Two Years From Today...

*This post was written to provide early material for a new site devoted to our pending trip. That site is still heavily under construction and will not go live until sometime next year. In the meantime, here's a short update concerning where we're at in our RTW preparations...

It's April 2nd, 2012 and if all things go according to hopes and plans, two years from today we'll be heading northward past the town of Darrington, WA on our way to the junction with the North Cascades Highway and the Northern Tier bicycle route. I must say that despite the lengthy amount of time before we depart, the excitement is already building. I suspect it's this way for anyone planning such a monumental uprooting. Which brings me to why I'm writing this post. I want to make sure and seed our site with posts that point to the steps we took to prepare for the trip and, as with everything that will ultimately appear on TwoFarGone.com, to provide another data point of reference for those who will one day be where we are now: scouring the internet like mad for all the tips, advice, and information you can find. So, in that regard, here's where we currently stand on a few things.

Savings
There's nothing more important during the long waiting period than saving and so far so good. We're past the halfway mark for our goal and several months ahead of schedule due to some good investments and are now socking away $700/month towards the trip. We continue to increase the monthly savings amount by $50 every six months.

Kristin and I are lucky in this regard that we haven't had to make any sacrifices in order to save for the trip (very lucky considering Kristin was laid off in December, 2010). We combine for a relatively comfortable "household income" and don't have very expensive tastes, except perhaps in bicycles. But going hand-in-hand with saving for the trip has been a full-frontal assault on all of our outstanding bills. Our mountain of credit card debt has been whittled to a molehill, the cars have been paid off for a couple years now, and we are soon to be debt-free outside of the mortgage for our house in WA, a minuscule mortgage on land we own in NC, and a lingering student loan. The latter two will be paid off this time next year.

Gearing Up
I built up our Salsa Fargos last winter and though I do intend to swap out the butterfly "trekking" handlebar for a standard mountain bike flat-bar to give us a wider grip for rocky/technical tracks (not to mention more cockpit space for accessories), they are otherwise tour-ready. We enjoyed every moment of these bikes during our 10 day tour around the Olympic Peninsula last summer and anxiously await our next short trip. Hell, I actually look forward to my quick jaunts to the grocery store. Anything to sneak a ride in on it.

Though we are two years away and are trying our best to not dwell on the trip too much, we have begun researching and buying gear in earnest. We've so far stuck to products that we either know will not change between now and 2014 and those we love and fear may be discontinued. Part of our reasoning for this was to also make strategic use out of our annual REI Dividend and the gift cards we've been receiving from family for holidays and birthdays. The pile of inspiration in the spare bedroom has been growing of late.

So far we've purchased Ortlieb front and rear panniers for each bike along with our sleeping systems of choice (an unorthodox combination that I'll explain in a separate post). We have a lot of gear already from our past trips, but I've also begun adding some clothing as I see things go on sale. Merino wool for the win!

We've created a spreadsheet that is already taking the form of a packing list, though it's really a way for us to track the things we've bought, what we still need, and what our top choices are for certain topics (detailed gear lists will be provided on this site). We read a lot of bike touring blogs and have studied more than a few people's gear lists over the past few years and have finally begun tracking the products that we want to get. This way we can purchase it gradually over time. This nets us two benefits: 1) We don't suddenly have to dip into our trip savings just as we stop working, and 2) We're not running around trying to research/acquire gear while also trying to sell our house and all of its contents.

Hair Removal
Kristin is in the process of writing a separate post about this, but she'll be going in for her third of six scheduled sessions for laser hair removal this week. This was a costly expense, but one I was not about to say no to. I know some women would rather let their leg and armpit hair grow out and that some guys don't mind their wives or girlfriends going a few days or weeks without shaving. Not us. Actually, Kristin was probably going to eventually do this anyway. I guess the trip just provided the necessary motivation. For those considering this, do note that it cost more than the total cost of my Fargo including racks and panniers. And it's extremely painful.

Snow Route
Earlier I mentioned that we hope to be crossing WA via the Northern Tier in early April. For those who aren't familiar with Washington State geography and highway closures, the North Cascades Highway (Hwy 20) closes every November due to avalanche and re-opens sometime that following spring. There are essentially four major routes through the Cascade Mountains in WA and Hwy 20 is not only the most scenic, but the one we prefer by a wide margin not only for its beauty but it also passes the town of Winthrop in the Methow Valley, one of my all-time favorite places in the Pacific Northwest. The highway didn't open until May 25th last year, its second-latest opening ever. This year it is expected to open the first week of May. As of late March, it still had snowdrifts 50 to 60 feet deep in some of the avalanche zones and the road surface at Washington Pass was under 9 feet of snow.

Photo from WA DOT of Highway 20 near Cutthroat Ridge during 2012 snow-clearing.
See their impressive collection of photos here.

If our hoping to ride this route in early April sounds like wishful thinking, it is! But it's not without precedent. Here's just a few of the highway opening dates I'm hanging my cycling helmet on: April 16th, 2010; March 10th, 2005; April 8th, 2004; April 14th, 2003; March 22nd, 2001; and March 30th, 2000 (source). Oh, and the road never closed during the winter of 1976-77 so we can always hope for a repeat. The two words we don't want to hear are "La" and "Nina" as the La Nina winters (like 2011 and 2012) are responsible for the immense snowfalls.

It's worth noting that Hwy 20 is only closed to cars. As long as you stay clear of the road crews while they are removing the snow, you are otherwise allowed to be up there on foot, bike, or ski (avalanche risk notwithstanding). So there's always the possibility that we time our crossing with the last remaining days of the snow-removal process and make it down the east side before the road opens to cars. More than likely though, we'll either luck into an early opening or have to take the route over Stevens Pass (Hwy 2), Snoqualmie Pass (I-90), or cross much further south, perhaps in Oregon or on Highway 12 through Washington.

The one thing we don't want to do is wait around until late May to start. We're waiting long enough as it is..

One Year Ago...

As I commence packing for a lengthy bi-coastal business trip (and a couple days on the beach in North Carolina with my sister), I can't help but think back to what I was doing this time last year: Riding! I was about halfway through a 9 day mountain biking trip to the Fruita/Moab area of the southwest US with some new friends. But rather than tell you about this incredible trip, let me show you. Here's a two-part video I shot with my Kodak Zi8 pocket HD camera.

I did 99% of the filming and all of the editing. There's a couple of shots of me in there (usually in a red top, on a white Specialized Stumpjumper 29er). Unfortunately, YouTube replaced the third song "Venice Queen" by Red Hot Chili Peppers with some muzak. Best moment? Definitely part 2, at 2:20. Oh, and definitely bump it to 720p and full screen for the proper effect.

Losing Weight the DBLDBS Way!

It's been five weeks since I stepped off a plane from San Francisco weighing a few pounds more than at any previous point in my life. Nine days spent sitting idle behind a computer. Nine days of eating way too much for breakfast and drinking too many beers with dinner. We need not discuss the desserts. I can't pin all of this blame on Duke though. My eating habits in general had deteriorated over the winter and the frequency at which I was working out could be measured in lunar phases. I wasn't getting fat, but I was certainly getting soft. Something had to give.

This is where I could write about how hardcore I've become in terms of working out and watching what I eat. I could tell you that I'm again training for marathons and Ironman triathlons and stage races in Canada. But it'd be a lie. As it turns out, I'm enjoying pretty significant results with what I would consider a very non-drastic course of action. I call this the DBLDBS plan, short for Don't Be Lazy, Don't Be Stupid. All rights reserved, copyright 2011, property of Randomly Generated blog. Rebroadcast or description of events prohibited without the expressed written consent of Major League Baseball. Oops.

Before I share the details of my plan, a few results are in order. I've been using our wonderful Omron scale every Thursday morning to chart my progression in terms of weight loss, body fat percentage, visceral fat, and skeletal muscle percentage. After five weeks of DBLDBS...

Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit

It's rare for me to watch a movie that I remember two years later, let alone one that I not only import on DVD, but that I even end up buying the accompanying comic books too. Or, in this case, the manga. Actually, it's not rare; it's unheard of. While this may not shock those of you who know me well, many suspect that because I work in the videogame industry that I have certain, shall we say, traits. Assumptions are made that I'm into action figures, that I like science-fiction and superheroes, and that I've collected comic books, played Magic: The Gathering or Dungeons & Dragons, and, well, you get the idea. The truth is, the only action figures I've ever owned were a couple of ThunderCats when I was 10; I hate all things Stars, particularly Wars and Treks; I couldn't tell you who the Superfriends are. I'm not even sure if there are Superfriends or if I just made that up. And though I did buy a couple of "Ghost Rider" and "Silver Surfer" comics as a child, 90% of the reading I've done since then has been, gasp, non-fiction. I'VE. NEVER. ROLLED. TWENTY.

Alas, I am a very poor excuse for a geek. But this doesn't mean I can't be swayed. My time spent writing the Batman: Arkham Asylum Official Strategy Guide two summers ago sparked such a keen desire in me to learn more about the Batman universe that I actually bought the "Arkham Asylum" graphic novel by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean (an exceptional piece of storytelling and art). Though I now have no idea where that book went, I do recall enjoying it considerably (and yes, I do hope to be writing the guidebook for the sequel later this year... fingers crossed).

And that brings us to my foray into manga and Ikigami...

Deciphering Your Xbox Stats Email

So I got an email today from Microsoft detailing my own personal usage stats for March, 2011. But before I share with you a bit of my own time with the system, allow me to show off my avatar's new pant. No, I didn't forget to make it plural.

Behold the Plaid Attack!

Yes, it's a hideous concoction (though he seems to look perfectly dressed when sitting at the table in the new Full House Poker game). Think what you will about his appearance, what everyone wants to know is where did I get my pant. Well, it's actually an unlockable item in the new version of "You Don't Know Jack." Each episode in YDKJ has a sponsor-themed wrong answer. Answer incorrectly (by accident or intentionally, it doesn't matter) and happen to choose that right wrong answer during the show and you get a prize. My fabulous pant was provided by a world famous designer of high-fashion pant and slack.

Ride Report: Blanchard, err, Chuckanut Mountain

Did I really think the ride wouldn't be that hilly? What made me believe Preston would bother looking for others to join him if he wasn't going to at least be leading a relatively serious ride. Sure, he "takes the winter off" and it's "just an early season ride," but me? This year? They say luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. What about when zeal meets sloth? Pain and embarrassment, that's what...

I had never heard of this place Preston called Blanchard (Google Maps insists we were actually at Chuckanut Mountain). I tried to find it on the Evergreen Trail Wiki (an outstanding resource) and came up empty. I asked Preston, and was told it's just a place he likes to ride up by Mount Vernon (a lie, it's actually much closer to Bellingham but he didn't want to scare me off with a longer drive). I should have asked how far we'd be going, or how much climbing we'd be doing. After all, I had only been on my mountain bike for longer than an hour once or twice in recent months. I was also walking quite gingerly thanks to going for a run on Thursday -- my first run in a year. Forty-eight hours later is when the true muscle soreness sets in. Way to time it perfectly, Doug. All I knew was the trails "kicked the shit out of the ones at Tokul." I like Tokul. It's my favorite local ride. And I really wanted to ride someplace new, with guys I don't usually get a chance to ride with. It was settled, agony be damned.

Across Bellingham Bay to Anacortes and beyond...

New Pounds, Garmin Connect

I returned Wednesday night from a nine-day trip to the San Francisco Bay area for work and brought a little something extra home with me. There was the usual suitcase crammed with dirty laundry and a pouch filled with dozens of receipts for the expense report, but there was also an extra four pounds around my mid-section. I knew we were eating well, but I didn't realize just how well. The extra poundage comes at a bad time, as I've yet to shed my winter weight. And the fact that I just nonchalantly typed the words winter weight makes me want to punch myself in the face.

Tactics Ogre Strategy Guide: Don't Take My Word For It

Some reviews are starting to pop up on Amazon for our Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together strategy guide.

Both reviewers love the content and the writing, but would have preferred heavier paper. I don't blame them, but it was a simple matter of economics. The book is 400 pages... for a game that is played on a handheld device. In order to keep both the heft and the price of the book reasonable, cheaper paper had to be used. Now, I'm not privy to the discussions that take place regarding page count and paper stock, but my guess is that going to heavier weight paper would have pushed the retail cost of the book up to that of the game. And nobody wants that, especially for such a niche game as this.

Guidebook Giveaway: Tactics Ogre

I have three copies of our absolutely enormous strategy guide to Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together to give away. It's not often that I say having a strategy guide is essential for getting the most out of a game, but I can't imagine anyone discovering more than 70% of this game without the help of this guide. It's over 400 pages of densely packed maps, side-quests, data, and strategy.

My co-author and I (with help from the lovely Mrs. Walsh) submitted over 1200 pages of manuscript for this book. There are hundreds of maps, countless items and weapons detailed, and hundreds of skills and spells described.

And I've got three autographed copies to give away. All you have to do is sign up to become a Friend of RG (see links on the left) and post a reply to this thread. Take a moment to tell me why you want the book, your memories of playing past Tactics Ogre games, or even let me know what you're favorite character class is. I'll do a drawing of names on 3/12 to pick the winners.

A Punch to the Gut

The year has gotten off to a busier start than I ever dared imagine. My work on the strategy guide to Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together carried through the New Year and nearly all the way to the end of January. At one point I averaged over 7 hours a day for 27 straight days, not including a single minute for time spent checking email or making coffee. I started my current project just a few short days later and already have another waiting in the on-deck circle for me to begin as soon as this one ends.

Nevertheless, I came across a bit of news last night that I just can't shake from the back of my mind. It hit me with such force, I nearly doubled-over in shock.

I've spent the past week reading the book "Miles From Nowhere" by Barbara Savage, what I believe is the best-selling and most well-known travel memoir on bicycle touring. And it's obvious why. Barbara writes with an honesty and pacing that is as easy to read as it is enjoyable. And she tells a great story too. She and her husband set off in 1978 from southern California on a journey to bicycle around the world. Recently married and not too far removed from their college days, they were already tired of the humdrum routine of wake, work, sleep and set about giving themselves a memory to last a lifetime.

Toms

I first thought they were slippers. We were opening gifts from Kristin's sister and the brown corduroy shoes in my hand bore a striking resemblance to the types of slippers an uncle might wear. Not necessarily the uncle with the cane and ear hair so visible you can see it across the room, but an older uncle for sure. Then, as Kristin opened her box to uncover a pair of red ones, I recognized the little blue and white flag in the bottom. Toms!

I meant to write about Toms early last year, during my hiatus from blogging. I meant to check out their website and order a pair, but one thing led to another and the story I heard on the radio slipped from my memory. Toms Shoes isn't your typical shoe brand. Founded in Santa Monica (naturally) a few years ago by Blake Mycoskie, an American traveler during a trip to Argentina, Toms was created as a way of bringing free shoes to the barefooted children of the world. For every pair of shoes purchased, another is given to a child in need as part of the company's "One for One" mission. They've given out over 1,000,000 pairs of shoes as of September, 2010.

Get Used to this Name

Hannah Cunliffe.

The world's fastest 15 year old. Last year, at age 14, she walked away from the field in both the 100m and 200m sprints at the American Athletic Union Junior Olympics winning by an obscene margin in both events. Despite then being in the 8th grade, her time of 11.71 (wind-aided) would have won the state championship in the two largest classes in Washington state, would have placed her 3rd overall at the Pac-10 Championships, and would have placed her 4th all-time in the University of Washington record books.  Her performance in 200m was even more incredible, clocking a 23.91 and winning by over a second! Again, as an 8th grader.

Now she's in high school and she'll be competing (as a freshman!) at the UW Invitational this weekend against some top Division I collegiate talent from the PAC-10 and beyond. She's just a half-second from qualifying for next year's Olympic Trials. She could very well be racing for the Stars & Stripes at age 16.

Source: Seattle Times

Not Running From Xian to Trafalmadore

It's high time for a books post, but first a word about Kindle. As it relates to my preferred reading medium, I had long considered myself firmly in the camp of the traditionalist, wanting to feel the heft of a book in my hands, flip and dogear its pages and, yes, admire the cracked spines aligned vertically on my bookshelf. And then I saw a Kindle in person. One of the guys I worked with on the Official Halo: Reach Strategy Guide brought his first-gen Kindle in to show me. No amount of marketing or online advertisements can ever be as effective as those first ten seconds with a borrowed device. For it only took those few seconds to get it. The screen's eerie similarity to that of newspaper or a paperback immediately washed away my main reservation--the screen--and the ease of use, incredible battery life, and massive storage capacity won me over.

I went home that night and scoured all the information I could find on Amazon's site to see how many holes I could poke in its glossy veneer. None. One of the biggest selling points for me was the ability to share books with up to six Kindles on a single family account. This meant I could buy a book once (often at a steep discount over the physical form) and Kristin and I could be reading it simultaneously. Then I thought to travel guides and our future trips and realized I could pre-purchase all the guidebooks we would want and have them stored on the Kindles. A fine alternative to lugging around heavy travel guides, not to mention the challenge of finding English language guidebooks (or books in general) where nobody within a thousand miles speaks the language. I ordered a second-gen Kindle one evening late last summer, the 3G model, and have since purchased books while laying in bed well past midnight, in an airplane stuck in a lengthy queu on the runway, and, yes, in the bathroom. Kristin now has a Kindle too, one of the newer graphite-colored third-generation ones. I actually think the newest one is a little too sleak and prefer mine. She, of course, loves it. Kristin's sister gave us both Amazon gift cards for Christmas and I must say it was a lot of fun to pick out four different books each and have them beamed to both devices within seconds. We're both reading Ian Frazier's "On the Rez" right now, in fact.

Coming Soon... I hope.

I have post-it notes sticking all over my monitor, reminding me of topics to write about. They're primarily about the several books I've read recently, the Kindle, our dances with unemployment, and looking ahead to 2011.

The only problem is that I'm positively crushed with work right now. I've submitted nearly 700 pages of manuscript for the guidebook I'm currently working on, my co-author has submitted over 200 additional pages (mine contained hundreds of pages of data tables), and neither of us are done. The game we're writing on was released in Japan in December alongside a 704 page strategy guide written by 11 people.

Lucky for us, we were able to get my wife hired on to assist with the data entry and some match-and-find style translation work with a 4000 word English-Japanese glossary. Never thought I'd be saying "lucky" with respect to her having become suddenly unemployed, but it was a real blessing (in more ways than one, but that's for another post).

I should be wrapping up my work on this guide in the next couple days and will have a proper post soon. I realize this is in bad form, to bring the blog out of the closet only to post so infrequently.

Nevertheless, I hear that you're always supposed to leave them wanting more. And on that advice I'll tell you the next post will be titled "Not Running from Xian to Tralfalmadore."

I hope that piques your interest.

Flash Flood in Australia

Incredible footage of a flash flood cleaning out a parking lot in Australia.

The Trail Unblazed

I unlocked a rather unique Achievement yesterday while playing with the Xbox: Squat Master. I did my one-thousandth squat-based exercise with EA's Active 2. I also dodged 1000 balls in the dodgeball exercise of the same game. Not at once, mind you. Over time. I've done 10 workouts in the game's 9-week "hard" program so far and the milestones are starting to pile up. The game has a number of these quadruple-digit based Achievements. I'll unlock another one once I complete my thousandth lunge, pushup, crunch, etc., etc.

I wrote about Active 2 earlier and I'm every bit as impressed with it now as I was when the novelty of Kinect was still day-one fresh. EA also released a patch for the game that has done a good job of eliminating the chance of the game confusing your arm movements for wanting to pause and see a tutorial. I'm not sure if that was what the patch, err, "title update" was for, but it seems to have gotten much better since then.

My workout yesterday concluded after 38 minutes, with me drenched in sweat after sustaining an average heart rate of 143bpm, including warm-up and cool down. The calorie-counter says I burned 517 calories, much higher than the projected burn at the start of the workout. I try to stay right on the border between zones 4 & 5 in the heart rate scale (out of a scale of 1-5) and it seems that the game expects players to spend more time in zone 3. I routinely pop my heart rate above 175bpm while playing.

But back to the Achievements. One of the reasons I enjoy this "game" so much is that the developers did a great job of keeping the carrot out in front of you, allowing you to sniff, lick, and taste tiny bites just often enough to keep you coming back for more. Unfortunately, a bit of lazy design in regards to the Achievements has given this game what may be the most difficult Achievement in all of the Xbox-land:

Trail Blazer - unlocked by running 1,000 kilometers/621 miles.

Tooth the Nightmare Before Christmas

The resort manager had barely finished extolling the virtues of our room -- "the best in the lodge," he promised -- before Kristin began what would be a brief obsession with the concierge, Floyd. He was taller than me. He was darker than me. And try as I might, I have to admit Floyd is even a much better listener. And we all know how important that is to the ladies. Lucky for me, Floyd also outweighed me by nearly two thousand pounds and was quite hairy. And dead. Floyd was a stuffed bison on display in the main lobby that, according to Kristin, was just oh-so-cute. Whether or not he performed concierge duties we don't know for sure. We never saw anyone at the desk adjacent him, yet the reservations were always well taken care of.

As for our room, it was every bit as fantastic as we were assured. We entered to the sound of classical music playing on a stereo, a ready-made wood fire waiting to be lit in the fireplace, and a view looking out to an endless winter snowscape every bit as pillowy as the down-clad bedding. The four and one-half hour drive went smoothly with clear roads over both mountain passes, yet we were anxious to commence with the relaxing. Armed with a couple bottles of pinot noir, a favorite single malt, some books and a backgammon board, we embraced the lack of a television in the room and set about putting the stress of the preceding weeks behind us. Back home in Snoqualmie I'm neck-deep in one of the most frustrating and difficult projects I've been a part of in years and Kristin, well, she just got laid off two weeks prior. But here at Sun Mountain Lodge, none of that mattered. All we had to remember was that our couples massage was scheduled for three o'clock on Friday and we had a dinner reservation for seven on Christmas day. It would be four days of blissful relaxation.

We settled into a pair of leather armchairs near one of the two massive fireplaces in the lobby, just feet from a towering two-story artificial Christmas tree, to do some reading while the local Cascadia Choral group filled the room with a harmonious hour of Christmas carols. Kristin sat working her way through one of my favorites, "The River of Doubt" by Candice Millard, while I read Colin Thubron's "Shadow of the Silk Road." The choir was explaining the finer points of miming along to the reindeer song as I came upon the following passage:

Fargo: It's a Wrap!

Finally received delivery of the gel padding that I wanted to include under the leather handlebar tape (and red anodized Salsa skewers to match the headset!) and was able to finish up the build. Had a request for some close-ups of the cockpit so I'm attaching a couple extra down below. I admit this is a pretty unorthodox setup. Butterfly trekking bar, disc brakes, grip shifters, and leather Brooks bar tape... wha-wha-what?



The orange gel padding that was holding up the show. Looks ugly now, but should add some
comfort for the hands during those long days in the saddle.



Head-on view of the control arrangement. Installed the brake levers on the edge of the bars and the grip shifts just inside of them. It gets tight underneath with the brake and shifter cables dueling it out in close-proximity, but it works well!



The Fargo Build

There's something really magical about building up a bike that was purchased for the express purpose of being ridden around the world (although it's maiden tour will be a slightly more modest 500 mile trip around the Olympic Peninsula next summer). I hemmed and hawed over each part like never before. Weighing the pros and cons of frame materials, disc brakes versus rim brakes, standard 26 inch wheels or 29er, drop bars versus flat bars versus trekking bars. The list goes on...


Bike parts galore, spread out like a buffet for our building pleasure!



Behold the "Funguy Green" Fargo by Salsa... and its family of future stablemates in the background.

Crossing the Congo in a Toyota

I just spent the better part of the day reading what may be one of the most entertaining and exciting trip reports I've ever seen on the Internet (thanks to the Dubious Quality set of Friday Links). It's a trip report about a Belgian couple's crossing of the Democratic Republic of Congo in their Toyota Landcruiser. They spent 40+ days driving through jungle and savanna, along many of the worst roads in the world, if you can even call them roads (they were little more single-track trails at many points). And that doesn't even begin to touch on the hostility of the people they encountered.

Frederick's trip report was posted over time on a message board here. It's filled with incredible photos and lots of questions, answers, and criticism from other readers. Don't be intimidated by the length of the thread. Just scroll ahead for posts made by Frederick, aka "RadioBaobab". You'll be glad you did. Note ahead of time that this was just a small part of their 2-year long trip. They had already been on the road for over a year before embarking on this leg of the journey.

There were several comments that Frederick made in his report that I felt were particularly wise and offered some good advice for folks planning a trip like Kristin and I are. One was his saying that "It's better to be sorry for what you did do, than be sorry over what you didn't do." Let that one sink in.

The other came up at the end of his telling of a particularly harrowing ordeal.

"As agreed before we would not try to convince each other to push on. She contemplated the situation for half an hour with a warm tea. She is no quitter, she wanted to continue!"

Trips even less ambitious than theirs will always have their tough times. And sometimes the stress can be too much. I think promising one another ahead of time to not try and convince the other to push on is a great idea, as that can only lead to resentment and greater problems down the road.