The funds keep rolling in.
Stafford has sent a generous sum to my PayPal account. Humble thanks, man.
Not to be outdone by anyone, my buddy Tom, in Seoul like Stafford, has sent me $150 via PayPal, putting my total at $464.12. Again, without any fundraising action of my own, I now find myself more than halfway to my goal of $800 to be able to file for IRS exemption.
My thanks to both of you.
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These are the ketone strips I'll be using to measure my progress while on Atkins. No, I will not be blogging their actual use. As you see, they're made to be peed upon.
Here are some of things I must part with in order to do the Atkins Diet correctly:
First, we've got jjajang-myeon inspired by Hahna's recent post:
I was supposed to start the two-week induction phase of the Atkins Diet this past Monday.
And I did.
But I lasted only one day.
Strangely, this wasn't about lack of resolve. My first day on the diet actually came as something of a relief from the previous carb-bingeing, and I would have been glad to continue dieting.
Here's the problem: I realized, upon waking on Tuesday morning, that I still had a fridge full of perishable items that wouldn't survive either two weeks in the fridge or an indefinite period in the freezer. Rather than throw everything out, I thought it best to deal with les restes in the best way I knew how.
I'm not talking about leftovers like half-empty jars of peanut butter or zip-topped bags of raisins. Those items can be closed and stored, and they'll still be fine after two weeks. No: I'm talking about food like the leftover jjajang-myeon I had, or the leftover Thai(-ish) chicken and shrimp I'd made, or the gallon of milk sitting innocently on the fridge's bottom shelf. Freezing jjajang-myeon sauce or fresh-made Thai(-style) pasta toppers would have led to the ruin of both, and leaving both in the fridge for two weeks would have led to an even darker scenario.
So I've spent the week since Tuesday eating these things up, and while that slaughter has been going on, I've remembered that May 4th and May 8th are important dates for our family: Mom's birthday and Mother's Day, respectively. Right now, it seems better to wait until after May 8 to start the two-week induction: I've got no special occasions to honor between May 8 and May 22. If induction proves effective, I'll continue with the next phase of the diet. That, or I'll reintroduce a moderate amount of carbs and start exercising in earnest (you're not supposed to exercise during induction).
The false start is still my fault, of course: I shouldn't have begun the diet without having been fully prepared. On May 9, I will be.
In other news: I'm beginning to think that a September start date for the cross-country walk is too soon. It's also bad timing, because unless I decide on a southern route across the country, I'll be walking right into the teeth of winter in the Plains states.
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Many thanks to Stafford for his contribution to the cause! My PayPal account now reads $314.12.
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As you know, I'm trying to recruit volunteers to help out with the upcoming walk's planning, fundraising, etc. One of my projects last weekend was the creation of a flier to distribute among high school students who regularly attend one of the tutoring centers where I work. That particular branch of my company is located across the street from W.T. Woodson High School in Fairfax, Virginia. Most of the high schoolers I tutor come from Woodson, in fact, and I'm hoping to rope some in.
Today, I contacted Woodson about the possibility of using one of their rooms for one or more meetings, and was transferred to the office of Mr. John Kenny, an activities director. He asked that I send him an email detailing my needs; I sent that off almost an hour ago, along with the MS Word version of the flier I've given to a few students. Because I sent it near the end of the school day, I don't expect to hear from him until early next week.
Meanwhile, I'm planning to impose-- gently-- on my colleagues at both of the branches where I teach, to ask them to distribute these fliers to their high schoolers (in fact, I've already approached two fellow teachers about this). I have no idea how many people might show up to the first meeting, which I've set for Friday, May 20, at 8PM, but I'm hoping that we have at least twenty.
Here's the text of the flier. Front side:
WOULD YOU LIKE TO VOLUNTEER? [Changed from "Thank you for reading this," which is on 40 copies of the first version of the flier.]
WHO: Kevin (C2 tutor, Centreville and Fairfax) and a group of committed volunteers—primarily high school students and any interested C2 faculty/staff
WHAT: Meeting to begin to discuss planning and preparation for a large-scale personal project: a walk across the Lower 48
WHEN: Friday evening, May 20, 2011, at about 8PM (details to follow)
WHERE: W.T. Woodson High School (specific room to be determined)
WHY: Cross-country walk on behalf of victims of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most common and most aggressive form of brain cancer
HOW: The “how” of this project is precisely what we’ll be discussing. Topics for the first meeting (which might run anywhere from 1 to 2 hours) will include:
-deciding on a walking route (very likely the American Discovery Trail, or “ADT”)
-deciding on a start date for the walk (either September this year, or early next year)
-discussing local fundraising opportunities and strategies
-discussing PR/marketing to raise awareness about the walk along the walk’s route
Can we make this happen? Would you be interested in helping out? If so, please read the other side for more details and RSVP as soon as possible to the following email address: kevinswalk@gmail.com.
Greetings! Thank you for picking up this flyer, despite not knowing what it might be about. Long story short: I’m looking for volunteers who would be willing to help me with a massive personal project.
A bit of background:
On April 16, 2009, two days before I was to return to a cross-country walk that began in 2008 (I managed to walk about 600 miles as part of a personal exploration of American religious diversity), my mother exhibited symptoms of severe cognitive impairment. At first, we thought this might have been a stroke, and we took her to the ER. What we discovered, instead, was a significant mass on the surface of her left frontal lobe. This turned out to be glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the same sort of brain cancer that eventually killed Senator Ted Kennedy. For patients over 60, the prognosis is grim. Most GBM victims die within 11-13 months of diagnosis. An exceedingly small number of people manage to defy the statistics and live longer than two years; a very small handful of people has managed to survive 10-15 years with no recurrence of GBM after treatment. Senator Kennedy survived fifteen months post-diagnosis—two months beyond the upper threshold. My mother, unfortunately, died nine months after her diagnosis—two months under the lower threshold. She passed away on January 6, 2010, at 8:03AM.
That was how 2010 began for me and my family: with the death of my mother. Over the next several months, I remained at my parents’ house to help my father complete a renovation project that began before Mom’s cancer, and which was put aside during her illness. I moved out to my own place in November, having gotten a job as a TOEFL essay rater for ETS (the same company that makes the dreaded SAT, AP, etc. exams). This job lasted only a few months due to the “low season” for TOEFL testers; I switched to C2 this past March, and have enjoyed making the acquaintance of so many bright students and fellow tutors.
What I’m doing now:
I’m hoping to return to my trans-American walk—the walk that ended after only 600 miles in the fall of 2008. This time, however, I plan to walk on behalf of all past, present, and future victims of GBM, in an effort to raise money and awareness for GBM research. At the moment, I’m somewhat torn as to the start time for the walk. For personal reasons, I’d prefer to begin it this coming September, but I’m beginning to think it would be more practical to begin it early next year.
What I need from you, if you’re willing:
A project of this scale can’t be realized without help from all corners. A lot has to be done: route planning, equipment prep, PR, lodging arrangements, research into terrain and weather, etc. I need a team of committed volunteers who might be willing to help me with these tasks. Walking across the country means walking somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,500 to over 4,000 miles, depending on the route. I’m seriously considering using the American Discovery Trail, which is the only officially walkable route across the mainland United States. The trail has advantages and disadvantages; these need to be considered before I can finalize my itinerary. Discussing these things as a group would be a great help to me. (NB: students who need to fulfill community service requirements could probably use this project to do so!)
How this all begins:
I teach at the Fairfax branch of C2 on Wednesdays. The Fairfax branch is right across the street from Woodson High School, and I’m going to speak with the high school’s main office about the possibility of reserving a classroom—preferably one that allows for multimedia presentations and chalkboard/white board work—for a group of us to meet semi-regularly. So here’s the question: would you be willing to help me with this crazy project? If you are, please RSVP to this invitation by emailing me at kevinswalk@gmail.com. If you’re a student (or, hey, even if you’re a colleague of mine), feel free to include your parents. Their help would be appreciated. I haven’t fixed a meeting date and time yet, but as I wrote, I’d like us to meet at Woodson High School. As for the meeting date, it would be in late May: Friday evening, May 20, probably around 8PM, to give most people time for dinner. If you email me with your RSVP, I’ll be able to email you back with more specific information as the meeting day nears.
High school seniors, who are graduating soon and will be prepping for college, will have to consider their summer schedules before RSVP-ing. So will everyone else (people travel during the summer), but in truth, the state of technology is such that we can all keep in touch from practically anywhere on the planet. In fact, I’m probably going to be making extensive use of my smart phone’s GPS and email/Skype/Twitter capabilities during the walk.
Pertinent websites and contact info:
My blog, Kevin’s Walk, was originally about the 2008 religious diversity walk. When I came back home, the blog switched gears to reflect the fact that I was recuperating from my knee injury and was writing about whatever came to mind—academic topics, sci-fi, books, and slices of life. In April of 2009, the blog shifted emphasis as I began to chronicle our family’s struggle with brain cancer. I did this in part to keep friends and relatives informed of what was going on with Mom, and in part because I felt it was my duty to remember this harrowing time in our lives. The blog is located at: http://kevinswalk.blogspot.com. I also maintain a Twitter feed at twitter.com/kevinswalk.
Many thanks to Bolt, who added another $100 to my PayPal funds. I'm floored. Funds now stand at $290.40 (PayPal shaves off a small percentage of every transaction; this is how they make money), putting me only $510 away from my initial goal of $800. I may be filing that IRS exemption paperwork sooner than expected.
Again, if you're within driving distance of DC and would like to engage me as a speaker on GBM-related patient advocacy, you can do so. Email me first to find out about available dates, then click over to the eBay ad and purchase an "event." Thanks in advance!
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Many and humble thanks to friend and reader Brat for her $100 contribution to the cause! Man... I haven't even launched the speaking circuit yet, and I'm already getting donations. That's amazing.
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I had to stop my 2008 walk for three major reasons, all of which converged like a perfect storm. First, there was my injury, a stupid and preventable fall that occurred early in my walk, and which worsened over the next 300 or 400 miles. Second, as I tracked my own progress, I began to realize that I was going to hit the Rockies at exactly the worst time of year: my timing had been poor. Third, there was the money problem. It's not as though I was pissing away my funds on gambling and frippery; I was simply doing what any normal human being does: eating, resupplying, and sleeping. Unfortunately, when you're out on the road, these three activities cost a bit of money.
One of the ways in which I tried to stem the financial drainage was by using a service called CouchSurfing. The website, couchsurfing.com, is modeled after a dating website in that it tries to match a traveler with people who would be willing to host him for a time-- all for free. A traveler builds a profile on the site, talks about his interests and some of his travel experiences, notes his itinerary, then connects with people along his travel path who are also members of the site-- people with an empty couch on which a tired rover can spend a night or two before moving on. The subtext of all this is-- again, like a dating site-- social networking. You're crafting a web of friends and acquaintances, sharing experiences, seeing new sights and eating new meals.
CouchSurfing wasn't my own discovery; it was suggested to me by a number of people, and overall, it turned out to be a very good way to save money while traveling. The problem, though, is that most of the available couches are located in larger towns and cities. Once you're out in the boonies, CouchSurfing isn't nearly as easy.
What, then, are the alternatives?
One would be camping. I camped in quite a few state parks, especially while moving down the western spine of Washington State. None of these places was free, however, although they were all cheap alternatives to paid lodging, i.e., hotels and motels. I was afraid to camp on people's property: I saw signs that said "PRIVATE PROPERTY! KEEP OUT!" and even "PUBLIC PROPERTY! KEEP OUT!" We live in an era where just about every square inch of ground is spoken for, and unlike other America-crossers, I wasn't willing to risk arrest by plopping down just anywhere.
Well, that's not entirely true. I did spend two or three days camping out at Exit 151 along I-84 in Oregon. I'm pretty sure it was PUBLIC PROPERTY, but it was also obviously a campground for fishermen, and there was no management office to which to pay a camp fee. I simply plunked my tent down there and rested my knee in the heat (see here). I didn't feel so guilty about potentially illegal camping when I was out in the boonies.
The problem with using hotels and motels is that you're nickeled and dimed to death over the long haul: thirty dollars here, fifty dollars there... it quickly adds up, and without any donations rolling in on a regular basis, the whole enterprise quickly becomes unworkable.
My feeling now is that I'll need to change a few things about my walking strategy-- and my personal outlook-- if I plan to use only a minimum of money during this walk. First, I have to be more willing to knock on random doors, if need be, to ask for a place to set up my tent or bivy sac. In 2008, I walked right through most suburbs (and past many farms) without ever trying that approach, despite its having been suggested by several blog commenters. Second, I may need to rethink my absolutism when it comes to setting up camp in a potentially illegal area. I'm not talking about the boonies, here: I'm talking about PRIVATE PROPERTY and PUBLIC PROPERTY in urban or suburban areas. Third, I need to continue with the CouchSurfing (CS). That was one of the absolute best ways of moving across the country. CS opportunities may be few and far between should I decide to hike the American Discovery trail, but (1) I'll at least be able to camp along much of the trail, and (2) the ADT does, in fact, run through many towns and cities, which means CS won't be irrelevant.
Even with the above shift in thinking, parks remain something of an anomaly. There are, for example, some national parks that charge visitors who arrive by car, but leave hikers alone, whereas other parks charge a "hiker/biker fee" to human-powered travelers. I may not have much choice as to whether I have to pay.
When I step back and take a larger view of this enterprise, I don't see that I'll be able to design a walk in which I pay for nothing. That's not a realistic strategy. Even if I minimize costs, I'm going to have to buy crucial items for my survival-- food, season-appropriate outdoor clothing and equipment, etc. So I suppose we should add a fourth change to the other three: an income stream. Asking for donations can only work if one markets well and aggressively; I hope to do a better job of that this time. But along with donations, I'd like to be able to earn income of my own-- and that's where the speaking engagements come in. Right now, I've got them pegged to eBay/PayPal, where the funds can be transferred either to my bank account or to the future 501(c)(3) account. I have a feeling that, if the lecture circuit idea catches on, it's something I could pursue even after the walk is done.
As for those hotels and motels-- well, they're still a possibility, but only as an absolute last resort. I need to exhaust all non-paying and minimal-paying possibilities first.
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Many thanks to A Reader Who Shall Remain Nameless for plunking down $100 in my PayPal account, putting me that much closer to my goal of $800 to fill out the IRS exemption status paperwork. This means a lot.
(In case anyone is wondering where I'm getting this $800 figure from, see Wikipedia here, the section titled "Obtaining Status." Strangely, the IRS.gov site has a PowerPoint presentation on the subject, but it's a few years out of date and shows a figure of $700-something.)
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It's been a while since I've posted anything here. Sorry about that; it was a busy weekend.
One of my projects this past weekend was to create an eBay ad for a lecture circuit as part of my effort to (1) raise money for my trans-American walk, and (2) raise money for GBM research. First things first, though: I need $800 just to be able to file the paperwork for the 501(c)(3) nonprofit. This situation puts the cart before the horse-- I need to raise funds before I can raise funds-- but as they say, it takes money to make money.
So: if you're in driving distance of the DC area, have $300 on hand for a lecture fee (this can be collected), and you've got the facilities for a lecture, please visit this eBay entry, read it, and consider helping me out. The first three lectures will defray the cost of the IRS procedure; after that, the money will go into the 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
This, folks, is one of the reasons why I asked my bosses at my current job to give me three-day weekends. I have Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays available for just this sort of work. If I could do three lectures in a single weekend, I'd leap the IRS obstacle right away, and whatever money I make after that could go straight into that fund.
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More in the "lessons learned" series:
5. hotels/motels only as a last resort
6. clothing (and the whole notion of traveling light)
7. tents versus bivy sacks (and how not to lose your damn tent)
8. traffic, narrow road shoulders, and me
9. weight, conditioning, and knees
10. shoes, blisters, and weather
11. food, drink, peeing, and pooping while on the road
12. protection from the sun, wind, rain, and cold
13. whether REI is just for elites/snobs with money
and another one:
14. on money
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Now that I know about the looming, $800 obstacle in my path to obtaining exemption status (itself a hurdle I need to jump to establish a 501(c)(3) nonprofit), I need to think about immediate ways to raise funds. To that end, I'm going to talk with some high school students at my places of work (I work at two different branches of a tutoring center) about fundraising ideas. I also hope to use the kids as resources for route-planning; as Stephanie at PNC Bank wisely noted, many kids need to fulfill community-service requirements. Alas, this week is spring break for many local counties, so it's the wrong time to go trolling for teen help. I'll try next week.
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So I went to the IRS.gov website and sat through the little PowerPoint training program for people trying to establish a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Guess what: I'm still going to have to shell out filing fees plus $800! I don't have that kind of money.
Looks as if I'll need to do a fundraiser before the fundraiser. To that end, I'm going to be slapping up an ad on eBay for speaking engagements at $300 a pop. I'll talk for an hour and have a 30-minute Q&A period. As I've noted elsewhere, lecturing isn't really teaching, but it's an efficient way to disseminate information. The topic of these talks will be primarily about how one's own family is the best patient advocate.
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On this blog, I've never told the full story of what happened on the day my mother first showed signs of her brain cancer. This is that story, known to my brothers and my closest friends.
Two years ago, on April 16, 2009, almost to the very minute of this post's time stamp, I woke up and smelled something burning. I went upstairs to find a spotless kitchen, and my mother sitting quietly in her favorite corner of her new couch, watching Korean TV. My father was nowhere in sight.
I went to the kitchen sink and found the pot in which someone had tried and failed to cook breakfast. The pot was partly filled with water; its bottom was covered in the black char that can only happen when someone starts heating something on the stove, then turns away and forgets about it.
I called over to Mom to ask her what had happened. She got up from the couch and approached the kitchen with an open, childlike expression on her face. I asked her whether she had tried to cook breakfast, and she nodded, wide-eyed. The look on her face alarmed me: she wasn't herself at all. When I asked her what she had tried to cook, she said, "I tried to make some... some... some... chicken!" It had obviously been oatmeal, and my mind screamed aphasia. I asked Mom a series of questions—the sort that a doctor might ask a patient with neurological difficulties: what day is it? Where are you? Who's the president of the United States? Mom's answers, and her continued demeanor, weren't reassuring.
I sat Mom back down on her couch and went to find Dad. He was in his den/computer room, typing away on his computer, seemingly oblivious to what was happening to his wife.
"Something's wrong with Mom," I said. Dad stopped typing.
"She was acting funny this morning," he observed quietly.
"She's aphasic and is acting almost as if she's having..." I couldn't say it.
"Could be a T.I.A.," Dad said. I asked what that was, even though I was pretty sure I knew the answer. "Transient ischemic attack. A mini-stroke," Dad whispered. And then he did something I'll never forget, because it was emblematic of how he handled the entire nine-month crisis: he leaned slightly toward his computer, bowed his head, and squeezed his eyes shut. I was witnessing denial. My father was blotting out reality.
"Shouldn't we do something?" I asked, feeling the urgency building. "Shouldn't we take her to the ER?"
My father—a man with paramedical training—said, "Nah, the ER won't take her. I'm going to set up an appointment with Dr. Reyff [not his real name]. His office isn't open yet. I have to wait two hours before I can call him."
"Why won't the ER take her if she's having a stroke?" I asked, incredulous.
"The ER won't take her," Dad said again, shaking his head. I was dumbfounded, and didn't know what to say to this. My father's shutdown was complete.
I went back downstairs and quickly emailed my brothers about the situation, including the fact that Dad wanted to wait for Dr. Reyff. My brother Sean called as he was rushing over to the parents' house; he and I agreed that waiting two hours for the doctor defied common sense: Mom needed to go to the ER now. My brother David came over as well, and it was the three of us—with no help from Dad—who persuaded Mom to stand up, slip on some slippers, and head out to the van so we could go to the ER. Yet Dad drove.
We got Mom to Mount Vernon Hospital, discovered she had a mass on her frontal lobe, had her transferred from Mount Vernon to Fairfax Hospital, and left her there for her MRI. Some of these events are chronicled on this blog. What I didn't blog about, however, is what happened that night, after Dad and I got back home sometime after 1AM. I was furious at my father for his conduct throughout the day, and I let him have it.
"How could you insist on not taking her to the ER?" I demanded. It was the question that was foremost on my mind. "She could have been dying right there in front of you, and all you did was clean up the mess in the kitchen and go back to your computer! What the hell kind of paramedic can't tell when a patient needs urgent care? She never burns a meal! That didn't alert you that something was seriously wrong? You couldn't even recognize a cognitive problem like aphasia? All I ever had was a couple psych courses, and even I know what aphasia looks like!"
Dad's response was unbelievably lame: "I never took any psych courses, so how could I know that?" Was my father simply dodging responsibility, or was he genuinely that stupid?
My mother had often called Dad a "phony-baloney doctor." She may have meant it tenderly, as the sort of gibe a wife might use against her husband, but with her instinct for understanding people, she doubtless knew, even years earlier, that my father wasn't a competent EMT: he merely thought he was. On April 16, 2009, that incompetence could have gotten my mother killed.
Sean told me much later that, if I hadn't been home, Mom would have died on the couch. Maybe; maybe not. As it turned out, she hadn't had a stroke: her cognitive symptoms were the result of the edema arising from her brain tumor. Still, it's likely that my father—who had revealed a shocking inability to step up and take care of his wife when she needed him most—would have left my mother on that couch until she quietly slumped over. Had I not been there. Had I not been there to provide a sense of urgency.
My father's response to my furious questions wasn't I'm sorry, son; I fucked up. That, at least, would have been a man's response. Instead, all he did was deflect: "It's good that you can express yourself this way." Spoken with clinical detachment. The remark was so utterly irrelevant that all I could do was laugh bitterly.
"That's all you have to say? You think you're my therapist, now?" I was breathing hard, filled with a mixture of incredulity and fury. In a single day, I had lost almost all respect for my father, who had proved himself to be a coward in a crisis. The man who loved to brag about his EMT training, who so proudly wore a military uniform, had shown himself unable to rise to the occasion of his own wife's need. His role throughout the day had been little more than to fill out paperwork and to sit by Mom's side—something the rest of us were already doing. He had shown not a single spark of initiative.
Our family had no idea what glioblastoma multiforme was when the day began, and if I recall correctly, we didn't even learn that term until a day or so later. But as the weeks rolled on, I was the one who did the research about the cancer; I was the one who guided the decision-making process as the cancer progressed; I was the one who cleaned up after my father's repeated mistakes in his care of my mother. What I saw on April 16 was that I was losing two parents, not one: my father had effectively left the building, passing off responsibility to his sons because of his own unwillingness to make important decisions or take decisive action.
What happened that day, and over the ensuing months, has had major repercussions for our family. And I haven't blogged about any of that until now.
Oh, yes: I was ignorant about strokes on the morning of April 16, 2009, but I researched them a day later, so now I can tell you this: if you think someone's having a stroke, then you've got about one hour to get that person to an ER. My father should have known that. All I had to do was use Google to find this out. Jesus Christ.
In case you're wondering: yes, many things went un-blogged during my mother's illness—the truth about my father being the most conspicuous of those things. Friends advised me not to write about this at the time, but given all that's happened since my mother's death, I see no reason to keep this information to myself any longer.
ADDENDUM: So much credit goes to my brothers for keeping their wits that day. David was, ultimately, the one who got Mom to her feet: she had been resisting our efforts to persuade her to get in the car.
The tableau would have looked bizarre to an outsider: there was Mom, stubbornly curled up on her couch in the living room, with her three large sons standing over her. Every time one of us said, "Come on, Mom! We need to get to the hospital to check you out," she responded with an iron "No!" Her expression was a frightening combination of stony and desperate. When we shot back with a "Why?", Mom couldn't answer us—more proof that something was dreadfully wrong. Mom wasn't the type to be at a loss for words, but that morning, all she could do was glare at us.
I remember briefly wondering whether she would struggle violently should we try to get her on her feet. David, who had more common sense than I did, didn't wait: once he saw that talking would be fruitless, he bent over Mom, slid his arms around her, and lifted her into a standing position. She didn't resist at all.
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I met with Business Banking staffer Stephanie today, at my local PNC branch, and she did a great job of giving me the lowdown on how to proceed with the creation of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The first thing I need to do is file with the IRS for an "exception status," and once the IRS sends back its approval, I'll be meeting with Stephanie again to discuss the next steps in the process.
I also learned that my idea of involving kids in my project is a good one: Stephanie noted that many kids, especially high schoolers, often need to meet community service requirements of some sort or other (due to involvement in a service-oriented club, for example).
So for the moment, it's going to be a matter of downloading forms, filling them out, and waiting on tenterhooks for a response from the IRS. Wish me luck as we get the ball rolling.
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It's taken some doing, but on Monday at 11:30AM, I'm going to be speaking with a business banker at the local branch of my bank, PNC, about the creation of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The consultation itself may not be free; this wasn't made clear when I arranged the appointment.
In other news, a perusal of my rental contract shows that it may in fact be possible for me to sublet my apartment. The language in the contract stipulates that there can be no more than one occupant, and that if, at any time, the occupant is not a family member, occupancy can only occur with permission from the rental office.
So I'll be talking to my local bank and to my rental office about how this all might be arranged. I want everything to be aboveboard-- no surprises, no sneakiness. I'm hopeful that we can work all this out.
(Meanwhile, my thanks to the Parks family for suggesting that I talk with my bank.)
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I'm tempted to file this under "lessons learned." As it turns out, the American Discovery Trail is not bike-able along its entire length, as I found out while reading the FAQ for the ADT. Bikers must instead follow detours, and even then, there are portions of the ADT that are impassable by bike.
I also found out that the ADT is not clearly marked as the ADT along its entire length; each segment is managed by a different state, and not all states are on the same page. Complicating matters is the fact that the trail's routes occasionally shift due to maintenance or construction, and maps that were valid last year are no longer valid this year.
Most of these problems are minor annoyances, not major obstacles. The idea that a trail might not be clearly marked is, well, par for the course with most trails all over the world (unless you're in Switzerland, where all the trails are scrupulously marked). Still, it complicates matters now that I know that the ADT, despite having a "society" devoted to it, is actually a rather disjointed path.
That "society" bugs me, too. Far from disseminating free information about the ADT online, the ADT Society has taken the most current information about the trail and rendered it in paper map and book form. I wonder just how many maps and books I'll have to carry with me at any given time. I'd much rather use Google Maps (which employs satellite/GPS) to guide me than to carry around a few ounces (or pounds) of paper. (Of course, paper doesn't run out of battery power, but it can wear out, crumple, fall apart in rain, and do a bunch of other nifty disappearing acts.)
I checked to see whether the trail was marked on Google Earth. It's not, as far as I can tell. There may be random photos pegged to the maps on Google Earth, but they aren't readily searchable as part of the ADT. That's frustrating, to say the least, and the upshot is this: the only way for me to get detailed information about the ADT is to buy it from the ADT Society. Shucking fit. Doesn't seem fair. Then again, that's capitalism, right?
Speaking of capitalism, I think it may be possible for me to couple the ADT with the notion of paid speaking engagements. I'm thinking that I can tie this in with eBay, where people are allowed to sell services (no, you pervs, not those services): I can set my fee at, say, $300-$500 to speak at a local venue; the money I collect can go to mostly the 501(c)(3) nonprofit, with the remainder being used to help keep me on my journey.
Gears are turning.
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My brother David thinks I should consider subletting my apartment, instead of raising money to cover the rent, as a way to lower the costs of the upcoming walk. I'm going to check into the legality of doing that, but I'm not hopeful.
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