Mighty Blue on the Appalachian Trail, the ultimate midlife crisis,

joins Stephen his guests every week as he staggers from Georgia to Maine.

Welcome back to the show and episode number two. I'm glad you decided to drop by again.

Before we start, I just wanted to point out that I'm learning this podcasting stuff on the fly

and I'm constantly amazed that the availability of

the technology and how cheap it is. That said, every time I find something different to try out,

the learning curve seems to be steeper than it was when I was younger. I'm getting to grips

with most of it, so please bear with me, and the quality of the audio will improve with each

episode, I promise. I'm actually doing these podcasts earlier than I thought I would be.

I made a rather pathetic attempt to hike the John Muir Trail in July

and discovered that going from an elevation of about 20 feet in Florida

to over 11,000 feet in a couple of days is not the way forward.

I really couldn't cope with it at all.

My dermatologist, of all people, suggested I may

have been suffering from a high-altitude pulmonary edema or hape. According to Wikipedia and I'm

reading here, this is a life-threatening form of non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema or fluid

accumulation in the lungs that occurs in otherwise healthy

mountaineers at altitude is typically above 8200 feet hate remains a major cause of death related to high

altitude exposure with a high mortality rate in the absence of adequate emergency treatment

i bloody glad i did know that at the time. Once more my complete

lack of knowledge stopped me from Panicking. My guest today, indeed the first ever guest on my

podcast, is Max Michkin or Bearbag. He was one of the class of 2014, several of whom I'll be

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