And we leave New England.

Day 1: May 29 My dad and I started our journey across the Atlantic today. We got to the Lakeville-Middleboro rail station at 4:30 pm. We said goodbye to my mom–she actually hasn’t spent 6 weeks living by herself, ever–she got married when she was 20–so this is all new for everybody. We rode the train all the way to South Station in Boston and got a little hipster pizza in the main concourse, then headed to the airport. We had a fun interaction while we were getting out some British pounds at the money exchange-a guy eyed our gear and said, “whoa, nice GoLite umbrellas–wait a minute, that’s a Hyperlite pack–are you guys thruhikers!?” His name is “Optimist” and he’s South bounding the CDT in a few weeks. He thruhiked the PCT in 2016. I told my dad he needed to take the wheel on the next convo like this that happened. I helped my dad gear up for this trek and subsequently we have thru-hiker approved gear and brands, and my dad will be happy when we get to the Camino and he sees everybody else’s 40 pound packs. We got some Greek yogurt for my dad–we have to think carefully about his diet because he had gastric bypass surgery a few years ago and has to eat a lot of protein every day. Then we boarded. I looked questioningly at the stewardess when she asked me to sign for my credit card charge of “900” for my glass of red wine–turns out that’s Icelandic. All’s going as planned, now to try and get a few hours sleep for this night shift nurse. We’ll spend 2 days in London so we can recover from the red eye flight. The full moon is shining like a trailing spotlight on the black Atlantic Ocean and it is exquisitely beautiful. I’ve never flown this direction from Boston before. It is strangely disconcerting, and a piece of me wants to run back to New England and Boston, though I have my dad in the seat next to me. But instead this is the very first day of a ten month departure from comfort and normalcy.