Surgery Today!

I have surgery today. The little bone has torn free of its ligaments and needs to be bolted to the big bone. It also needs a plate bolted onto it and four screws in addition to the big bolt.

Summary of weekend

I slept in a bed last night. The night of rest has given me a lot of confidence and strength on the crutches. But on to the summary.

Friday night me, Lewis, and Brad arrived at Turkey Creek. There was someone camped where I usually camp, and after a short search no other camp sights showed promise. So we headed across the three river crossings. The deepest was barely three feet, which is quite a bit better than the Forest Service had warned us about on their website. We made good time up the canyon and were about 300 meters from the hot springs when I fell in a hole in the stream that was full of slippery algae. I twisted side to side several times trying to hold my balance with me trekking poles. One pole broke and then I spun around and pitched over face first. Then I couldn't walk. In the morning I still couldn't walk, so I wrote out a note with all the info I knew SAR would need and sent Lewis out. He found a forest ranger and handed over the note. The forest ranger said it was the best first contact he'd ever seen because all the info he needed was there. I didn't expect any SAR to arrive until midnight, but a team showed up before dark. They had just had a rescue in the area and were all there and packed, so it was a fast roll out for them. They stabilized my leg, put some ice on it, and we hunkered down for another night out. Sunday morning it was quickly established that I couldn't walk even with the crutch. So I crawled. Mostly on my stomach. When the stream was deep enough I floating and crawled down it. Sometimes when the ground was stable I hopped on on foot holding onto Lewis and using the crutch they had brought up. Eventually I reached the mule team. I was put onto a mule, and thankfully not tied to it, and led out to incident base.

Death By Mountain: Failed

I didn't die out there. I did have to crawl for six hours to the mule rescue team because they couldn't reach me. Not allowed to walk, drive, or bicycle in the meantime. Showering seems too hard so I'm staying dirty.

My Pack

2x Nalgene 2.24kg
2x bigger Nalgene 3.30kg
Fresh cherries 1.08kg
Pair of Leki trekking poles .37kg
tp .14kg
toothbrush and ziplock bags 0.04kg
headlamp .23kg
Tell All by Chuck Palanhiuk .33kg
sunscreen .15kg
silnylon full of food 2.29kg
Gila map .10kg
Waterproof digital camera with spare battery .18kg
2 pack towels 0.06kg
rain jacket and rain pants .78kg
hammock .59kg
water filter .43kg
silnylon tarp .21kg
stakes and rope .11kg
junk bag .99kg
bivy .56kg
smartwool long unerwear .36kg
sleeping bag in silnylong bag .76kg
backpack with gps attached 1.68kg

16.7kg total. About 37 pounds. Of which 5.5kg is water.

Packed?

My pack weighs 8.8 kg. I'm using a 35 liter Gregory pack, and it seems quite empty. It has no water in it yet.

The pack I used to use for this was near 150 liters, and it weighed about 4kg when it was empty. When full, I often carried about 27kg of stuff.

Packing

Packing for tomorrow's departure.

I bought food, somewhat along my traditional diet, and somewhat along my updated diet.

• 450.8 grams of almond M&Ms, 2420 kcal
  
• 544.3 grams of dark chocoalte M&Ms, 2730 kcal
  
• 85 grams of smoked salmon, 120 kcal
  
• 296 grams of pink salmon, 280 kcal
  
• 283 grams of 100% whole grain Wheat Thins, 1260 kcal
  
• 326 grams of turkish apricots, 720 kcal
  
• 340 grams of unsalted roasted peanuts, 2040 kcal
  
• 425 grams of golden raisins, 1430 kcal
  

In addition, I have some almonds and some Tasty-Bite lentils I was planning to take in addition to what I just bought. On the other hand, I see that I just bought exactly 11000 kcal of food. I need to eat Friday night (probably at a restaurant), Saturday, and about half of Sunday. Now, I do know that I used to eat 5000 kcal per day, but I don't think I do anymore. So I should probably cut back on what food I have here. It adds up to 2750.1 grams plus the packaging. I can probably cut back quite a bit on what I bought to take with me.

Yoga: hard

I realized today that despite what Brian said, I think my yoga is supposed to hurt me. It's what I asked for. I'm not going in to relax, or to meditate. We do that, but I'm going in with specific goals, and those goals involve pushing myself.

Today for instance we continue pushing against my hips and hamstrings. We also wore out my abdomen. We did a bridge variant that trapped me upwards and left me physically unable to lower myself to the ground to get out of it. Kind of bizarre really.

I think my feet will be ready to hike 8km on Saturday morning.

Yesterday's Walk

Yesterday I headed out to hike around North Baldy. According to my GPS I made it 154 meters into my hike before I turned back. It was warm and sunny where I parked my car. I went up the grassy hill, and down into shaded woods on the other size. And snow, I should mention the snow. And I learned just how poorly Vibram Five Fingers do in the snow. If it had been perfectly flat I could have hiked, but I was on the side of a hill, and all I could do was slide off. I turned back pretty quickly.

I went over to the Timber Peak trail which I've never hiked. I have mountain biked it, but that is a little different. My hike there was short too, only about 800 meters before I turned back. But it was enough to give me a good feel for trail hiking in the Five Fingers. So far I'd only walked on roads and a track and around buildings. My goal is to be up to doing 8km on Saturday. It should be quite doable.

Sleeping Bags and Turkey Creek

My first good sleeping bag was a The North Face Cat's Meow that I purchased to ride across country with. The best testimonial for it was when I woke up in late November in Ilinois feeling a little damp. Looking around, I saw that baseball park I was in had flooded, and the raised platform I was sleeping on was underwater about two inches. I moved my sleeping bag out of the water and spent the rest of the night drying it out while sleeping in it on a picnic tale under an awning. That sleeping bag served me very well for many years.

Next I bought a Wiggy's. It's an absolutely bulletproof bag and it was well suited to Search and Rescue work. When I took back up outdooring last year I decided to buy a new Wiggy's. Not because anything was wrong with my original, but because I wanted a lighter weight bag that wasn't quite as warm. They had a good sale on their double bags though, so I ended up with two Wiggy's that are 0F and 40F and which mate into a -40C bag. But in the long run, I'm still mostly in the SAR mentality with them. I decided over the past week that I was going to give down a try again. My experiences with down were all from Search and Rescue in the years before I bought my own sleeping bag. The team had many military issue down bags which were warm, but heavy, leaky, and susceptible to water. I shopped around on the internet on Thursday, but I didn't quite feel comfortable buying anything. I shopped around at REI on Friday, but I wasn't happy with what I saw. But having looked at some bags in person I went back to shopping around on the internet today, and I settled on a very popular Marmot 40F bag. Campmor (http://www.campmor.com) had a good price, and only $20 for next day air, so I expect to have it on Wednesday. I am going to Turkey Creek on Friday, and it would be nice to have a tiny little down bag that weighs nearly nothing.

My Turkey Creek plan involves leaving town on Friday afternoon after work and driving to the end of the road in the Gila. I'll camp the night, then hike in to the Turkey Creek in the morning. I'm going to try and pack light. Lighter than I did back in August when I last did this. My Vibram Five Fingers will play a big part in this. I will have no need to take boots, and no need to take sandals. That cuts a lot of weight out right from the start. A lightweight down sleeping bag will save me a couple of pounds. I'm debating skipping the water filter and just using the chemical tablets. I probably won't take a change of clothes so that will save weight. Although I don't need socks, they are nice to wear in the sleeping bag. But I doubt it will be cold enough so I should skip the socks too. Food will be ready to eat so I won't need a stove. I should be able to pack lightly.

The Gila Ranger District has a warning in red letters that the river is very high, cold, and swift. I'd already guessed that a couple of weeks ago without checking their website. I've done it before, I can do it again. According to the Gila's online water tracking website, the gauge height is over five feet right now. Not as high as it was several days ago, but still quite high.

It should be fun.

No walking

Today was graduation. I spent my morning standing up and walking around. I spent my afternoon walking around, sitting down, and eating. It is difficult to say if it was a productive day or not, but I tried. Tomorrow I need to walk for sure.

Vibram Five Fingers and Yoga

Today I walked around a bit at REI. I've definitely decided that the left shoe has a defect, but REI didn't have a replacement for it in stock. I'm also strongly suspecting that I'm wearing a size too large. REI didn't have a size smaller to try on, so it's still just a suspicion. I discovered the Vibram offers $10 2nd day air and sells them for the same price as REI, so I ordered a slightly smaller pair just to see. It's cheaper than driving to REI to try them on, though I'm sure REI has a much more generous return policy.

I don't hurt from yesterdays yoga at all. I'm quite shocked.

Yoga

I didn't walk today, but I did do some hard yoga. Hard, at least, for me. Even the bridge defeated me with how long we had to hold it. And then we had to do it again. I expect to be sore tomorrow.

Blister

There is a rather large blister on the ball of my right foot. What minor discomfort I felt there never made me think it was a blister forming.

Four km

I did about, or at least, four km around town. I don't know exactly because my Garmin keeps turning itself off. I wish I knew how to make it stay on.
I discovered a road within about 100 yards of my house that I don't think I had ever noticed before. It looked short, so I didn't walk down it. I discovered a bridge/culvert being installed near my house as well. I saw the old "Delta House", and noticed that the balcony has been repaired and would be safe to stand on. I saw a family that lacked most vestiges of humanity, so I avoided them by walking the other way.

Administratia

The mailing list and calendar never worked out, so I'm going to dispose of them. Given the way the world has gone, it looks like Facebook is the only viable method of communication left. I haven't even gotten used to people who only text with their phone and refuse to answer it, and now I'm faced with people who only send facebook mail and never use actual email...and they only use Facebook on their phone.

Gaming: Cancelled

So after I eat something I think I'll go for a walk again. Just around town I suspect. I don't think I need to drive anywhere this evening.

A Walk

No one wanted to come to my house to watch movies, so I went on a walk instead. I did one mile on the track. Over all, I'm pleased. I was wearing my Five Fingers, and this was a whole mile in one go. The first mile I had walked in them was done in two half mile increments with a long rest in between. My feet felt better at the end of the walk than they did at the start. Since I go barefoot a lot already there seems to be no reason for me to worry about the problems other people have had with them. My feet and calves seem to be more than strong enough to take this. The weird aches and pains I had the first day were just on the first day and haven't come back.

Lately Death Is Not By Mountain

My commitment, as you might have noticed, has been rather poor (by which I mean non-existant) for many months now. The recovery from surgery hasn't been fun. I stopped wishing I had died on the table within about a month of surgery, and was mostly better within two months of it. But the strange feelings haven't gone away. Walking makes it feel weird. Sometimes walking even makes it feel a little sore. But I'm not so bad off that I shouldn't be walking. I should be. I should be out and about in the world again.

On the other hand, I still have benefits from the improvement in my diet and the exercise I still get (yoga and bicycling). Before that fateful trip to the doctor I had had frequent and crushing illnesses. At the slightest hint of being sick I knew I'd crash and it would soon send me to bed for days at a time. Since improving my diet and exercise that hasn't happened. I can't quite claim I haven't been sick since this all started, but what illnesses I've had were merely annoying. My season allergies have gone away too. While people around me have been miserable from the juniper, I haven't. Normally the juniper makes me miss work at it's peak, and requires lots of drugs to keep myself sane and functioning. This year, my eyes felt a little irritated a couple of times, and when I've been outside in it I get a minor runny nose.

My conclusion: diet and exercise have tremendously improved my life. I do miss eating fried potatoes and chocolate as my main diet, but I can live without them I've found. Getting beef and pasta out of my diet has also shown me that neither seem to agree with my body well. Bionature organic pasta, in specific, is quite bad for me, which is sad because I like the taste of it.

In new news, I got a hold of some Vibram Five Fingers. They are the knock off of the Vivo Barefoot I've coveted for quite a while. The Vivo has proven impossible to get, and the Vibram has proven to be almost as impossible. But I have giant feet, and when I went to REI on Saturday I was certain they would be able to help me. After looking at my feet, the sales rep did admit that with my feet they probably did shoes for me. They didn't have many, but I left wearing a pair. I had a blister forming on my left foot by the time I was done shopping at REI, but once home I've been slapping athletic tape onto it and it is coming along nicely.

Turkey Creek needs to be visited again. Graduation is this weekend, and I'm not in good walking shape for it, so it won't be immediately. The 22nd or the 29th seem like good times to attempt it. It is only about 4.5 miles in and out, so I could probably hike it without any preparation (assuming I get to spend the night in the middle) but building up to it would probably be best. I really kind of like the idea of the five fingers as it will greatly simplify the three river crossings and the dozen or more stream crossings. Often by the end of the trek I've given up on dry feet and I'm just wading down the middle in my boots to avoid recreating the "wax on wax off" scene with my footwear.

This website MUST live again! I need to pick myself up, deal with the discomfort, and press on with my goal of going into the mountains.