OXFORD – After more than two decades of running Rick’s Auto Service, Rick and Sally May will be putting down their wrenches and lug nuts and taking up flashlights and portable propane stoves.

The couple, who together manage their garage on Allen Hill Road, have been married 29 years. Come March they will fly to Georgia to start a six-month trek back to Maine along the 2,175-mile Appalachian Trail.

“As much as we’re close, it’ll bring us closer,” Sally said. She will turn 50 on the trail. Rick is 52. Rick grew up in Oxford, Sally in Norway. They knew each other in school.

“It’s always been payments and kids and work, and this will be a whole different style of life,” Rick said.

In 1995, Sally gave Rick a book of collected stories written by reporters who were sent out to hike segments of the footpath. The AT, as it is called, starts at Springer Mountain in Georgia and ends at Mount Katahdin in Maine.

He read it through. And then he read it again, about a year later.

“As he closed it he said, ‘Would you like to hike the Appalachian Trail?'” Sally recalled. “I looked at him and we were in bed and I said, ‘I was waiting a year for you to ask.'”

The couple will close their shop at the end of February, and not reopen until the following February. The few extra months after they finish the hike in September will give them a chance to recover from the many weeks spent mostly in wilderness.

“It’ll take a couple of months to slowly get used to reality. A lot of loud cars, a lot of loud people,” Sally predicted.

In the 10 years that have lapsed since the two first decided to undertake the long walk, they have been getting in shape by hiking as many weekends as they can. They’ve also prepared themselves mentally for the challenge, Sally said, by envisioning each day of the journey as a day unto itself.

“You look at that trail, you think of it as a day hike every day,” Sally said. “You try not to get overwhelmed.” She already looked as if she was ready to charge up a mountain, dressed in shorts despite the chill of the November day, and wool socks under Teva sandals.

They’ve also been training by walking on flat ground with 25-pound packs. “We’re in better shape now than we ever have been,” Sally said.

They’re in shape, the kids are grown, their garage is going well.

“Sometimes you have to put money and work aside because it’s the time to do it,” Sally said. “And take the time to go. A major excursion, a big adventure.”