What a crazy week! As mentioned in my previous hard-to-read Soiled mega post, the week started with a 7-mile hike on Monday, followed by a snowy 5+ mile hike on Tuesday, then as more snow arrived, morphed into slow 4+ mile snowshoe stomps on Wednesday and Thursday.
Part I, Tuesday, 6:17 AM
I was up at 6 AM on Tuesday to tend to the dogs, drink giant mugs of coffee, make food, and slack around the internet in the dark, waiting for dark grey daylight sometime after 8 AM and a chance to get some miles in my feet.
It’s not the first time it’s happened to me, but this week, I once again suffered from Premature Mile Accumulation (PMA). Unlike more awkward premature “ations,” PMA leaves me feeling quite good about myself but similarly leaves me questioning, now what do I do, but with fewer sheepish apologies.
2023 was a year filled with some ups and some downs, but as a whole, it was been one of the best years I’ve had in a long while.
I continued my nearly daily lumbers, lost a few pounds, and, most importantly, finally got my depression under better control. Not perfect, but better.
I only wish I felt as confident about 2024 and what America has in store for us. But, all I can do is keep on keeping on, ignore the news and half of the country, and continue to lumber on through the woods with my camera.
In a couple of days, I will be starting the next leg of my life rebuild tour with the 2024 Lumber Through Hell Tour, which starts on January 1st.
#2024LumberThroughHellTour
Until then, I am going to bask in the numbers my 52-year-old feet put up in 2023’s Soil The Woods Tour:
Total Hikes: 260
Todal Days Goofing Off/Not Hiking: 105
Total Distance: 1,294.76 Woodsy miles
Average Distance: 4.98 miles per hike
Average Time: 1:25:28 per hike
Longest Hike: 8.12 miles
And let us not forget that this whole lumbering shit show started back on September 19th, 2022, with the 2022 Not Dead Yet Comeback Special, and those numbers are as follows:
Total Hikes: 346
Total Distance: 1,657.04 Woodsy miles
Average Distance: 4.79 miles per hike
Average Time: 1:23:34 per hike
I remember back when I first crawled out of the Bed of Torment, walked past my bikes, laced up my hikers, and started lumbering away from my brain; I questioned how long I could sustain hiking at pace 20 to now 30 miles a week. Turns out it’s 468 days and counting, which averages out to 3.54 miles per day.
Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.
-Larry David
While I am in NO way looking forward to the American political shit show that is coming in the months ahead and the possible end to our democracy as we know it in 2024, I am looking forward to more miles lumbering away from my problems. And people.
Photos are from Saturday’s sunrise hike when the temperatures dropped overnight and left the woods covered in a thick later of frost.
Later.
This is a long one, people. No reason, really; I just found myself wasting time every so often this week and writing down random shit.
6:05 AM on Christmas Morning, and I was up as usual.
No, I wasn’t waiting to gleefully rip through a giant pile of presents (although there was one with my name on that I had my eye on); I was up waiting for the freaking sun to start thinking about rising so I could squeeze in a few miles before we did the version of Christmas Morning you do when it’s just a couple and their 19-year-old son who is now thankfully way more into sleep than opening holiday presents.
Sadly, the sun wouldn’t be fully up until after 8, so that meant I had nothing to do but tend to the dogs, drink coffee, and look at the ever-declining interwebs until I had enough light for woodsy lumbering without a headlamp.
Sometimes, the numbers don’t add up.
After hitting my weekly 30-mile goal last Friday, I held true to my promise to “not do a damn thing” over the weekend. And by not do a damn thing, I mean no hiking, for there are always more leaves to bag, foods to cook, groceries to get, poop to scoop, dogs to tend to, beers to drink, music to listen to, sexy time to have, and absolute shit International football to watch (Gahdamn, I hate International Breaks!).
I got out on Monday for a 6.75+ lumber, half of which was done in a thunderstorm, and I have to say it was pretty magnificent. Plodding along through the dark woods with rumbling thunder and lightning overhead and rain pissing down shouldn’t be as fun as it is, but it is. And I only almost pissed myself once with fear.
For whatever reason, and for possibly the first time since 2005, I have found myself uninterested in writing anything about my long-running, mundane, pedestrian, unproductive life. But in the interest of knowing I paid my hosting bill upfront, I am here. So, I got some photos and some October stats—that’s it.
As I type, I am in the middle of enjoying (?) an “off day” from hiking so I could get some lab work done at the hospital. I am also in the middle of Week 4 of increasing my lumber mileage to 30 miles. Because if I can’t go faster (and I can’t, not yet), I must go further. Know what I mean?
