Soooo…that really escalated quickly. It should seem pretty obvious by now that I am not hiking the Appalachian Trail for my Trek Dirty to Me project. COVID-19 shut down the trail along with the rest of the world, and my very precise window for being able to complete my project quickly came and went. You can check out a more complete post regarding that on my Instagram by clicking here. Also check out a video message regarding my decision by clicking here. My new plan is to start my AT hike on April 1, 2021, and Trek Dirty to Me will begin seeing action again soon.

In only a couple of weeks, I had to switch focus from my years-long planning of hiking the trail, to settling in my hometown of Indianapolis - where I hadn’t lived in five years. I found an apartment downtown within walking distance of everywhere I needed to be, and quarantined like the rest of the world. A few days before April, I received news that my only source of income at that moment had been shut down due to COVID, and I immediately had to figure out how to make money in order to contribute my half to the costs for my soon-to-be-born Baby Boy! Yup! I’m going to be a dad in August, if everything is on schedule! You can read more about that by clicking here!

So what can I do to make money during quarantine while millions have been laid off or furloughed and virtually all businesses have been shut down or stripped to skeleton crews? I did what I knew best with what I had (or others so graciously supplied me) and started making bread. Now I haven’t baked bread since my days at Le Cordon Bleu-Paris and my time at Le Petit Grain, but I had hundreds of recipes and ideas stewing in my brain and in countless notes on my phone and in notebooks, so I decided to lean into that and hope I could sell a loaf or two of bread and maybe a dozen or so donuts every few days.

What I didn’t realize is that the amazing people of Indianapolis (and surrounding cities and towns) would embrace what I made, and then some! I set up a special page on Books Bourbon & Bacon for just the ‘garage’ bakery I was running out of my studio apartment with all of my products being given out for only donations. You can check out that page by clicking here. Well, the bakery blew up (figuratively, not literally), and I was able to make back all of the lost income from COVID and make up my half of the baby costs. Again, all through only donations. You can check out my “Thank You” letter to Indianapolis and others by clicking here.

Now, I’ve maxed out my capacity of stuff I can make from my apartment, and demand grows every week. So, on June 30th, my Kickstarter campaign to raise money to buy a food truck begins! You can click here for more details on that. So COVID-19 really provided a multitude of blessings, and I truly hope this campaign is successful and fully-funded so that we can continue growing!

Because of the craziness, I have obviously neglected the main mission of this site, but I have been in contact with some really cool folks who have put together some awesome content that I can’t wait for you to see! And I will be better with my content creation, now that the baby money has been made and I’ve refocused on finding a more healthy work/life balance. So stay tuned, and keep reading, writing, drinking, eating and adventuring (at an appropriate social distance).

- AJ