Adventure

I've got to admit, taking time off to do an adventure vacation... my usual thing... not only brings my adrenaline way up but it gives me a goal to live for and train to.

I'm far too hyperactive to do a passive vacation where you stay home and rest, or drive to a touristy city and take a bus tour. I want to die spent.

Adventure vacations are just larger and grander versions of my usual weekend, where I'm glad it's Monday and back to work so I can rest. Thus my vacations are long strenuous mountain hikes or extra long bicycle rides which include overnights with wide variation... from the tent carried on my back to a hotel. In a long wilderness hike or bike, I usually lose a dozen pounds simply because I can't carry that much food. Road biking is not too bad, since along the road there is fast food and motels, and thus credit card camping is the norm.

Even day hikes or mountain biking can turn out to be strenuous. The temps were way above 100 degrees when hiking 15 miles from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon to Phantom Ranch in the gorge last summer and I chugged 3 beer before the rest of the group showed up. I rode a gorgeous canyon pass in Jackson Hole one hot summer a few years ago that took all day... when I finally got out and to a convenience store, I gulped a half-gallon of Gatorade. A 100 oz bladder only goes so far.

The allure is the challenge, and the opportunity to prove my fitness... in spite of injuries and accidents.


-© 2009 by Willy

P.S., and off to New Hampshire I go, hiking the White Mountains.

Don't Look Back

Lot's wife looked back and turned into a pillar of salt.

After a while we only seem to remember the good times and forget bad ones. This is mentally healthy in one sense, but on another sense, we have to be careful that our feelings of love, loneliness or jealousy don't ever take us back to a proven horrible person. If our previous relationships or friends were abusive, remember that they will do the same to a new significant other... or to us... again and again. There's a reason why we have our current friends and don't associate with some of our old ones. There is no hope... people don't really change... they are what they are, just like us. We may mourn the end of our fantasy, but should recognize it as a happy ending necessary for a bright healthy future.

“Remember Lot's wife.” - Jesus in Luke 17:32


-© 2009 by Willy

Too Tactical To Worry About

Around here we have alarm horns at all the schools, the TV gets interrupted by The Emergency Channel System, and my secretary's weather radio alarm makes me jump off my chair much too often.

Then when I get home late after gym or cardio the Tivo-ed news is just the local weather jocks rambling on and on and on.

Rant 1: It's the old overused wolf call story... when the real wolf comes we'll be desensitized to it and won't respond.

Rant 2: What in the world are they doing, when a tornado and a thunderstorm are so surgical and tactical? I figure that when it's my time to go, it's my time to go... in the meantime I have way too much to do to worry about something else. I'm not cowering from fear. That is, I'm picking priorities and weather is not it.

Related Rant 3: Neither is a priority yet another relationship. What's the point of stressing to death?

Call me only if you see a nuke detonating.

- text © 2009 by Willy

Proposal

"Want to get married?" said Jan yesterday.

Friend Jan had earlier told me The Rest Of The Story. She could not get a disability check due to her heart problems, even after getting a pacemaker-defibrillator put in due to her heart attack, because she was able to work too much, but her doctor told her not to work so much. Definitely a chicken and egg situation. She's in a bad spot, and does need somebody to help her, but it should be the social security administration cooperating with her doctor. She also needs to get her stressors off her.

If it wasn't such a bad situation, Jan's proposal would have been quite a hoot.

That was the first time a gal has outright proposed to me. Previous times have been manipulations, like the redhead from hell telling me she wasn't looking for a husband but then telling everybody else that I was her fiance.


- © 2009 by Willy

Feeling It On The Skin

I've been out feeling nature at her best. It was a beautiful, sunny day... which has been unusual lately... so I rode. It's been raining so much that I have bike-commuted seldom this year.

Seeing me get ready, my neighbor commented on the projected high temperatures today, to which I responded with a smile that a bicyclist creates his own cooling wind on such days. I'm grateful that I can and do get out, whether it's biking on a beautiful hot day like today or hiking a rainy and muddy mountain like last weekend... and that I have control over my life. Today I was blessed to have had a headwind going in but a tailwind coming back (some days it's a headwind both ways... really!).

Headwinds and mountains are great trainers, without which I would not be fit, nor appreciate nor have the easy days.

On my heavy commuting bike I did 2 hours at 15 mph which is a little slow, but much better than my neighbor's alternative, or that of my children's mother at her nursing home.


- © 2009 by Willy

P.S., psssst... yesterday hiked my favorite mountain again, 6.5 miles at 3 mph.

More Rain

The Mayapple leaves have long shrivelled and the St John's Wart are still out all over the place, but then so is the rain. I've missed the outdoors so much that this morning I went out hiking in the rain anyway. Certainly no mountain bikers were out there. What a boggy mess it was! Oh, well, we do what we can with what we got, whether it's out... or in.


- © 2009 by Willy

P.S., I will be hiking two weeks in New Hampshire soon, rain or shine.

Just Questions

Am I a good and faithful servant? What am I here for? What is my mission? How important is life? What's there to live for? Why are there tears? And when's dinner?

Questions, questions, questions. Fuzzy ones?

Well, dinner is pretty much whenever I want, and I choose to eat after my workout. Thus the other answers must be, similarly, choices I make.

Inspiration... espiritus, the divine breath... is not easy to acquire, but I'm listening for it while making choices.

-text © 2009 by Willy

Fear of Snakes

"There's a huge rattlesnake stretched out across the path!" said the mountain biker this morning, riding back to the trailhead.

Fear can be helpful, but most of the time it's damaging. It can help by keeping people away from the bite of the rattlesnake but it can hurt by keeping people away from living their life. Fear deprived the rider of this trail at this time. By the time I got to his snake, it had already moved on.

The same fear has been true for me after my last relationship crash a couple of years ago. Fear of relationships had put a damper on my socializing and I had to force myself to join a support group, which helped but also prolonged my recovery.

That snake was in its element... its home. Respect it but let it go and go on with life. My own snakes have long gone to other trails after fresh targets.

It's taken me a long time to empty the trash, but I did. I sure hope I got all of it out of my head this time.

Reminder: don't play with snakes.



-© 2009 by Willy