Episode #18 - Patrick Bredlau (RW)

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

Steve Adams

Wilderness, Sports

4.8 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2017

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Patrick Bredlau had a truly life-changing experience on the trail. His candor at his spiritual epiphany was touching, while his encounter with a man hiding from his past seemed to provide a counter-point. Following his hike, he has given talks about the trail and exhibited pictures from his journey. Some of these photographs are on show at the Illinois State Museum. The museum also sells his book and 50% of the royalties from those sales are donated to the museum. Other ways to get the book include his website, http://appalachiantraildiary.com/, where you can buy the book directly from Patrick or, of course, Amazon.

If you'd like to contact Patrick, you can email him at rw.roadwarrior@gmail.com or find him on his Facebook page, where you'll find his speaking engagements on his event calendar. The pictures below are one of Patrick at the top of a cold Mt. Washington, a copy of his book cover, and one of the two of us just before the end, in Maine. We both look very reflective.

I'd still like to hear from you with a trail name for Jessa, more "If I did it again" ideas, and any other suggestions you may have for the show. The more we can interact with each other, the better the show will be. See you all next week.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Mighty Blue on the Appalachian Trail, the ultimate midlife crisis, join Stephen his guests every week as he staggers from Georgia to Maine.
0:25.7	Hello again and welcome to episode number 18. This week we have Patrick Breedlaw,
0:32.1	otherwise known as R.W. as our guest. R.W. and I met on the knife edge in Pennsylvania, a ridge of sharp rocks that
0:40.5	unbalanced the hiker and test the strength of your ankles. He just spent a few weeks off the
0:45.3	trail due to injury and chose that Godforsaken place to re-enter the trail. Getting back into
0:50.9	your stride on that tricky section took its toll, as you'll hear.
1:00.1	Since our conversation, I revisited some of my notes and found that I fell twice on the knife edge.
1:05.8	The neither time was particularly bad. By that, I mean that I didn't actually draw blood,
1:08.9	which tends to be my definition of an uneventful fall.
1:11.6	Talking about injury and illness,
1:13.5	I wanted to give a shout out to Gris,
1:15.6	our guests in episode number six.
1:19.6	He'll be giving a presentation on Saturday, February 4th,
1:23.5	at Ocean Township Public Library in Ocean, New Jersey,
1:25.7	from 10 a.m. till midday.
1:29.2	The subject is going to be Lyme disease on the Appalachian Trail, a personal journey. Grizz's fellow presenter will be a neurologist, Dr. Rhee, who has been
1:35.7	treating Gris since he contracted the disease in 2014. If you're in the vicinity, please drop in
1:41.8	and introduce yourself. I'm sure that Gris will be delighted to see you and you're going to learn something.
1:48.0	I have an update from Jester today, still preparing for a hike starting in late March.
1:53.6	At this stage of my preparations, three years ago this last weekend,
1:57.8	I took a trip back to the UK to kind of say goodbye to family and friends.
2:03.1	Most thought I was bloody crazy and of course they told me so, but they could all see my enthusiasm.
	...

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