North Country National Scenic Trail...

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

A friend who knows all about my keen interest in all things Adirondack sent me an article regarding forty miles of trails being designed as part of the North Country Trail within the boundaries of the park.  I had done some research on the North Country Trail while considering my retirement treks, but had discounted it as too long for a single season hike – 4,651 miles – and with too many miles on roads instead of trails – 1,500.  I also wanted to experience an adventure out west – of seeing some of the great, natural wonders that made up the Pacific Crest Trail, which passed through things like Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada’s, to name just two.  But then I began pondering all the difficulties of resupply and getting to and from the PCT and decided to look in earnest at the NCT.

Though the concept of the NCT had been in the works since the late 1960’s, it wasn’t until an act of Congress in March of 1980 that it received official designation as a National Scenic Trail.  Since then, thousands of volunteers have dedicated countless hours to bringing the trail to life.  It starts on Lake Champlain in northern New York and within the boundaries of the Adirondack State Park and begins winding its way west and south for a little over 700 miles before entering Pennsylvania at its northwestern corner.  It is only in that state for 272 miles before entering Ohio where is largely hiked on the Buckeye Trail for the next 1,000 miles.  It enters Michigan, the state with the most hiking miles – 1,152 - before moving into Wisconsin, Minnesota and finally North Dakota where it terminates two thirds of the way across that state.

I suppose the greatest appeal of the NCT would be its proximity to home and friends who might join me for parts of the hike or were willing to help with resupply.  To date, only 16 hikers have completed the entire trail in a single year, and I suppose this notable item appeals, as well.  Doing the math though, it would take over seven months, hiking an average of 20 miles a day, to complete. This may be a little out of my comfort zone.

And then I get back to the big question.  Why undertake such a thing at all?  I love the outdoors, hiking and camping, but this is way beyond any of that.  I could meet those needs in so many different ways yet my mind keeps returning to what most might think of as an insane endeavor.  It seems almost too selfish to do just for me.  I would be unavailable to friends and family for any help or support they might need for that entire time.  It would be all about me and that bothers me.  If I can’t turn it into a pulpit of some kind, I don’t see doing it and that's why I got in touch with my hiking and riding partner of the last twenty years to brainstorm something I'd been thinking about.  I already knew from speaking with John that hiking, camping and climbing in the wilderness can have immeasurable benefits for people struggling with depression and addictions.  I have seen the travesty things maladies visit on people I love and would gain great satisfaction from thinking there might be a way to aid anyone suffering in such a manner.  I suggested to him that there might be some way to tie in my endeavor with one he and his wife were working on - a way to help people struggling with both depression and addiction at the same time.  We have some time and will continue to explore any value my trek might have in raising awareness and as a direct aid. 

Monday was warm enough to ride and I thought about where and for how long I would go as soon as I got home from work.  I knew it might be my last chance to get outside for several days…or even weeks…and was extremely anxious to get home and get started.  I got into my car around three and had no sooner pulled out onto the road than the rain/snow began to fall.  By the time I got home, it was a full on snow storm and the ride was off.  Disappointed, I called to Dakota and we headed out on a 4-mile hike.  It’s still January after all and I should be happy I got in one ride!

Riding the new bike...

Sunday, January 28, 2018
I managed some major hikes over the past week putting in over 167,000 steps in seven days – 2,000 more than my previous best.  I had backed off on riding and running because the nagging pain in my right hamstring remained throughout the week; I felt it on most of those steps.  On Friday, I received the call I’d been waiting for though – my bike was ready for pick-up.

I drove to Performance Bike on Saturday after a couple of hours of raking up sticks and leaves in Mimi’s yard only to find the bike wasn’t REALLY ready.  Well…the bike was, but we couldn’t seem to get the attention of the head mechanic long enough to hand over the final labor tabulations so I could pay the balance.  After waiting thirty minutes and becoming increasingly frustrated, I announced that I had somewhere to be and would return in a couple of hours.

“Will that leave you enough time to figure out the balance and let me pay for the bike?” I asked the manager.

She knew my frustration was hitting the explosive point.  “I think I have all the information,” she said, looking at some hand written notes she held as she began ringing things on the register.

“Okay…replaced the brakes.  That’s $180 a set…”

Which was the last thing I let her say.  “Hold it!  I agreed to $130 for the set and you’re saying $180?  Look…you need to stop the mechanic, get the order form with the prices I agreed to and paid for last week or I’m leaving without the bike,” I said.

“Oh…um…well I can see Masato was being aggressive with the discounts on the brakes.  I was quoting the normal retail,” she said, tossing the man who’d sold me my bike and whom I trusted implicitly, completely under the bus.

“That’s between you and him and I don’t care how you handle it.  I agreed to a price, which was written down on the order form.  I’m paying that price or I’m paying nothing at all,” I said.

Fortunately, Masato had stopped by the store – he wasn’t working – and saw me.  He approached the counter and took over.  He told the manager that, in fact, the pricing was correct since he didn’t need all of the parts normally included in the brake set since he was using ones from the bike I’d purchased.  We concluded the deal quickly and satisfactorily once the order form was produced.  The manager apologized profusely…I had no respect for her not apologizing to the mechanic she’d tried to blame her error on, but that is just a style some people flow with – find someone else to blame instead of looking in the mirror.

Sunday was perfect for riding with temperatures in the high 40’s.  I had returned to Performance and bought a bike for Miggie from Masato right off the shelf.  She’d been trying to ride a clunky beast of a bike and never really got into it.  The new, light weight one we’d purchased fit her perfectly, had drop bars – which put you in a much more comfortable position when riding long distances, and, like mine, was a gravel bike and designed for riding on trails like the Towpath.

We headed out late afternoon, riding over to Hale Farm and Village on a paved path before taking to the road.  The gear shifters were in the brake system, as are most bikes these days and something I’m familiar with, but Miggie was not.  There is a learning curve with these things and she would get it, but the initial miles are scary.  She also had rat traps on the pedals and she had never ridden a bike where her foot was attached to the pedals and this was trouble for her, as well.  She also struggled on the little hills we encountered because she did not know how to come up out of the saddle and ride standing up when climbing.  The additional power this adds to each stroke is invaluable on difficult climbs, which is anything uphill when you’re out of shape.  She struggled, got off the bike a couple of times, but in the end did well and completed a 30-minute ride exhausted, but pleased with her effort.

I continued on for another 45 minutes before getting home just under the dark wire.  Though I now have lights for the bike, I will be reluctant to ride in the dark.  That may change, but old habits die hard.

Tomorrow I will share some new ideas about hiking the North Country Trail instead of the Pacific Crest.  It interests me, at least.
Bike duration: 45 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 135 bpm.
Calories Burned: 640

"We didn't know it was slippery..."

Monday, January 22, 2018
I was standing on a pasture of ice with a woman who had just brought out 11 horses for turn-out after having walked the same area and decided it was safe for the horses.  I’d seen her walking the area without the horses before turn-out, though she didn’t know that.

“It’s too icy here to bring them back in at the end of turn-out, John!  And it’s bad over in that chute and the ones in the other pastures.  Can you salt and get them ready in two hours?” she asked.

I knew that I could, but as I stood shakily on the ice and knowing that horses, with steel on the bottom of their hooves, must have had difficulty coming out, asked the obvious.

“Why did you bring 11 of them out in the first place?”

“We didn’t know it was this slippery!”

Okay…lie instead of taking responsibility.  I suppose that is one way, but it’s not the right way.  I didn’t call her on the lie, but she had to know I was a little smarter than that even if I didn’t lead horses.  I pointed out that a side gate to the pasture, which opened up onto grass that led back to the stalls, could be used safely and without the salt.

“Geez…we’ve never done that before.  I don’t know…”

Just because it made sense, would prevent the possibility of a horse breaking a leg or injuring a handler was not reason enough to do it.  I could see where it was going and laid down 500 pounds of salt over the next half hour and ran the tractor with the reveal, an attachment with steel teeth that would dig into and break up the ice, over the fields.  Take responsibility when you screw up, but more importantly, think of solutions and listen to suggestions of people who might just have something to offer even if it is outside the box, to fix it.  Oh well…

My sore hamstring muscle had been bothering me throughout the day.  Not too severely, but enough to tell me ‘no running or riding’.  I came home to an empty house as Holly had Dakota for the evening, so I elected to walk on the towpath into Peninsula.  It was a sloppy trail. The ice and snow pack had melted leaving a soft, slippery coating of unstable crushed limestone as the top layer.  I put on boots figuring the 4.5 mile walk would be a decent workout because of the conditions.  I also figured Miggie would suggest meeting me in town on her way home from work and that would become my return trip.  When she called as she was leaving work, I discovered otherwise.

“You’re walking into Peninsula?  When do you think you’ll be home?” she asked.

“Well…another hour and a half if I walk back…in the rain,” I said.

“Okay then.  I guess I’ll see you at home,” she said and hung up.

I arrived in the tiny hamlet and sat on a bench outside of my favorite restaurant, Fisher’s, for ten minutes enjoying the 60-degree temperature in the middle of January.  Dark was setting in and the drizzle was intensifying, so I got to my feet and began the journey back in boots that were anything but waterproof.

The 9-mile hike was the longest since my last trip to the Adirondacks.  It was easy except for the blister forming on the ball of my right foot and the dull ache in the buttocks/hamstring muscle I’d been feeling for two days.  It was a poor choice for someone mending from a slight muscle pull, but I’d never let those kind of sensible details deter me in the past, so why start now?  In reality, I should pay more attention to by body signals as I train for long distance backpacking because the aging process does nothing to reduce the chance of injury nor speed recovery.  Can one get smarter as he gets older?  Unlikely…
Hike: Two hours and 30 minutes.
Training Heart Rate:  90 bpm.
Calories burned: 1150.
Bonus: 31,000 steps.

Biking, hiking, and even running...

Sunday, January 21, 2018
Big things happened over the weekend and they began Friday with Alaska Paul coming to town and a 1-hour ride on the trainer.

I’ve been visiting bike stores and speaking ad nauseum to bike pundits about what my next purchase should be.  I want something that will ride well on the roads, where I will do the bulk of my training and still want to be able to have a modicum of speed, and that will perform on rail trails and other hard packed surfaces while carrying panniers and gear for camping and long distance travel.  No one has more practical information and experience in the latter kind of riding than Alaska Paul.  I picked him up Saturday morning from his folks’ house, which he is trying to sell.  He looked sore and tired.

“Where did you sleep last night?” I asked.

He indicated a spot on the floor over some thread-bare carpet where his coat lay.  “Right here.”

I had brought over a sleeping bag, bed roll and pillow so that he’d have something better for the remainder of the week.

“Don’t really need the bed roll (air mattress),” he said.

He could sleep on a pile of rocks, but why bother when you don’t have to?  I made him keep the bed roll.

We had breakfast at Kleifelds in Willoughby and they drove to Performance Bike in Mayfield.  I had tried to get a bike from a local dealer in Akron, but after three visits and interest in buying two bikes, he had not gotten back to me about having them in for a try.  I gave up.

Over the next two hours, we quizzed, explained and listened to what the salesman and repairman had to say about what I needed.  In the end, we all agreed my needs could be met by modifying a Jari bike with new handlebars and mechanical disc brakes to replace the existing hydraulics.  Hydraulics may be slightly superior in performance, but if they fail on a two-week bike trip, four hundred miles from the nearest bike store, I’d be carrying it back.  Not a good option.  It would have cost around $2,000 for a customized bike, but we managed to put together my adaptation for less than $1,300.  I will have to bring my Look pedals and profile bars for installation, but should have it up and running in less than two weeks!

I was still feeling the ride from yesterday when I returned home and suited up for a 3-mile run.  It had warmed to the point that I was wearing t-shirt and shorts and running over the hard pack of snow that still remained on the trails.  At about 20 minutes into the run, I felt a familiar, albeit unwelcome, twinge in my right, upper hamstring/buttocks muscles.  I ran another 10 minutes with the pain and then hopped on the bike for a 40-minute ride before collapsing in a blissful exercise fatigue. 

I used Sunday for healing though I did manage a 3-mile hike on some icy trails at Horseshoe Pond.  Running will go on hold for several days and I’ll need to hold myself to 15 minutes when I start up again.  At least I finally feel that I’m making progress.

"Something cool happened, dad..."

Tuesday, January 16, 2017

Though I have not been writing about it, I’ve had a good fitness start to 2018.  I’ve managed one 20-minute run, gotten my bike back on the trainer and ridden for an hour and hit a record 35,000 steps for a single day.  I’m also counting down the days until retirement – 348 – with relish for what will follow.

The search for a new bike continues.  I took UB Express in for a tune-up so I could put it on the trainer while planning for the purchase of a ‘gravel’ bike I could ride both on the roads and on gravel surfaces, such as the towpath.  I stopped in to pick it up last week.

“Umm…yeah…I didn’t do anything on it.  I don’t think you should put any more money into this bike with the frame issues,” the owner said.

He went on to explain that although the carbon fiber part of the frame would last another billion years, the resin that binds it together is failing and that the frame could fail catastrophically at any time.

“So…you might be sitting on the post instead of a seat, if you know what I mean,” he concluded.

I did know and now, after 25 years, UB Express will be sidelined, stripped of useable parts, and scrapped.  Thanks for a couple of years of good riding, UB.  I will have to break the news to my Uncle Bill delicately.  He’d put the first 23 years on the bike and was so proud of it.

More importantly, Jack called me yesterday around three.  He never calls during work hours, so I knew something was up.

“Something really cool happened today, dad.  We had a brigade meeting and a Lieutenant General – that’s a three-star – spoke to the group.  I was called forward with one other soldier and he gave me one of his coins!” he said, excitedly.  “Do you know what that is?”

I didn’t and he explained that it represented the rank of the soldier and was a piece all soldiers carried.  He did mention something about soldiers pulling them out when drinks were ordered.  I’m pretty sure the highest ranking coin did not pay.  Jack will never pay again.

He said he was so honored because he’d been recently promoted, been recognized as soldier of the month and received a perfect fitness score of 300, which means he ran two miles under 13 minutes (he’s never had trouble with that) and did 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups in whatever the allotted time is – I think three minutes. 

“His name is Lieutenant General Paul M. Nakasone and he talked to me.  He said, ‘you’ve been a busy soldier’,”.

I looked him up and discovered he is the current commander of the Second Army and has the Cyber Command, as well.  That means he’s the top guy in Jack’s line of work. I could see why he’d be so excited, but his achievements don’t surprise me.  He is dedicated to his work, his conditioning, and the Army and not necessarily in that order. 

Yesterday was brutally cold, but I walked into Peninsula to have ribs with Miggie.  The snow was reasonably hard packed on the towpath, but did create more effort with each step and the walk in took about 80 minutes and left me with over 27,000 steps for the day.  Miggie has been reading ‘Wild’, the true story of one woman’s experience walking the Pacific Crest Trail and the story that inspired me to consider doing the same.  I think she is finally getting what an undertaking this could be and was quite amazed at what the woman achieved.  So am I.

Looking forward to 2018...

Tuesday, January 9, 2018
So…it is a ‘new year’ and again, I am trying to make plans and commitments to myself that will lead me on a path to better physical condition, and physical and mental health.

New Year’s Eve marked five years since I found out my wife was in love with another man.  Much has happened in the ensuing time, but nothing to relieve me to the point that I no longer grieve for what I had…and should still have now and into the future.  I suppose that is a sign that what I had was something very special for me and the very reason I cannot walk away from it and the feelings it entails.  It has, however, given me new directions and optimism in some respects; things I will act upon in 2018.

There are a few things on my list of ‘to do’s’ for the coming year.  Not so much resolutions, but courses of actions that will shape the next several years.  Here they are:
·        Retire in December: though maybe work at least one day per week at the farm.
·        Buy a minivan: my camping and traveling vehicle.
·        Purchase a new bike: a touring bike that will handle panniers and rail trails.
·        Running: I need to do some of this for fitness and my mental health.
·        Survival Workout:  I never felt better than when I performed this regularly.
·        Hike the Northville/Placid Trail: 150 miles and four peaks to climb in a two-week period.

They aren’t crazy things or too ambitious, but they will all work towards setting the tone for the next several years as I pursue hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and traveling to some of the great North American national parks.  On a micro level, it will hopefully get me back to the total fitness person I had become during the early years of writing the blog and help to be an inspiration to me and those around me or who read the blog to formulate and execute their own ‘life’ plan. 

I have done some running since the New Year began and have taken my bike for a tune-up so that I will be ready for any weather break to ride outside…and on the trainer until I can.  I did not do the steps I’d done in November for the month of December, but am off to a good start in the New Year.  Yesterday, I surpassed – by far, my greatest single-day effort when I logged 35,200 for the day.  The day included another exhausting one on the farm moving snow, three tons of salt and various other physical duties. 

I hope to make 2018 a transitional year.  Transitioning away from a daily work schedule into something that sustains me financially and physically.  I have so much I would like to see and do before I really am forced to acknowledge the aging process, but I know that can be pushed back with hard work, conditioning, a good attitude, and some luck.  Let’s see just how much of the first three I can manage…the last one is out of my hands.