What I would have done differently at Philmont

So I went to Philmont and wasn't as out of shape as I was afraid I'd be. Yes, I was one of the slower ones, but I had no need to go fast. I kept a steady pace as long as I needed to. But I was thinking it might be nice to share some of the things I would do differently if anyone asked or if I had it to do over again in a few years. If anyone reading this is getting ready for the trek, I hope this helps.

Things I would have changed in my pack:

• The first thing I think I would have changed is the amount of clothes I took. It was really close to just what I needed, but a little off. I took a little too many. I'd take two shirts, two pairs of pants/shorts, two pairs of underwear, three pairs of liner socks, and three pairs of wool socks. I wore pants the whole time, but I was the only one in my crew who did. I didn't want my legs to get sunburned. I should have left my swimsuit and the extra pair of shorts I brought just in case I needed them.

• I also would have preferred to take a sleeping bag a little less intense than the one I have. I've got a 0-degree North Face bag, so I was plenty warm and the weight wasn't so much the issue, it was the space it took up. Also, I tended to sleep halfway out of the bag every night. A warm-weather bag would have been a better choice. A bag rated somewhere around 40.

• Another thing I would have taken was a load-rated carabiner. I just had a cheap one to clip my shoes to the outside of my pack, one of those keychain type ones. I would have taken a heftier one to help string up the bear bags.

• I would have left my wool stocking cap behind. It just wasn't that cold.

• I should have pared down my mess kit to a single dish. That's really all you need.

• It would have been nice to have two Nalgene bottles instead of just one.

• The boots I have were not designed for a trip as long and tough as this one and I felt it. I would like to have had a more suited pair of boots, but the ones I have are great for the hiking I do regularly. For this trip, though, I would have preferred a pair with a heftier sole.

Things I'm glad I had:

• I was really pleased with my Marmot soft shell jacket. It was just the right weight and worked great as a pillow.

• Extra tent stakes. A couple of mine got mangled trying to push them into the really hard dirt of some of those campsites.

• A multitool. We used it frequently to sterilize the dishes, among other things.

• This was the first time I'd really used my hydration system. Mine's a Camelbak and I'm certain it kept me from getting dehydrated. Every time I had a thought like "I'm thirsty" or "It's hot out here," I'd take a little sip.

• A little notebook and pen. It was important to me to write down my experience, my thoughts and the things I learned about while I was out in the wilderness. Also, they made it easier for me to send a postcard home in the middle of the first week.

• I'm glad I took a camera. One thing to be aware of, though, is that if you bring a camera that uses film (I didn't want to pulverize my digital camera in my pack), you have to put it up in the bear bag at night. Not really a big deal.

If you've been or want to ask about something, go ahead and comment. Let's share the love.

I missed it

My old friend, that vomity feeling, came back during this last session of exercise I just finished. I was working just as hard as I needed to be, and then when the optional exercise screen popped up, I thought, "I should add one of these on." So I chose the abdominal toning pack. I'm feeling really sick and sitting here, pouring sweat.

Plugging along

I've been doing a pretty good job of keeping up with my exercise. The only downside to my game is that on the weekends, when I usually go on a hike, carrying the baby around, I'm worn out from that and don't want to fire up my exercise game to get that done too. I figure I've already exercised. But then when I start it up the next time, Anna, the trainer reminds me that I missed a day and should probably do an extra workout to make up for the missed one. She tries to point out that I'm only going to get out of it what I put in and there's no way for me to say, "But Anna, I went on a morning-long hike Saturday morning, carrying a little boy the whole way."

Regardless, I'm doing well, working hard and feeling stronger. Never mind the fact that my weight is staying roughly the same. I can at least go on a hike and do the workouts without completely wearing myself out. I don't feel that same vomity feeling I had that first night. Part of it is that I'm more psychologically prepared for it each time now, but the other part of it is that I'm getting more fit. So far, so good.

hot and dusty

I've been doing a good job of keeping up with my exercise this last week. But today, we went on a hike to Goblin Valley. It's a really fun state park in the middle-of-nowhere Utah. I'm feeling pretty good about my backpacking trip coming up in about 6 weeks.

Still getting it done

This weekend, we went on a hike as a family. We were planning on going on a fairly low-key hike, but the road to it was closed and we ended up going on a more challenging hike that took us four times longer than we were planning to be hiking. All the time, I carried the little boy in one of those child carrier backpacks. Needless to say, I got lots of good exercise in that day and was encouraged about the impending backpacking trip I've got coming up.

On the downside, though, I didn't do my scheduled video game exercise routine. There were two very good reasons for this. First, I was already pretty worn out from the hiking exercise I did earlier on Saturday, which was a kind of good exercise. Second, I still didn't have that lens for my EyeToy, which would have meant that I would have spent another routine trying to dodge a bouncing ball while my body takes up half the screen. Not fun.

But I got the lens today, along with another copy of the game and another EyeToy. Anyone want the set, minus the full vision lens? If so, let me know and we can work something out. That means tonight, I'm all over it. I'm going to use the thing the way it was designed to be used. I'm looking forward to seeing how it really works, but not looking forward to the virtual personal trainer telling me to get my act together and make sure I get enough exercise. I'll let you know how that goes. In the meantime, I have a workout to do.

It seems to work

Well, my game came a little earlier than I expected, which I'm not complaining about. I actually got it on Monday and tested it out. I figured I'd just put it in and set things up, like my user profile, game settings, stuff like that. But I had started and then, just like we tend to do with just about every video game, I jumped right in. There was just going to be a little tutorial and then I'd stop, right? That was the plan that quickly went out the window.

The first exercise involved avoiding a ball bouncing around the screen while hitting other ones. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, I quickly realized that in my haste to find a technological solution, I had neglected to find an additional important piece of hardware. A lens. A wide angle lens that would allow me to stand the proper distance from the camera and still be the proper size on the screen. But as it was, I was about three times bigger than I was supposed to be. That made dodging the bouncing ball so much harder. I had to be particularly spry and that didn't quite work out so well for me.

After doing that and another couple of exercises, a screen came up, asking if I wanted to add an optional module. Dripping sweat because I had just spent 40 minutes working out in the same clothes I went to work in, some unknown force gripped me and I thought "Yoga sounds nice," forgetting that when I started doing our yoga DVD a couple of years ago, I thought my head was going to explode a couple of times. It's hard. And yet I pressed on in my masochistic bent until I told my virtual personal trainer, Anna, that I couldn't do that one anymore and moved on to the final stretching module.

I swear that cooldown stretch made me more sore than anything else in the routine. But by the end of the exercise routine, I was sweaty, exhausted, and felt like I was about to throw up. Also, it was about midnight, which is too late to be exercising, if you ask me. I jumped in the shower and kept turning the water colder and colder until I felt myself calming down. It was like my time in Ukraine all over again, with the cold showers and the exercising.

The training went fairly well and I got on for my second routine again today. Still a little sore and without the lens to make me the right size on the screen, I had a tough time hitting targets precisely, so I'll have to find one of those lenses and snap it up. They're tough to find, I've learned, but the cost is still going to be less than even a single month of a gym membership. In the meantime, I'm on a roll and feeling good about what I've done.  EyeToy: Kinetic sets out a twelve-week exercise program that I've started on, so I'll keep you up to date on how it works out for me. The best news, though, is that I've lost a couple of pounds since last week. Let's keep it on the downward trend.

Technology to the rescue?

I really don't like just running for running's sake and I was having trouble coming up with something that would give me an excuse to run around, kind of like when you chop up mushrooms and mix them in with a bunch of other things to get your picky eater kid to eat them. When I was in high school, I played a lot of volleyball, which tricked me into running. You have to run to get to the ball, to get into position, there's all kinds of jumping, and I didn't ever necessarily recognize that for what it was because I was too busy trying to get more points than the other team.

I thought about a treadmill, where I could watch an episode of a show while I jogged. Or at least walked quickly. But where would I put one? About the only place there's room is on the back porch and if I put a treadmill out there, I might as well just go running and enjoy the scenery while I dodge traffic. There are a couple of gyms fairly nearby, but I didn't want to have to go there either before or after work, when I was already at home and comfy. Also, it would cost more money than I'm willing to spend on it at the moment.

It was a conundrum, but then the solution hit me while I was in the shower. Buckaroo Banzai calls them the Three Bs, where we do our best thinking: Bed, Bus and Bath. It's when you aren't actively looking for the answer when the best ones hit you. I was thinking about the Wii Fit and how it's pretty nifty and my Playstation's got tons more computing power, there's got to be something that it can do with exercise. If so, I'd already have the majority of the equipment and it would solve all the disadvantages I came up with for the other ideas I had. All the hesitations, gone. Also, I seemed to remember seeing something about a game that used the camera to track your movements, the trick now was finding it and learning more about it.

Like anyone else would have nowadays, I turned to the all-knowing internet, looking for that Playstation fitness game. Not only did I find it, but I found one for a really good price. It's called EyeToy: Kinetic, developed by Sony and Nike Motionworks. As far as my research to this point suggests, it does pretty much the same things that Wii Fit does, except with fewer silly games and more exercise. I ordered it and I'm guessing it will get here in about a week or so. Now I'll have absolutely no excuses, but I'm thinking I won't need them anymore because I'll have something to play that will sneak in some exercise for me.