[nct-l] Ed Talone

Hope everybody had an adequate turkey day.

I had a phone call from Ed Talone last night. For those of you who are not
aware, Ed was the first (and still only) person to do a single-season end
to end of the NCNST, back in '95.

Ed may be the most hiking addicted person I know. He has done all of the
National Scenic Trails, (and may be the only person to have done that) and
more besides. He typically spends eight or nine months a year on long
distance hikes.

He just completed another long distance hike, this time with Sue Lockwood,
his companion for much of the NCNST hike. This was a coast to coast walk,
from Cape Alva in NW Washington State, to the Atlantic in Delaware. They
actually started near Chicago, and walked out to the Pacific, then came
back to Chicago and went east, so as to avoid the peak heat of the midwest
summer, which would have been hard on Sue.

My admiration for Sue holds no bounds. She is severely diabetic, and
functionally blind, using a leader dog (and Ed) for guidance. When they did
the '95 hike, Ed and Sue were followed on the hike by her brother, Gordon
Smith, in a van carrying a portable dialysis unit, for Sue's failing
kidneys meant that she needed dialysis several times a day. She's since had
a kidney transplant, but still needs enough support that the two were
supported by Gordon again this trip. On this trip, a fungus infection meant
that she had to have two toes amputated, which kept her from walking for a
while, so Ed helped her with her wheelchair for several hundred miles on
roadwalk and railtrail. Her lead dog, Buddy, helped pull during that
period. Folks, we're talking indominable here.

Anyway, Ed is good friends with some people at American Hiking Society, and
they kept up a brief journal of the hike on line, the first time he's ever
tried it. If your interested, it's on the AHS page:

http://www.americanhiking.org/news/journal/index.html

Ed commented to me several years ago that sooner or later he's going to
have to settle down and get a job, but there's been no sign of it yet. (He
does usually work for two or three months in the winter.) He's already
making plans for next year's hike.

-- Wes



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