Episode #257 - Dan Gosmeyer (Shoeless)
Mighty Blue On The Appalachian Trail: The Ultimate Mid-Life Crisis
Steve Adams
4.8 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2021
⏱️ 79 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We have another of my Class of 2019 brothers on the show today. I met Dan Gosmeyer pretty early on the trail and recall his quiet determination but, with a tiny hiking budget, I had doubts he'd get to the end. But the trail does something to a person. It reveals character that you may not have even known was there.
Sure enough, sometime last year I received a friend request on Facebook from Dan and confirmed immediately. I checked out his page and was delighted to see that I'd been wrong; he did it.
He's still a quiet guy, thoughtful in his deliberations. In fact, I had to cut out quite a few pauses in our chat to keep the flow going. Yet that determination is still there and–after all–he is still an Appalachian Trail thru-hiker.
You can follow Dan and his girlfriend's new YouTube page, where he shares a few things he learned from the trail. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwarHBfDGl7-nr-OIfkfLcw
The ATC have recently come under heavy criticism for a contract they signed last year with Mountain Valley Pipeline, a company which is exactly what it sounds like! Much of the criticism seems to have been reflexive, and I wanted to know what the rationale behind this seeming sell-out was. ATC provided me with Andrew Downs, a thru-hiker himself, who is passionate about both the trail and the attendant environmental issues. You may or may not agree with this rationale, but I hope you give him the opportunity to make his case and read further on the subject through all or any of the following articles.
Please feel free to offer your own opinion on this. I may bring you on the air or read out your concerns and will certainly bring Andrew back on to answer those concerns.
Finally today, Larry Luxenburg's "Walking the Appalachian Trail" discusses some of the more spiritual aspects of the trail. Whether you're religious or not, the trail affects you in a spiritual way.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to the Hiking Radio Network, where we taught the walk with shows by hikers |
| 0:05.3 | about hikers for everybody. |
| 0:19.3 | Mighty Blue on the Appalachian Trail, the ultimate midlife crisis, |
| 0:24.3 | joins Stephen his guests every week as he staggers from Georgia to Maine. |
| 0:34.7 | Hi everybody and welcome back to the show. |
| 0:37.4 | And in case you don't know, this is Mighty Blue on the Appalachian Trail and I am Mighty Blue or Steve Adams. |
| 0:42.8 | Now, I'm pretty sure that a lot of you don't know why are Mighty Blue. |
| 0:45.6 | I actually named myself before my 2014 through hike of the AT after my perennially lousy soccer team in the UK. |
| 0:53.6 | For some never explained reason, the fans of |
| 0:56.3 | the team started referring to them as the Mighty Blues back in the 1990s. I've been going |
| 1:00.8 | since the late 1950s. When I was thinking about my trail name, I was absolutely sure that I didn't |
| 1:06.7 | want to be called England or Mr Bean. So I opted for my beloved Mighty Blues, dropping the S at the end and went with it. Well, you're going to hardly believe it, but one of the first people I met on the trail on the approach trail up Spring and Mountains, pretty precise, was Grizzly Bear of Maine, or Gris. Guess what he insisted on calling me after he heard me speak. Yep, England. |
| 1:29.5 | So I'm glad I chose that name. |
| 1:33.6 | Sorry about the tangent there, but I'll just be watching the Mighty Blues player game, |
| 1:34.6 | and they won. |
| 1:35.7 | Happy days. |
| 1:38.4 | Today we have a couple of interesting guests. |
| 1:41.0 | The main guest is Dan Gossmeyer or Shulis. |
| 1:45.1 | Dan and I met in 2019, and we shared each other's company for a few days before he zoomed off ahead of me. That he finished the trail was, from what I could see, |
| 1:50.5 | a flipping miracle. He was on such a tight budget, but well, he found a way. Wanted to catch up |
| 1:56.1 | with Dan so that he could tell you how important determination and grit is on the trail. |
| 2:00.3 | The best gear and all the stops in town won't get you there. |
... |
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