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.