
June is done. Thank the dogs above!

As mentioned here a few times this year, The 2024 Lumber Through Hell Tour has hit a bit of a rough patch due to my old ass nursing multiple toe, foot, and knee issues, along with trying to refinish our deck before the summer of 2029.

I ended this week with no real way to make my 30-mile goal and nursing a few aches and pains. So, I opted for a short photo creep around Meridian Park rather than a lumber. In hindsight, I should have just hiked; the pain would have been more fun.

After my first 30-mile week in over a month, I was eager to keep that going this week. Sadly, for a variety of reasons (none of them good), I can’t imagine that I’ll get more than 20-25 this week—my bad.
One bright note was the bunnies in the hole (not code for a bizarre sexual parlor game).

After hitting the Publish button on my last post, I stuffed the Stache (known in some circles of my brain as The Mustachioed Bastard for reasons I will spew forth later) into Escape II and drove to my normal lumbering trails at Deerfield Park. Only this time, there was no lumbering but 11 miles of big wheel cruising through the woods.

I woke up early Tuesday morning with daylight sneaking through the curtains of the bedroom, a few minutes before my artificial “sun” alarm clock was due to wake me at 6 AM.
Despite the slightly earlier wake-up, I was eager to get the dogs out, get some breakfast in, and plan another ride in lieu of my normal lumbers.
Then things changed.
After a week off from hiking, I headed back into the woods on Thursday to finally get some miles in. Or at least that was the plan.

No matter where you live, people will say that the weather is psycho, except maybe in Pittsburgh, where crazy weather means going more than 24 hours WITHOUT “partly cloudy” skies (which is a nice way of saying “it’s cloudy with a chance of rain, yinz guys.”).

I haven’t had what I’d call a “normal” lumber in the woods since the first week in January. The time in between has been spent doing the following:
It’s been a hell of a month, but such is life.

The outside was a mess of ice, melting snow, slush, and rain on Friday, and after 15 miles of snowshoeing already completed, I was a mess of aching knees, stiff calves, sore hip flexors, and an arthritic mind. So with that, I took Friday off to bask in the glow of the dank sky and catch up on some long overdue house shit.