Tuesday, June 24, 2008

taking a breather

I'm sitting on a park bench* by the water in Olympia, Washington, behind the state capitol, taking a short break before moving on with today's 20-miler, of which I've already done about half.

I had to poop something fierce last night, and I'm pretty sure it had to do with the fact that I had two-and-a-half meals yesterday: a full breakfast, a full dinner, and a snack at lunchtime. That's quite a change from the roughly one-meal-a-day schedule I've been on since May 26.

Today, I therefore elected to skip breakfast; I'll have lunch in town during the return portion of the walk, and will likely skip dinner to have more time to shower, do laundry, get a haircut, and get back on one of the library computers.

I brought along both the BlackBerry and the digicam today; I'm very disappointed at the short lives of my digicam batteries, which seem to lose their charge very quickly, even when they're just sitting in storage.

Battery wimpiness notwithstanding, I've taken a ton of pics and will take several more, including the world's weirdest park bench and the Yoda prank, during the return leg.

I thought ahead and brought along all three pairs of digicam batteries; if all six batteries conk out on me, I'll still have the BlackBerry, which sports a more respectable battery.

Ah, yes-- a note to the several friends and acquaintances requesting a map of my travels: I'll do my best, but figuring out the Google Maps functions is going to take some time. If I don't get my act together before I leave Lacey, I'm stuck until I have access to a real computer again (have I told you what a pain it is to call up and attempt to read maps on the BlackBerry?).**

In the meantime, there's nothing stopping you from using Google Earth (or GMaps, or whatever works) to follow my path. Just use Google Earth to find the locations I've mentioned, and you're good to go.





*Gnats are flying up my nose.

**All this would be moot if I had a chase vehicle with WiFi hookup, a laptop, a place to sleep...


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Do you have nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) rechargeable batteries? They seem to lose their charge extremely quickly unless they are actually in whatever device you are using them for.

When we first bought our digital camera, the guy who sold it to us convinced us to buy two sets of rechargeable (NiMH) batteries so we would always have a spare set. Thus turned out to be pointless, since by the time the set in the camera ran out, the "spare" set had long since lost its charge.

What I have taken to doing is carrying around a set of Duracells for when the NiMH batteries run out. Then I swap the Duracells in and use those until I can recharge the NiMH batteries. The Duracells will last longer than the rechargeables, and they also won't lose their charge when in storage, so you might want to consider that idea. As an added bonus, you can cut down your weight (slightly) by only carrying around one extra set of batteries.