Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
I feel like a little kid counting the seconds until a Disney Vacation (before I realized that Disney is actually an incarnation of evil that is). I get the feeling Maytag feels the same way. He has been doing a good job of testing out his equipment … most recently he was practicing camp settings to make sure we keep dry and comfy. I would like to be doing the same thing, but the weekly snow storm is making playing in my yard more of a challenge. Granted practicing in the snow makes sense, since all indications are that we will be seeing a bit of it on the trail, but I am not quite THAT devoted to it until I really have no choice.
In the mean time, I have been wondering around my house with a bag of weights on my back. I have been doing my best to get used to not giving into the constant whining of my stomach and nibbling every time it tries to convince me I am hungry. Based on my personal history, much of that hunger stems from boredom anyway. I continue to do what I can to keep a few pennies coming in. Beyond the occasional gig at the Wedding Hall that has basically allowed this trip to even be a possibility, I have also gone through the torture of endless inane online surveys to make a few dollars. I am still waiting on a few deliveries of cool stuff so I can do a proper map for packing my bag properly. Yes, I said map. How else will I ‘memba where I put everything?
I have found that somehow a hiking guru or two have stumbled across this blog (poor gurus!), and even offered some advice. This combined with my original guru, who still wishes to remain anonymous, has actually convinced me we might be pretty well prepared for this adventure. The most recent advice (thanks TimB) was to avoid dangly things. As much of a fashion statement having things dangling from the bottom of the back pack may be, they are not wise from a physics point of view. For dangling means swinging, which means screwing up my balance and “sucking my energy like a tick” (TimB’s words). Which makes sense to me. So I need to rethink the packing at least for those items.
Fortunately, there is a wonder invention called Bungie Cables, which is the equivalent to duck tape for extreme usefulness and fixing everything. Put the two together, and NOTHING is impossible. I am not sure how I neglected this fact that I know all to well, but that has been corrected now. So that is next on the ever growing list of things to get.
Which reminds me … I forgot to get duck tape too.
