Years have passed...

 I'm still here.  This has sat, long forgotten.

My diabetes got worse, much worse.  I started taking insulin just because it seemed so hopeless.  I started at 10 units per day, and I saw a huge improvement.  A little more than a year later I was taking close to 300 units a day and spiraling out of control in terms of my health.  I've seen it happen to other people.  They crash hard and nothing can save them.  I had my recent scare where I almost lost a foot to botulism and staph, my blood pressure was at a place I called unsurvivable,    So I stopped taking insulin, and the six other pills I took for diabetes as well.

I also buckled down and really changed how I eat.  I had been up at almost 300 pounds, with a BMI that was just barely shy of 40, the magic BMI number that changes from obese to the unofficial morbidly obese.  My A1C hadn't returned to the days of being in the high teens, but it was on a steady and strong upward trend.

Today I weighed 222 pounds.  I estimate my A1C to be about 7, and estimate that it has been falling steadily since May.  My blood pressure was high when I went to the ER last week for a scratched eyeball and puss-oozing eye infection, but I had reasons for it to be high.  I'll get an A1C test within a month or so, but over the past year I've gotten good enough at calculating my A1C that I usually match the numbers the doctor gives me from a blood test.

I hiked close to Chupadera peak a couple of weeks ago, but there was lightning and thunder, so I didn't go up it.  I meant to go hiking in the mountains over the weekend, but my back injury was making itself known again, so I didn't do anything in the hopes of avoiding another spasm in it.  After watching Miranda In the Wild, an REI employee who made a series of terrible videos for REI that eventually turned into a show of her own where she was allowed to have a personality, I really want to hike 30 miles.  She hiked 30 miles on her 30th birthday.  I'm about to be 51, and I'm not going to try and hike 51 miles.  But half of 51 would be doable, and is close to 30.  So I need to get out more.  I still want to be at Turkey Creek for my birthday, so it would be a hike in the Gila, which from Turkey Creek, means uphill a lot, but an easy downhill back to the springs.  I'm not sure I'll achieve it though.  But the goal of a thirty mile hike this calendar year, even if not on my birthday, is something I suspect I could pull off if I try hard.

Posting Again!

My current steps are 9,008,351 over 1542.97 days, an average of 5662.86.  My last recorded odometer on my new bicycle is 1340 km, but I've probably ridden ten or twenty km more than that by now.  I do love driving my new Subaru a lot.  Which is bad.  I'm about to buy new tires for it, relevant to mention here because the tires are for driving to Springtime Canyon in a few weeks.  Mostly car camping, but outdoors at least.

I didn't go to Turkey Creek this year because I was afraid of the fire season.  When my birthday came around the forest was open and not on fire (there) so I could have gone, but I hadn't planned it so it wasn'y really feasible.  I might go later this year, maybe in October.

I'm once again on yet another push to eat better and exercise more.  I'm even thinking of hitting Wheeler Peak, a mountain I've never been on in New Mexico.  One of the alternate routes passes by two lakes, which seems nice.

Long Time Without A Post

I haven't posted in forever.

My new bicycle, which I bought just over two years, managed to accumulate roughly 1000km in those two years.   They were evenly divided as well, with about 500km the first year, and 500km the second year.

I recently fixed it up, and I'm trying to get back to riding a lot.  I've gone 81km in the last past two weeks, which is a huge improvement over the average 10km per week for the past two years.  Now, over the past two years, I'm averaging 11km per day!

My lifetime average for steps is up to 5598.69 per day, over 1345 days.  Over the past weekish (8 days) it has been an average of about 8800.

I don't have much else to say.  I'm still fat.  I'm still ugly.  I'm still stupid.  I'm getting old as well.

Belated Title (Added August 2018)

I wish I could delete comments.  I also wish I could add a post title.  Something is going seriously wrong with this so-called "blogger" platform today.  I have a ton of spam comments that can't be removed, and I can't add a title to this post.   The "Send Feedback" button doesn't work either, so I can't send feedback.

Oh, I can't publish this post either.  That button has broken as well.

Ice Chests

I gave my Coleman Xtreme a little bit of a cleaning.  Despite having been kept indoors and out of the sunlight, the outside is cracking right where a handle attaches.  It's only been used a dozen or so times over maybe ten years at most.  Kind of disappointing.  Maybe I will be picking up a Yeti sooner than later.

Camping!

Going to go camping on Friday at Water Canyon in the San Mateo mountains.  I cobbled together some quick directions:  from Socorro go west on highway 60, then turn left at 13S 0292274 3777050  on 107, then right at 13S 0283810 3753148 on forest road 52, then left at 13S 0279156 3754953 onto 56, then stop at 13S 0276343 3748827.

I currently own at 36 quart Coleman Xtreme cooler, and that I think is a Coleman 52 quart steel belted cooler.  The 36 quart is definitely too small.  The 52 is a good size, but doesn't keep things cold very well.  It seems like I really need a 45 quart Yeti.  But Yeti's are expensive!

But the Yeti is bear proof, should keep ice as ice for maybe as long as a week if I never open it, and it looks quite nice.  The internet is filled with people who love the cooler, and a few who hate it, and the consensus seems to be that those who hate it don't know how to use a cooler.  Just reading about the Yeti has probably improved my cooler-using abilities by a lot.  I'll be pre-cooling my existing cooler for the camping trip.

For my food I'm probably going to take steak for the evening, and bacon and eggs for the morning.  I'm debating if pancakes are a good idea.  Or possibly hash browns.  Probably hash browns.  My hash browns will be tiny cubed pieces that are pan fried.  I'm planning to have my green Coleman camp stove with me, as well as an MSR whisperlight for any boiling.  I think the whisperlight will easily defeat the Coleman when it comes to boiling.

I'll need to pack: steak, eggs, bacon, potatoes, oil, black pepper, a cast iron comal or skillet, tongs, a spatula, a cutting board, a knife, and an onion.  The onion was an afterthought, it goes with the potatoes.  And maybe butter.  Butter is nice with hash browns.

I kind of wonder if popcorn would be good too.  I'd need a pan to cook it in, and popcorn if I do that.

I have six blue cold packs for my cooler.  With my small need for food, I can probably use the 36 quart Xtreme.  I need to freeze some water to pre-chill it Thursday night.  I should be able to pack it Friday morning, and leave it in my car all day at work without it going warm on me.  I'll add a couple of straps to it to seal it shut.

There is no rain forecast, so hammocking should be a breeze.  But I'll have my tarp with me, and set up, just in case.

On Monday I drove out to the campsite after work to make sure I remembered how to get there and that my car would make it.  The road was a little rough, but doable.  Friday should be no trouble.

Pictures at http://schlake.us/daily/2016-05-16.html

REI and others...

I spent a lot of money at REI today, but I stayed on my list, and pruned the list while I was there, so I did good.  They didn't have the TNF jacket I wanted, but I tried on a very similar jacket.  But since I like the Marmot, I probably won't order the TNF.

I now have a metal bowl and a metal plate and some metal utensils.  No more plastic!

I bought some food to try eating.  I plan to go camping for two nights starting May 20, so I can eat it then.

I bought the table I wanted after setting it up in the store and poking it.

I have a bug net for my hammock now.

I have a much wider collection of maps for New Mexico now.

I bought a few other sundry things as well.

And I went to Whole Foods after that and also stayed amazingly on list.  They had the jarred sauce that Supermart stopped carrying, so I bought some of that off my list, and hey had buffalo tenderloin, so I bought that off the list.  I suppose the chocolate covered cake bites were sort off list, since they weren't the desert I traditionally buy, but not much off list.  They were sitting right next to the thing I meant to buy!

At the Salinas Pueblo Missions Visitor Center I  bought a book on scenic drives in NM.  It has a lot of good drives in it.

Rain Jackets

My Goretex jacket still fits.  I'd bought a smaller The North Face jacket though, not Goretex, and it doesn't really fit anymore.  Surprisingly, it was just a size large.  I was worried I was too fat to do the good stuff (high end brands) but TNF makes jackets all the way up to XXL in many cases.  I can still zip up the size large, so an XXL should be plenty.  But before I realized how small my jacket is, I'd noticed an online only sale for a Marmot Precip in XXXXL, and the price was good.  Buying a gigantic jacket would leave me open to get ever fatter and still be waterproof!  Realistically, since I knew I was going to REI tomorrow, I had the option to return it and only be out $10.99 for shipping.  And while it looks gigantic, I kind of like the way it fits, and it has pit zips.  I had been thinking I was going to buy a TNF Venture Tall in XL or XXL.  Now I'm not sure I need it.  The online reviews of the Marmot are often dismal because of how quickly it wears out the waterproof lining, but I live in New Mexico where rain honestly isn't much of an issue.

I also have my silnylon waterproof poncho which I really like because of how small and compact it is.  I carry it with my backpack pretty much all the time every day.

GPS

I just went to get my GPS.  I only found one though, I have two.  The one I found, a Geko 201, I bought on March 7th 2005.  I paid $117.99 for it.  Amazon still has it for sale, with prime.  They want $175.95 for it.  When I bought the GPS it was the green version.  The picture is still the same GPS, in the same color, but now it is yellow.

And it's a terrible GPS.  At least for hiking.  It isn't even that good for bicycling.  It's a very low-accuracy GPS.  I need to find my better GPS.  But there is no telling where I put it or what I did with it.  The last time I remember using it, it was in the back of Mandy's car, and that was years ago.

EDIT: and then you suddenly realize the good on is laying on the shelf in plain sight, and it's been there for a very long time.

It's a Garmin H, which I bought July 13th 2009.  Based on that date, I bought it for this website!  It still works despite not having been used in years.  I paid $81.00 for it, and bought a $10.99 carrying case.  The closest upgrade is the Garmin eTrex 10, which is $85.20, and the suggested carrying case is $10.29, but it's the same case I already have, so I can skip that.

But since it isn't broken, I'm not sure it is worth replacing.

Vigil's Beef Jerky Co: Original

This is part of my plan to rethink my eating habits when in the wilderness.  I'll be trying new products and seeing how I like them.

For yesterday's hike I tried out some "Vigil's Beef Jerky Co" original/salt beef jerky.  One side of the package is labelled original, the other side is labelled salt.  I suspect this is normal, as their other flavors are trendy modern flavors (green chile, teriyaki, etc), and salt is more traditional.

It was less than $9 for 85g of beef jerky.  Ingredients were beef, salt, granulated garlic, and soy lecithin.   This is real beef jerky, made of sliced dried beef, unlike most beef jerky which is some kind of moist beef paste pressed into sticks with lots of weird chemicals added.  The only weird chemical here is soy lecithin, which is a bit mysterious as to why it is added.  Perhaps to encourage the granulated garlic powder to stick to the beef.

Overall, I'm happy with it.  It wasn't too salty, and tasted like beef.

706 meter hike!

I went on a 706 meter solo hike yesterday.  It was probably a little more than that, though not much.  I wouldn't add more than 10 meters to my number for the fudge factor.

It was slow going, and by going slow I didn't feel like I brutalized myself too much.    But by the time I made it back home I was quite sore.  But I felt better than I usually do the first time I try to overexert myself after a long hiatus.  This morning I felt quite sore getting out of bed, but it wasn't bad.  I guess the extra walking I've been putting in on flat ground has been paying off.

I'm not entirely sure 706 meters is right though.  I have this nagging suspicion that it's only 353 meters.  Back in the 1990s the Socorro SAR team measured hikes in elevation.  My number of 706 is assuming that elevation lost counts as much as elevation gained.  The hike took a little over 10000 steps, so it was a respectable bit of walking, even if coming down didn't count.

I hammocked at the top, of course.  I also tried stringing my hammock tightly, to see how it worked.  I think I could sleep in a tight hammock.  Saturday I plan to invest in some kind of mosquito protection for my hammock.

I also tried some store bought beef jerky.  I'll make a separate post about that though.

Wish List

A few places I need to find and visit.

Bridal View Falls in Lincoln National Forest near Cloudcroft.

Bluff Springs in Lincoln National Forest

Another frequent update!

I made my pedometer tracker update a png on the World Wide Web!  Now I can view it in a meaningful manner instead of looking at a column of two numbers. 

I need to start getting in shape now if I plan to survive my trip on August 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.  Tomorrow I think I'll do my traditional first-hike-after-being-lazy: mesa trail.  It's a simple plan.  I hike up it, I hammock there, I hike down.  Not too long, not too hard, and it's very nice.

I need rethink how I do trail food.  My views on food have changed a lot since I set my ways.  I used to think packets of soup with icky sauce were good.  Now I make it a rule not to eat dehydrated milk, and that's in lots of them.  The Mountain House company has a lot of meals that look semi edible.  I don't think anything with "modified" or "isolate" is still food, but I haven't decided to ban those things from my diet.

With my bicycle I bought Klean Kanteen stainless steel bottles.  I think I really like them.  I have small bike bottles, normal bike bottles, and a pair of 64oz growler type bottles.  I think I should have bought the more-expensive and harder to find wide mouth bottles though.  They also make an insulated version, which actually seems like an easy way to transport chilled food.  Hot dogs would fit through the opening!  But if I really want to do that, they make food canisters just for that.  A little expensive, but packing a food canisters with sausages and freezing them would likely lead to being able to eat still-refrigerated sausages several days into a trip.  Or ice cream.  That would be awesome.

I plan to hit REI on the 30th, because I'll have a paycheck then.  I'll buy a little bit of camping gear.  I want a table.  Cooking on the ground is traditional, but a table would be a luxury.  The table would be for car camping.  Car camping is fun.  I recently replaced my Coleman green camp stove that disappeared so long ago.  I replaced my camp chair that I broke as well.  I still have my second Therm-A-Rest chair, and three pads from them, but for car camping a real chair seems nice.  It will go with the table. 

I'm going to investigate mosquito netting for my hammock.  There is a hammock that is well reviewed which has netting attached, but you can't lay in it sideways to dangle your feet out.  Another option is a giant net that drapes over the hammock.  I might end up with both.  One seems better for car camping and the other for backpacking.

I think I'll replace my lexan cutlery with some of this modern metal stuff.  There is an aluminum set I like the looks of, or a simple steel set as well.  There is also the want of a new bowl.  My current bowl is a plastic one that someone stole from the 90s.  They make titanium and stainless steel bowls.

I think I need new matches.  I bought my matches, a big box, back in the early 1990s.  They've lived in film cannisters since then.  While still lightable, they don't seem as potent as they once did.  I'll also try a real match holder that is long enough for big matches, instead of a film cannister.  I seem to remember all the matches I have stored I had to manually cut down to film cannister size.

I want a duffle bag.  Another really, I have two.  One giant one and one normal sized one.  A spare would be nice.

I found a giant waterproof jacket at REI in an online-only deal.  It's a 4x.  The reviews tell me it will wear out quickly, but it doesn't rain much, so I doubt I'll wear it much.  So it will work while I try to be smaller.

I want to camp in that meadow past Devil's Elbow someday.  That should be a plan.

A Frequent Update!

It's been a while since I had my ankle fixed.  All those years of walking, but having hives and pain are all behind me.  I'm not entirely sure when it stopped hurting, but it has stopped now.  If my cat walks on me I don't wince in pain and jump up!

I've set a date of August 2-4 for a return to Turkey Creek.  I broke my ankle there.  I need to go back.  So far I've mentioned it to five people, most of whom I suspect might be motivated to go.  It's a Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday kind of trip.  I don't have anyone to cat-sit, so I'll need to start training my cats to be more self sufficient.  I doubt that will work, so instead I'll plan on putting out extra water and extra food for them.  They'll get by.

Right now my pedometer reads 239025.  That translates to 1859353 steps.  I could actually go back further I think, if I mine data out of this so-called "blog".  I was careful to post here when I reset the trip counter, so I have numbers and dates.

I've gotten much better about not eating chocolate.  :(

Supermart had USDA organic strawberries today, so I bought a box.

Another infrequent update!

On July 20th of last year my pedometer read 390247.  Today, earlier in the day, it read 145064.  But I've kept careful track of resets, and written a program to the math for me. so my real number since the reset before July 20th is 1765392.  That looks like 6638 steps per day on average.  I need to do better.

I have a new bicycle.  It's nice. The junkyard near San Acaia is the longest ride I've taken it on.  I have a new car too.

I messed up my right toe pretty bad trying out new boots.  The toenail got torn off and the resulting infection was pretty epic.  The kind of infection that people died from before antibiotics.

I need to shape up, and get myself back to Turkey Creek for my birthday.  It's a Wednesday this year.  Also, I need to make it all the way to the hot springs this time, and not cripple myself hundreds of yards short of my destination.

My weight is up.  High.  I'm stupidly fat.  I shouldn't even record my number.

I'm also fighting athletes foot.  I suspect I got it the last time I had surgery.  At the very least, that's when it really made itself known.  It could be I had a little before surgery.  My most recent attempt at visiting a doctor diagnosed it and gave advice and medicine.  The one before that, when I complained about the weird growth on my foot, told me I needed lotion.  The one before that thought that it was great I was worrying about it.  So this newm one is much better.  A few simple things and it's all much better.  Still not cured, but I'm getting there.

I outfitted my new car with a shovel, and a saw, and two maps of New Mexico, and a pair of hammocks.  It needs a GPS still.  I have a couple of those I can throw in as well.  At the very least I should ease into car camping as a way to get out more.  Fenton Lake, up in the Jemez, is a noble goal.

I should update this more often too!

Step Counts and Stuff

478243 over 82 days.  A whopping 24 of them were taken "today" because I walked to bed after midnight.

Time to reset!

I broke the frame on my bicycle about a week ago.  The same day I was wearing new boots.  I hadn't realized the funny shift I felt just as I arrived at work was the frame failing, so I walked home that night and left the bicycle there so I could walk back in the morning.  The next day, at lunch, I discovered what had happened.  So I walked the bike to a welder, then back to work.  Then I walked home from work. It was a lot more walking than I had planned on.  And it hit me hard.  I'm apparently very out of shape.  So I should walk more, or just give up and die.  I need to get in real walking.  So maybe I'll bicycle less.

Also, I'm car-free for a couple weeks now.  It's merely broken, but hard to fix broken apparently.  But no car makes hiking in Water Canyon just that much more exciting.  I'll have to start getting in shape to bicycle out to Water Canyon again.

My bicycle frame is probably saveable.  Which will be good, because I really like it.

The new boots I was wearing that day I had to buy because my cats ate/clawed at my old boots so much they had torn all the threads and the boots were coming apart.  I bought better boots, but still on the cheap end, mostly because I can't find good boots that fit me as well.

My Pedometer Is Almost Full

996802 steps over 198 days.  By the end of the day, if I don't reset it, it will lock up and stop recording steps.  And it is reset.  It registered one step after I set it down.

Steps!

I spent most of my day naked, and I never clench the pedometer between my buttcheeks, so whatever steps were taken have been unrecorded.

The pedometer sits at 600846 for 112 days.  I'm naked again, so I'm resetting it for tomorrow.

In recent days I've felt like I could run 2 miles instead of just 1 mile.  But I didn't, because I shouldn't push myself too hard.

Tonight, however, was the either night, I've done a whole week of miles.

By the time I reach half a mile I was pretty much done.  I have no idea how I finished an entire mile, but I did.

Today was not a great day.  I wonder if it was my dinner.  It had a lot of sour cream, which is bad for me.

Steps?

In the past 111 days I have taken 596608 steps.  There is a little less than 2 hours to go today, so I might get some more in.  That looks like 5375 steps per day.  Not great.

The past week, starting on Sunday August 3rd, I have gone out for a one mile run each day.   Not fast, but continuous.  I haven't been lifting though, or swimming.  This is better than I've been able to do in a very long time.  I'm having no weird health problems.  In retrospect, I'm fairly convinced now that all the weird health problems I had been having which weren't obviously related to my leg are also related to my leg.  So many things got better once they finally removed the metal.  My ongoing problems with my inflamed lungs, for instance.  At least, I don't think my lungs are inflamed anymore.  The symptoms that made me bring it up to the doctor on two different visits are certainly gone now.

I sort of think I should work hard on 10000 steps per day for a while.  On the other hand, running a mile a day has taken a tremendous toll on me.  I can run my mile, but after that I'm staggering around and feeling quite bad.  It's getting better though, slowly but surely.

Fasting is in the news

My pedometer says 269157 steps over 50 days.  Over 5300 steps per day average.  My weekends probably contribute to it being low, as I'm often wandering around my house naked and not recording my steps.

Things with that metal out of my leg are amazingly good.  So many things are less painful and less stressful to do.  Turning left, for instance.  I had high hopes that I'd jump excitedly into exercise, but my body is definitely worn down by the past four years of pain, and the past year especially.

I lifted weights a week ago, a 45 pound bar, and it hurt badly for most of the week.  I lifted weights again last night, another 45 pound bar.  Nothing hurts yet, and I'm hoping I mostly don't hurt this time around.  I really thought I would be walking more, but I'm not.  I'm just lazy.

I've been eating a lot.  Far more than I'm used too.  It's bad.

A little more than 12 years ago, I read this: http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2002/mar/09/restandrelaxation.shopping

It changed my life.  I stopped drinking Pepsi.  Since then I've had one gulp of Pepsi Throwback, a few years ago, just to see what it was like.  When I was a kid my family drank a lot of soft-drinks.  My father used his business license to buy them.  Every week the Coke man, the Pepsi man, and the 7up man would pull their semi-trailers up to my house, and wheel in cases of soda.  As a child, I drank Coke, my mom drank Pepsi, and my father drank 7up.  Then, of course, came the new Coke debacle, and Coke Classic.  I was a Pepsi drinker after that.  When I quit Pepsi cold turkey I was probably drinking a 12 pack of cans a day.  I had to drink a Pepsi just before bed, or I couldn't sleep.

I've always liked fasting.  I feel good when I fast.  I feel really good.  Eating makes me feel bad.  But I love to eat, and I don't know why.  I only have the self control to eat nothing or to eat everything.  I can't find any middle ground between the two.  I've never fasted for more than four days.  I personally think, based on what reading I've done, that four days is safe enough.

http://www.universityherald.com/articles/9814/20140608/fasting-for-at-least-3-days-could-rejuvenate-immune-system.htm

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/fasting-for-two-days-could-regenerate-the-immune-system-according-to-research-9506168.html

There are more articles out there than just those two, and they are all written about the same one paper.  There are, of course, the crazy fringe fad diets that are all over this.

I've never really thought of fasting as a path to weight loss.  Cutting calories and burning more calories are the path weight loss, and fasting is more of a spiritual kind of thing.

Officially, I'm fasting now.  I ate yesterday, so it doesn't really feel like it yet.  I plan to fast until Wednesday.  Wednesday morning, Supermart should have fresh USDA Organic raspberries for me to buy, and I can't fast through those since I asked them to order them for me.  Two days is a good amount of fasting.