Episode #130 - Paul Maguire (Irish Paul)

Mighty Blue On The Appalachian Trail: The Ultimate Mid-Life Crisis

Steve Adams

Sports, Wilderness

4.8 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2019

⏱️ 93 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As soon as I started speaking with Paul Maguire I knew we'd get on well. He has that cheeky Irish lilt to his voice with a smile just under the surface, ready to make an appearance at a moment's notice.

Paul retired and was looking for something to do when the AT caught his attention. Unlike some, though, he didn't go straight to the trail. He hiked in Ireland for a while before spreading his wings and touring Europe with a kayak, his bike, and his backpack. He even took a major detour up Mount Kilimanjaro.

Eventually, Paul made it to the East Coast of the US and headed north. What he found was a delightful surprise, as I'm sure he was to his fellow travelers.

We also have Margi Miims this week, the eighth and final member of the Mighty Blue Class of 2019.

Margi and all our class members are hoping to beat the odds and complete the trail by the end of this hiking season. I hope you stick around and follow our journeys.

For now, though, let's finish with a beaming Irish Paul.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the Hiking Radio Network, where we talk the walk with shows by hikers
0:05.3	about hikers for everybody.
0:15.3	Mighty Blue on the Appalachian Trail, the ultimate midlife crisis, joins Stephen his guests every week as he staggers from Georgia to Maine.
0:32.9	Hi, and thanks for coming back again to Mighty Blue on the Appalachian Trail, the ultimate midlife crisis. I must say, I like the tagline, the ultimate midlife crisis is a bit of fun. I'm not sure it applies anymore. If you've been listening to the show for some time now, and I know that many of you have, you'll understand that most people aren't in any sort of crisis when they go to
0:54.8	the Appalachian or other long-distance trails. They're far from a crisis. They've decided to
1:00.1	fulfil an elusive dream and are probably making the least crisis-driven decision of their
1:04.3	lives. Listen to all these people, you'll have heard the joy, the unexpected kindnesses,
1:09.5	the camaraderie, sometimes the sadness and the
1:12.0	pain of hiking. Nobody has talked about being in a crisis at the outset. I'm going to keep the
1:17.1	tagline, but I wouldn't want anybody to be misled by it. It was a joke against me, really,
1:22.1	when I first did this. Deciding to hike a long-distance trail may well be the most rational
1:27.1	decision of your life.
1:28.7	It certainly was in mine.
1:31.2	Talking about rationality, today's guest, isn't a very endearing Irishman.
1:36.6	Paul McGuire.
1:38.2	Paul was an utter delight to chat with, having a humour that was never far from the surface,
1:42.5	which meant, of course, that we spent a lot of time laughing. A couple of months ago, one of my iTunes reviewers said that I laugh
1:48.7	way too much, and he thinks it's a false laugh. For you, whoever you were, I'd advise you to
1:54.2	miss this one. I'm having far too good a time laughing with Paul. We've also got the final member
1:59.7	of the Mighty Blue Class of 2019, and after
2:02.6	the two Fab 50s last week, this time we have a charming young woman in a 20s, Margie Mims or Fireball.
2:09.6	Her enthusiasm is infectious and in fact the whole show is pretty upbeat today. We're now down to
	...

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