Before I blather on for no reason whatsoever about the mundane, goofball stuff I do, I wanted to take a second to give a shout-out to the readers and folks I’ve got to know over the years from the Los Angeles and Southern California area. I hope you, your families, and your homes are all safe. Be careful out there.
OK, now on, with tales of my blissful ignorance whilst walking in the woods with my camera.
The first full week of the 2025 Ignorance is Bliss Tour is in the books, and I have to say it went pretty darn not bad.
I got out Friday morning at the ass crack of dawn, which isn’t actually all that ass-cracky, given the sun doesn’t fully rise until after 8 AM, but still, I was out, and it was pretty early.
We had a minor heatwave today, with temps up to 23˚ at the time of lumbering. You wouldn’t think four extra degrees could make a difference, but indeed they did.
I started off this first full week of the 2025 Ignorance is Bliss Tour with a 5.50-mile hike in crisp, to say the least, 19˚ temps.
Since I’m at the age where I see enough balls dropping just by looking in the mirror, I continued my custom of being in bed several hours before midnight on New Year’s Eve.
On September 19th, 2022, I started what I jokingly called the 2022 Not Dead Yet Comeback Special. That was the day I climbed out of The Bed of Torment, laced up some hiking shoes, grabbed my camera, walked right past my garage of bikes, and into the woods to lumber on my own two feetz.
I took the weekend off from lumbering just ’cause I wanted to, but I wish I hadn’t.
The weather was dark, glum, and morose all weekend, the football sucked, and unsurprisingly Spurs blew another lead to draw 2-2 with Wolves. I hate them. My time would have been much better spent walking in the woods with my camera, but the ache of “new muscles” used whilst hiking three days on mushy snow and a tired mind from a week of grief, travel, and holiday “merriment” had me thinking differently.
The good part of the weekend was that 50˚ and an all-day rain melted any shred of snow, and the trails were completely bare come Monday morning.
With warmer temps, conditions in the woods have been getting progressively worse, so on Friday, I needed to adjust expectations of what I was going to get out of my morning lumber. I also needed to make further adjustments to my kit.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been a little late getting to the trails due to the late sunrise (8:07 AM Michigan Standard Time for your sunrise nerds who read this) and my want to fill a bathtub up with scolding hot coffee, climb my naked self in, and drink myself out instead of going out into the dank, wintry morning air.
Luckily, Wifey will not permit me to fill our tub up with coffee (“It’ll stain the tub!” she says), so I settled for a big-ass mug or two of the stuff and then got my shit together for another lumber in chilly woods.
My much-anticipated weekend of slack turned out great, and I enjoyed all the hits: good beer, good food cookin’, a commanding Spurs victory, sexy time, and other indoor goofball slacker activities due to freezing rain. As Ren Höek would say, “This is the life.” Well, at least until Monday.
