Who the Heck are these guys?

Lisa Last

Although she won’t appear on the blog, and she’s not even in China, Lisa Last, Lee’s long-suffering wife is a vital, if untrumpeted member of the Silk Road Hitchhikers. Lisa is the one-woman support team, editing the blog, dealing with photo problems and handling other issues that have to be done in the United States, things that Galen and Lee can’t do from China.

But Lisa played a much deeper role in the project. In fact, the Silk Road Hitchhiker Project would never have happened without her. It was Lisa who actually saw the announcement on Outside Magazine’s Facebook page that eventually led Galen and Lee to apply for and win the $10,000 Outside Magazine Adventure Grant. Although Lee is a long time reader of Outside Magazine, the grant was not announced in the print edition of the magazine, but only on their Facebook feed. Lee and Galen had long been kicking around the idea of hitchhiking the Silk Road, but if Lisa had not seen Outside Magazine’s announcement on that afternoon in May, the project would have probably still just been a dream.