Episode #40 - Kelly Anderson (Sleeping Beauty)

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

Steve Adams

Wilderness, Sports

4.8 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2017

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kelly Anderson is a former professional tennis player from South Africa. She came to the US to attend Georgia Tech in their tennis program before taking up coaching positions, first at USF and then as Head Coach at Stetson. She even has her own Wikipedia entry! A chance meeting with a number of AT thru-hikers intrigued her and planted within her a desire to take on the Appalachian Trail someday. Deciding that she needed to do it sooner rather than later, she divested herself of many of her possessions and started from Katahdin 2016, heading south to finish at Harpers Ferry in December. This year, she is back on the trail to finish what she started. Her tale of grit and determination is inspiring. The two pictures below are of Kelly on Mt Madison and, bizarrely, Kelly in rather strange loaner clothes on a launderette stop.

There are a bunch of ways to follow Kelly. You can email her, follow her on Facebook or Instagram, and go to her blog as she reaches the conclusion of her journey.

Jessa/Attie and Nick continue to travel north, with the halfway point approaching rapidly. You can also follow Jessa through her blog. As a bit of a preview for next week's show, I promised to add Craig McPherson's video to really whet your appetite for our interview. Once you see this, you'll get some of the magic that we used to see on a daily basis on the Appalachian Trail Don't forget that the price of my two Kindle books will soon be increased from $2.99 each to $3.99 each. Save a couple of bucks if you'd like to get the Christmas price mistakenly left up for over six months!!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Mighty Blue on the Appalachian Trail, the ultimate midlife crisis, joined Stephen his guests every week as he staggers from Georgia to Maine.
0:26.1	Welcome back to the show and something of a mini landmark with episode number 40.
0:31.3	This week we've got Sleeping Beauty as our guest or Kelly Anderson,
0:35.0	as she may be more commonly known away from the trail.
0:38.2	Kelly is a determined South African, so if you struggle to understand me, you'll have to make sure
0:43.2	your accent antenna are turned way up. Kelly will be coming soon. I also called up with
0:50.0	Addy this week for slightly longer than normal. She's still hiking with her fiancée Nick as well as
0:55.0	the enigmatically named The Machine. Wonderful name. I took the chance of chatting to Nick
1:01.0	about his impressions of the trail and how he thinks Addy is doing. When I caught up with her again
1:05.4	a few days later, she gave me an update on her animal encounters so far. She will be on after Kelly.
1:12.7	Now, I'd just like to update you on a little bit of housekeeping for the podcast.
1:17.5	When I started planning my hikes this summer,
1:19.6	I kind of expected to just take the podcast off the air and have just over a two-month break.
1:25.9	The other alternative was to have ended the show about two months ago, treating it
1:29.7	as season one as the first book ended, then starting season two when I returned from the
1:34.2	John Muir Trail.
1:35.4	To be frank, that would have been a lot easier.
1:38.1	However, these plans were thrown out of the window when I was told, in no uncertain
1:41.8	terms, by my friend Glenn the geek.
1:45.1	That stopping, then restarting the show would be a terrible idea. He has always pushed consistency as critical to
1:50.4	success so I've decided to revise my plans. I've also been swayed by the enormous support I've
1:56.6	had from you, the listeners. When I started this back in September last year, in my mind,
	...

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