planning for me. Here is an update on the gear we've got so far.
Backpacks
These will be our suit case for a year and will carry eveything we have for the the year as we change locations. The pictures are a little decieving but these are some pretty good sized backpacks. Mine is the grey Gregory Baltoro 70, which will hold 75 liters (or 37.5 2-liters of pop). Amanda's bag is the Gregory Deva 70 which will hold 70 liters. These packs have pockets in the lid front and side, and then have one large main compartment for our bigger gear.
Tent
This will be our shelter for the next year. We got the Marmot Limelight 3 because it was long enough that my feet and head were not both touching the tent walls. Also the way it's designed I can actually situp in the tent without having to hunch over (extra bonus). This tent has a door on each side and when the rainfly is in it creates 2 spaces on boths sides of the tent for us to store our gear. Tent tips the scales at just under 7 lbs (3.5 lbs for me and 3.5 lbs for Amanda) with included rainfly, footprint, poles, stakes, gear loft, and tent stakes. Not the lightest tent on the market, but it's built pretty tough so I'm sure it will last.
That's all for now, stay tuned for my next post about our sleeping bags, sleeping pads and hammocks.
