Oh, Monday, there is no
escaping your misery. – Me
After a pretty good, not bad, OK sort of weekend, I woke up in a funk on Monday. A funk that got increasingly funkier with a dark morning of blowing wet snow.
So as not to be stymied by my normal Monday funkiness, I threw a lackluster breakfast burrito down my throat, took care of business (that means pooping, not real money-making business), and headed out for a 7+ mile lumber through the woods.
This week has been a blur of final fall leaf cleanups, getting the septic tank its quinquennial suck-out, dealing with an unrelated plumbing issue in the basement shitter, and dealing with Lola (the dog), who, after four years, has decided that shitting on the floor of my office is easier than going outside.
This week has been a weather rollercoaster of light snow, rain, and sun with freezing temps one day, spring-like temps the next, and snow amounts varying between our home near town and the trails out in the country before finally melting.
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!).
After my First World mental meltdown concerning aging, being stupid, mobile phones, frozen Apple I.D. accounts, and realizing that I’m 52 years old, offer nothing to society and get the same in return, I said that I would bounce back like a fat kid through a trampoline. Well, I am happy to report that I bounced back and then some by lumbering over 30 miles in 5 days; to hell with the trampoline-breaking fat kid; this week, I was bouncing back like the glutes of Big Sean’s lady friend!
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.
The past two, now three, weeks have been busy as I’ve upped my weekly lumbering goal to a minimum of 30 miles [I have 23.49 in my feetz as of Thursday A.M.] until the snow starts flying. Of course, with the combination of the world burning itself down, climate change, and El Niño ’23/’24 in effect, who knows, I might be hiking 30 miles a week in February… in a Post World War III nuclear wasteland littered with ashen, lifeless bodies. NOTE: I am not sure how I survived; I credit beer pickling.
The urge to write anything here has been few and far between as I have come to believe that I repeat stories, themes, and events way too often (mostly because I do the same shit all the time and really don’t socialize or travel much), so today, I have chosen to just post a gallery of snapshots from last week.
I had a good week of lumbering and took the time to tweak some standard loops with different trails to keep things fresh as we get further into the stank scrum of autumn.
Throughout most of the week’s hikes, I had next week’s appointment with Doctor Bob in my head, as well as the blood tests I needed to have done beforehand to check my cholesterol numbers.
