April 27.
This journal entry is a few days old. I originally wrote it in "gedit," a Generic EDITor much like the Windows Notepad text editor, because I didn't have internet access when I wrote it. Gedit and offline is where most of my blog entries stay, but I wanted to share this one for a change -- this is the first time in a few weeks that I did something other than study, hunt for mushrooms, or work on projects.
I have bad genes. I've had the tendency to put on weight since I turned 25 years old. I mean that if I don't exercise hard at least 5 days a week, I will get fat, and this predisposition has gotten worse the older I've become. It starts with a small pot belly. Then comes chin "waddle," a bloated face, and a bigger pot belly. Finally comes the overall potato-shaped decrepitude that is so typical of Americans nowadays. How do I know this about myself? I looked in the mirror one day and, to my horror and disgust, noticed that I was fat. I was sickened on an even deeper level by my lack of self-discipline and will power and my overall moral failure in letting this happen. I had fought it off in its early stages several times before, but this was the worst it's ever been. I think I was 31 years old that day. What was so surprising is that I had been bicycling 50 - 75 miles per week and lifting weights at the time. I couldn't believe it had happened. Until then, that had been enough exercise to keep fit. So that left me with two choices: diet or more exercise. Or suicide. I like to be able to eat whatever I want and hate restricting calories. If I want a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream one day, I will have it. That rules out dieting. And I wanted to live and try to do something worthwhile during my lifetime in this world -- I was working toward my PhD in grad school at a world class university training to be a neurobiologist and wanted to help advance humanity's understanding of the neural substrates of consciousness. I thus chose to pile on more exercise and was able to take care of my weight problem within a few months. Over the years, to maintain my interest in exercise, I began to "cross-train" or alternate between different sports.
Exercise physiologists tell us that cross country skiing burns more calories than almost any other sport: about 800 - 900 calories per hour, give or take 100 or so depending on intensity. So during a typical day of skiing one might burn 5000 calories. Given an average 2000 calorie per day diet, that's 2 or 3 days of meals.
I enjoy winter sports, especially skiing, and 20 miles from me is an abandoned ski resort that has been shut down for years. But I don't drive so getting to good areas like that takes some planning. Some fool once accused me of having had my driver's license taken away, but that's not the case. I can legally drive, but I choose not to for a number of reasons, mainly political and ethical. As a non-driver, making the planning even more difficult is the fact that I live in Buttfsck Egypt, and there is no public transportation here. There was a commuter train here until about 50 years ago, but like most of the rail network in this country, it was dismantled in favor of single-occupancy automobiles.
Today would probably be the last chance of the year to ski in good snow. It had snowed much of the night and morning. There would be a foot of fresh snow at the resort, not counting the several feet of packed snow that has built up over the winter. The road to the resort was icy, and snow plows hadn't gone through yet. Snow was piled too close on the shoulders for me to haul the skis on my bicycle (I've done this before but on wider roads).
I had been skiing there part of the winter -- I was able either to hitch-hike -- just start walking down the road with my ski bag over my shoulder and within an hour or so of thumbing, someone going over the mountain pass would usually take me to the abandoned ski resort. But, I quit going because the snow has been rotten for the past 3 months because of the unusually warm and dry winter the Pacific Northwest has had. Today I was afraid there wasn't going to be a lot of traffic going up there. The Department of transportation might have closed the mountain pass or maybe just because it hasn't been plowed, I didn't want ot risk wasting the day hitchhiking.
Sometimes I compromise my ideals. I haven't driven in more than 10 years (since the 2nd oil war aka Iraq II). The only exception was the time I recently crashed my gf's car when my gf thought it would be a good idea for me, a non-driver, to pick her up from the San Francisco airport an hour away in heavy mid-day traffic in her car -- her NEW car -- despite my explaining to her in verbose detail why having me drive was a VERY VERY BAD idea because I would probably wreck her new car. Not only that, but BART (the Bay Area commuter train) is a five minute walk from her house and stops directly at the airport, etc etc etc.... But like a typical American Girlfriend, she has to have her way, especially when she's wrong. Thinking back on that, I think she might have wanted that exact result. She hated that car and for me to "total" it (to totally destroy it beyond the replacement cost of a new car) was a way for her to get rid of it and collect insurance money to buy a new one. ...
So not having driven a car fro more than 10 years, I borrowed an old "4X4" style hillbilly farm truck complete with a gun rack in the back window. The farmer whose truck it was explained that the truck was a 4 wheel drive with a manual transmission (stick shift). This will be obvious to most people who drive, but if not, operating manual transmission (stick shifter and clutch) is a skill that has to be learned. He explained that the truck would be terrific for driving in the snow. And because it was a 35 year old junker already full of scrapes, dents, and rust-holes, it didn't matter if I banged it up a little bit more.
OK. I don't really remember how to drive. And I definitely dont' know how to drive a stick shift. But he explaiend that the gears are arrayed in an H-shape. And you have to press the pedal all the way on the left (there are 3 pedals instead of 2 in a stick shift, and the pedal on the left is the clutch.....) and let off the gas so you don't over-rev it. Lucky for me, he let me practice driving it on the farm to make sure I didn't crash or ruin the transmission.
I drove there without any major problems except occasional gear grinding and a hot engine, and there's still about 3 feet of packed snow base with about a foot of fresh snow on top. And the temperature was below freezing. These are good skiing conditions. Today I had my Karhu telemark skis (a type of back-country long-distance touring ski notorious for their difficulty in turning quickly).
The icing on the cake is that I was the only one there. I had the entire ski resort to myself. The parking lot was unplowed and covered with snow. The chalet was empty; the cabins, hotel adn bar were vacant. The ski lifts were still and the lift-chairs were piled with snow. The chairs at the entry and exit of the lift were buried in sevearl feet of snow. The lift-huts were empty. Trail maps and directions to various areas of interest were still displayed intact at the major areas. The feeling was of emptiness and nostalgia for the crowds who skied there decades ago. (Ever since my recent Fentanyl run, I've picked up on a dimension of nostalgia in many aspects of life.) I was reminded of the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick's film "The Shining."
The lifts were strung out to the top of the mountain which is about 1000 feet higher than the lodge (according to the trail map) so I put on my skis and skins and trudged up the mountain. The climb was a good cardio workout. Just one trip up, and my clothes were heavy with sweat. But I was wearing a warm parka so I wouldn't get cold when the wind hit my sweat-soaked clothes at the top.
After a couple of hours of skiing, practicing my slow clumsy telemark turns on my way down the resort's slopes, then at the bottom strapping on my climbing skins, and going back up (a 1/2 hour trek wearing skis), I was ready to explore. There are miles of trails carved into the forest along the mountain ridges above the resort. A promising one, Canyon Loop, follows the rim of a 5000 foot canyon. But before I set out, I began to eat my lunch while taking in the view.
To my left (south) ski slopes are cut into stands of Douglas Fir and pines descending more than 1000 feet to a gorge and the mountain pass. Beyond the gorge are 3 more ridges of mountains, each one smaller than the one before it and through a break in them, I can see into a wide valley that looks like it could be around 50 miles across to the next mountain range (the Cascades, I think). Directly in front of me is the edge of a cliff. It drops even deeper to another narrow gorge. I can hear the noise of a mountain river rushing through it. Rising steeply beyond that is anohter ridge that's even higher than the one I'm on.
I love storms. Thunder storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and especially blizzards put a smile on my face. So I stood at the peak on Canyon Loop in my skis eating the afternoon luncheon that I'd packed and notice a snow storm creeping toward me. It had not been snowing since I got here. It's about 3 mountains away -- I'm good at judging distance by sight (I have training both in land surveying and in wilderness navigation)-- so 3 mountains means roughly 10 miles distant, and it seemed to be picking up speed. EVerything within the storm is whited out. It's like a 10000-foot-tall wall of snow moving in.
This is certainly the last snow of the year and who knows how long it will be before I can ski in Oregon again? (because I'm thinking of moving on...) I'd better enjoy it while I can.
To be continued (word limit exceeded)
This journal entry is a few days old. I originally wrote it in "gedit," a Generic EDITor much like the Windows Notepad text editor, because I didn't have internet access when I wrote it. Gedit and offline is where most of my blog entries stay, but I wanted to share this one for a change -- this is the first time in a few weeks that I did something other than study, hunt for mushrooms, or work on projects.
I have bad genes. I've had the tendency to put on weight since I turned 25 years old. I mean that if I don't exercise hard at least 5 days a week, I will get fat, and this predisposition has gotten worse the older I've become. It starts with a small pot belly. Then comes chin "waddle," a bloated face, and a bigger pot belly. Finally comes the overall potato-shaped decrepitude that is so typical of Americans nowadays. How do I know this about myself? I looked in the mirror one day and, to my horror and disgust, noticed that I was fat. I was sickened on an even deeper level by my lack of self-discipline and will power and my overall moral failure in letting this happen. I had fought it off in its early stages several times before, but this was the worst it's ever been. I think I was 31 years old that day. What was so surprising is that I had been bicycling 50 - 75 miles per week and lifting weights at the time. I couldn't believe it had happened. Until then, that had been enough exercise to keep fit. So that left me with two choices: diet or more exercise. Or suicide. I like to be able to eat whatever I want and hate restricting calories. If I want a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream one day, I will have it. That rules out dieting. And I wanted to live and try to do something worthwhile during my lifetime in this world -- I was working toward my PhD in grad school at a world class university training to be a neurobiologist and wanted to help advance humanity's understanding of the neural substrates of consciousness. I thus chose to pile on more exercise and was able to take care of my weight problem within a few months. Over the years, to maintain my interest in exercise, I began to "cross-train" or alternate between different sports.
Exercise physiologists tell us that cross country skiing burns more calories than almost any other sport: about 800 - 900 calories per hour, give or take 100 or so depending on intensity. So during a typical day of skiing one might burn 5000 calories. Given an average 2000 calorie per day diet, that's 2 or 3 days of meals.
I enjoy winter sports, especially skiing, and 20 miles from me is an abandoned ski resort that has been shut down for years. But I don't drive so getting to good areas like that takes some planning. Some fool once accused me of having had my driver's license taken away, but that's not the case. I can legally drive, but I choose not to for a number of reasons, mainly political and ethical. As a non-driver, making the planning even more difficult is the fact that I live in Buttfsck Egypt, and there is no public transportation here. There was a commuter train here until about 50 years ago, but like most of the rail network in this country, it was dismantled in favor of single-occupancy automobiles.
Today would probably be the last chance of the year to ski in good snow. It had snowed much of the night and morning. There would be a foot of fresh snow at the resort, not counting the several feet of packed snow that has built up over the winter. The road to the resort was icy, and snow plows hadn't gone through yet. Snow was piled too close on the shoulders for me to haul the skis on my bicycle (I've done this before but on wider roads).
I had been skiing there part of the winter -- I was able either to hitch-hike -- just start walking down the road with my ski bag over my shoulder and within an hour or so of thumbing, someone going over the mountain pass would usually take me to the abandoned ski resort. But, I quit going because the snow has been rotten for the past 3 months because of the unusually warm and dry winter the Pacific Northwest has had. Today I was afraid there wasn't going to be a lot of traffic going up there. The Department of transportation might have closed the mountain pass or maybe just because it hasn't been plowed, I didn't want ot risk wasting the day hitchhiking.
Sometimes I compromise my ideals. I haven't driven in more than 10 years (since the 2nd oil war aka Iraq II). The only exception was the time I recently crashed my gf's car when my gf thought it would be a good idea for me, a non-driver, to pick her up from the San Francisco airport an hour away in heavy mid-day traffic in her car -- her NEW car -- despite my explaining to her in verbose detail why having me drive was a VERY VERY BAD idea because I would probably wreck her new car. Not only that, but BART (the Bay Area commuter train) is a five minute walk from her house and stops directly at the airport, etc etc etc.... But like a typical American Girlfriend, she has to have her way, especially when she's wrong. Thinking back on that, I think she might have wanted that exact result. She hated that car and for me to "total" it (to totally destroy it beyond the replacement cost of a new car) was a way for her to get rid of it and collect insurance money to buy a new one. ...
So not having driven a car fro more than 10 years, I borrowed an old "4X4" style hillbilly farm truck complete with a gun rack in the back window. The farmer whose truck it was explained that the truck was a 4 wheel drive with a manual transmission (stick shift). This will be obvious to most people who drive, but if not, operating manual transmission (stick shifter and clutch) is a skill that has to be learned. He explained that the truck would be terrific for driving in the snow. And because it was a 35 year old junker already full of scrapes, dents, and rust-holes, it didn't matter if I banged it up a little bit more.
OK. I don't really remember how to drive. And I definitely dont' know how to drive a stick shift. But he explaiend that the gears are arrayed in an H-shape. And you have to press the pedal all the way on the left (there are 3 pedals instead of 2 in a stick shift, and the pedal on the left is the clutch.....) and let off the gas so you don't over-rev it. Lucky for me, he let me practice driving it on the farm to make sure I didn't crash or ruin the transmission.
I drove there without any major problems except occasional gear grinding and a hot engine, and there's still about 3 feet of packed snow base with about a foot of fresh snow on top. And the temperature was below freezing. These are good skiing conditions. Today I had my Karhu telemark skis (a type of back-country long-distance touring ski notorious for their difficulty in turning quickly).
The icing on the cake is that I was the only one there. I had the entire ski resort to myself. The parking lot was unplowed and covered with snow. The chalet was empty; the cabins, hotel adn bar were vacant. The ski lifts were still and the lift-chairs were piled with snow. The chairs at the entry and exit of the lift were buried in sevearl feet of snow. The lift-huts were empty. Trail maps and directions to various areas of interest were still displayed intact at the major areas. The feeling was of emptiness and nostalgia for the crowds who skied there decades ago. (Ever since my recent Fentanyl run, I've picked up on a dimension of nostalgia in many aspects of life.) I was reminded of the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick's film "The Shining."
The lifts were strung out to the top of the mountain which is about 1000 feet higher than the lodge (according to the trail map) so I put on my skis and skins and trudged up the mountain. The climb was a good cardio workout. Just one trip up, and my clothes were heavy with sweat. But I was wearing a warm parka so I wouldn't get cold when the wind hit my sweat-soaked clothes at the top.
After a couple of hours of skiing, practicing my slow clumsy telemark turns on my way down the resort's slopes, then at the bottom strapping on my climbing skins, and going back up (a 1/2 hour trek wearing skis), I was ready to explore. There are miles of trails carved into the forest along the mountain ridges above the resort. A promising one, Canyon Loop, follows the rim of a 5000 foot canyon. But before I set out, I began to eat my lunch while taking in the view.
To my left (south) ski slopes are cut into stands of Douglas Fir and pines descending more than 1000 feet to a gorge and the mountain pass. Beyond the gorge are 3 more ridges of mountains, each one smaller than the one before it and through a break in them, I can see into a wide valley that looks like it could be around 50 miles across to the next mountain range (the Cascades, I think). Directly in front of me is the edge of a cliff. It drops even deeper to another narrow gorge. I can hear the noise of a mountain river rushing through it. Rising steeply beyond that is anohter ridge that's even higher than the one I'm on.
I love storms. Thunder storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and especially blizzards put a smile on my face. So I stood at the peak on Canyon Loop in my skis eating the afternoon luncheon that I'd packed and notice a snow storm creeping toward me. It had not been snowing since I got here. It's about 3 mountains away -- I'm good at judging distance by sight (I have training both in land surveying and in wilderness navigation)-- so 3 mountains means roughly 10 miles distant, and it seemed to be picking up speed. EVerything within the storm is whited out. It's like a 10000-foot-tall wall of snow moving in.
This is certainly the last snow of the year and who knows how long it will be before I can ski in Oregon again? (because I'm thinking of moving on...) I'd better enjoy it while I can.
To be continued (word limit exceeded)