The weather people were calling for snow, rain, freezing rain, and high winds today, and they were not wrong. None of that stopped me from going for a lumber, but I was admittedly less than thrilled. Until I got in the woods.
There was an inch or so of wet April snow on the ground when I pulled into the empty parking lot to start my hike, and the clouds were hanging lower than an octogenarian’s tool bag as I set off down the park path toward the trails.
I figured I might as well keep a “not bad” thing going, and I was once again in bed before sunset last night. The result was I woke up more refreshed and rested than I had in nearly two flu-ridden weeks. It only took 13 days, but I’ll take what I can get.
I don’t know how it happened. Nor do I know if it should have happened, but this week, I finally hit my 25-mile minimum weekly goal for only the 3rd time this year. I don’t know whether to be happy or take a sad nap.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
