Tag Archives | being an idiot

Lumbers and White Whales

By soiledchamois on March 26, 2025 in Outdoors

It was a week ago today that I celebrated the fact that I was finally able to get 3 lumbers in a row in my feetz, and I was eyeing up my first full week of outdoor fitness activities this month. Sadly, along with the strange feeling of low-grade happiness, I also felt like I was coming down with a cold, which actually ended up being the flu, which kicked my ass like a football made of fevered, achy, sagging, man-flesh.

Fast forward to today, and I have once again completed three lumbers in a row, and HOPE to to get in a full 25-30 mile week of lumbering. There has been no celebrating, just a longing for normalcy and a blessed routine.

Continue Reading →

A Much Needed Return

By soiledchamois on March 17, 2025 in Outdoors

I am quite used to dealing with large gaps for such things as my résumé, my memory, and the distance between pants buttons and their holes, but in my “fitness” calendar, not so much.

I know, the sentence above makes it sound like I am some whispy fitness junkie who has 2% body fat, runs like a gazelle, and eats like a bird. But as we all know, or should know, I fill my calendar with lumbers, snowshoes, hikes, walks, runs, and rides as much as I can to make up for the fact that I am a 53-year-old man who loves to cook, drink IPAs, and works like a dog just to limit my pounds overweight to 50 and to keep my mind centered and in the present rather than racing with self-loathing, doubt, depression, and anxiety.

Continue Reading →

Thoughts of Emerald Lake

By soiledchamois on March 6, 2025 in Outdoors

In the summers of 1999 through 2004,¹ Wifey and I would drive from Pittsburgh to Colorado to ride bikes, hike, and goof off in the most amazing mountains my untraveled eyes had ever seen; the Rocky Mountains. It was quite the adventure for two Western Pennsylvania flatlanders who, during most of that time, lived in an apartment in what I think qualified as “the city,” given our proximity to traffic, tall buildings, and the sounds of nighttime gunshots.

Continue Reading →

Lumbers and Breaks

By soiledchamois on March 5, 2025 in Outdoors

After I got home from running some errands last Friday, I shut the garage door and didn’t leave the house again until 7:40 AM on Monday.

I have little desire to go out of the house if it’s not a hike, groceries, or beer shopping. I have little need for the American public, and the American public has little need for me. It’s your classic win-win sitch between a couple of assholes.

Continue Reading →

Crunchy Lumbers

By soiledchamois on February 28, 2025 in Outdoors

With temps already in the high 20s and an expected daytime high in the mid-40s, I knew trail conditions could be “iffy” on Friday morning, but with three good trainer rides already in my meatsticks this week, I really wanted to get outside for some miles in my feetz and hopefully some images on my SD card.

Continue Reading →

More Bunny Tales

By soiledchamois on February 27, 2025 in Random

Over the past couple of years, I have had a couple posts about rabbits.

There was the time I accidentally hit one with my car as I drove to the trails to lumber and, ironically, attempt to take photos of wildlife. That one hit hard.

Then, last summer, there were three baby bunnies, alone, snuggled up in a small hole in the backyard, that I had to safely remove before mowing the grass and then saw them reunite with Mama Bunny before bed that night.

Now I have another one.

Continue Reading →

Brief Signs of Intelligence

By soiledchamois on February 26, 2025 in Outdoors

I know it’s hard to tell, but sometimes I do actually know a thing or two. Mostly just one thing, but still.

So, I admit, I took some pleasure in that one thing I know, being that the trails would be shit on Monday and Tuesday; thus, me stuffing myself into an ancient bike kit (the one that still actually fits) and riding the trainer two days in a row.

Continue Reading →

A Little Less Conversation

By soiledchamois on February 25, 2025 in Random

As I’ve mentioned previously, Wifey is out of town for work and three hours behind, and B is at school an hour away in East Lansing, so I am home and very alone. This is probably why my posts have been rambling word salads that could have been reduced to a paragraph.

Continue Reading →

Weeks, Days, Birds, & Dead Beers

By soiledchamois on February 23, 2025 in Random

The Week: Even though I came up well short of my already abbreviated for winter 20-mile lumbering goal, I still managed to have a good week of “doing stuff” by re-embracing the trainer and logging over 26 virtual MyWhoosh miles in addition to the 14 miles of snowshoeing. It’s not ideal, but it’s getting me through the last weeks/months of winter with no ropes taken to attics. Yet.

Continue Reading →

Ending Early

By soiledchamois on February 21, 2025 in Outdoors

The week of outdoor lumbering thus far, and for the foreseeable future, has been completed on snowshoes, and with each day, my lumbers have gotten a bit longer.

Continue Reading →

Older posts