Just over 4 months to go...

Just a few updates, since it's been a while!

Gear Angels

If you “Like” us on Facebook or follow the “Looking OutAcross America” thread on Again Today, you probably saw our photo and post this week about the gear that started showing up on our front porch last Monday and didn’t stop arriving until Tuesday this week.  Some amazingly generous individual/individuals purchased at least 1 of nearly everything on our Amazon Wishlist!  We honestly never expected this to happen, unless it was perpetrated by our parents (who promise it wasn’t them!), and are extremely humbled by the generosity of people who are moved to do something this extraordinary when they hear about our journey and our cause – the Looking Out Foundation.

 

 

 All told, over $650 worth of gear showed up at our door, which is a huge relief for us to not have to go out and purchase on our own before we leave! This gives us that much more peace of mind as we prepare our budget to take the blow of 3 months of unpaid leave and no guarantee of being able to come back to our current jobs after Looking Out Across America.  Not that we’re complaining – we knew the implications of taking this trip, and are prepared to face whatever we have to…but we want these people to know exactly how much their generous donations are appreciated.  There really aren’t enough words to thank them for their kindness, but if those who haven’t come forward yet would like to, we’d be honored to be able to add you to our “Sponsors” page.  If you’d like to remain anonymous, we respect that too; just know if you read this that we are eternally grateful.

Looking Out Foundation Newsletter

I have a sneaking suspicion that our inclusion in the latest Looking Out Foundation newsletter prompted our gear angels to go out and buy some of our stuff – so thank you to the Looking Out Foundation for including a blurb about Looking Out Across America in your newsletter!  If you’ve been out to the Looking OutFoundation’s website lately, you’ll also find that Looking Out Across America is a featured campaign there.  Thanks again LOF – we couldn’t do nearly as much good as we hope to do with this trip without your partnership and support!  Click here to read the latest Looking Out Foundation news, and make sure you head over to the website and sign up to receive updates from them, and go out and “Like” them on Facebook!

Planning

 

 

 We have had our route maps for a couple of months now (thanks mom and dad!), and have had a decent idea of where the route goes, and how long it should roughly take us to complete the trip.  Our daily schedule and exact dates of starting the trip and ending in Seattle (hopefully) have been sort of floating out in space until this week.  While we still aren’t entirely sure of our exact begin and end dates (a lot of this hinges around the date of the Seattle Raise the Roof event, which we’re hoping still happens sometime in September, fingers crossed!), we have started to plan out our days, complete with daily mileage, stopping points, and working in rest days.

This is making the whole thing seem a lot more concrete than it has felt previously.  Actually knowing where in the country we’ll be on a rough date this summer makes a world of difference – we are actually conceptualizing exactly how many days it’ll take us to get to our first big climb of the trip (Day 5 or 6), our first time crossing state lines (Day 14), and our first crossing of the Continental Divide (Day 52 or 53).  Thinking about these things like steep climbs on fully loaded touring bikes also makes all more real the fact that we have just over 4 months left until we need to head out.  Four months to do all the promoting we can do of this thing; four months to get in the best physical shape we can to avoid complete failure in the first couple of weeks; four months to plan, pack, and figure out all of the logistics; four months to make sure we have everything in line for our small herd of animals to be cared for in our absence; four months to get as much done at work as we can.  Yikes!

 Soon we’ll post our tentative daily itinerary, so everyone can have a better idea of where we’ll be and when.  Hopefully some of you live close enough to come out and say hi along the way!

 Sponsors

We put together a short corporate sponsor proposal letter – we have contacted just a couple of potential sponsors so far, and got our first “No” today!  Hah, I assume there will be a lot of those, but hopefully some affirmatives in there too.  If you have any great ideas for sponsors, or think your company might be interested, send us an email and let us know and we can get a copy of the letter to you to pass along!  Or you can provide us company contact info and we can contact them directly.  We appreciate your help!

 

Looking Out Across America: The T-Shirt

 

That title reminded me of Spaceballs...but I digress.  T-shirts are still selling - we may actually have to have more printed soon!  If you still want one, we'll be happy to send it to you, just mosey on over to our Merchandise page :)  And...if you already have one, feel free to tag LOAA in your Facebook photos, or send us a shot of you wearing it - we'd love to include it on our FB page!   And we'd like to include you on our Sponsors page if you wouldn't mind! 

SOOOO…that’s what’s been going on in our world…hope you all are having a great 2013 J