Corky passed away almost a month ago on June 3, 2019, at 12:05am. He was born on August 11, 2003. I have been in kind of a funk for the past couple of months. He really started to decline at the beginning of May. The past month I have been generally unmotivated to complete tasks, especially to work on our house.
I am writing this for me, but you, the reader, are welcome to read along.
There hasn’t been much camping or backpacking this year, nor has there been much activity on this website. That’s because I’ve been stuck in an hourglass, or more precisely, I’ve been trying to dig myself out of debt. Not monetary debt, but trying to overcome a deficit in my time bank. I didn’t do anything wrong, the debt was planned – sort of – and now my time bank account has become overdrawn.
Continue reading Where has Nick Been? I’ve Been Stuck in an Hourglass!
I’ve decided to create a new category for the blog called Senior Moments for backpackers. Anything related to becoming older that impacts, changes, limits, or forces me to make changes as I get older may become something to write about.
2018 is now “in the books.” It’s a new year and I can’t change the past. Many outdoor bloggers summarize the previous year with their favorite gear (an opportunity to insert ads of said gear to generate income) or summarize the highlights of their year. I’ll do neither in this post.
2018 was the year I became a senior citizen. There really isn’t a set age when one becomes a “senior.” For some it is a state of mind and they start acting like old people in their ‘40s or ‘50s. The reality is that at some point in time all of us will be unable to do what we could do in our youth. Walking (my definition of backpacking) is something most of us can do for most of our lives. Last year I turned 68 and on a couple trips with younger people I couldn’t maintain my normal pace. I was fine on fairly level terrain and going down the hills. But on moderately long elevation gains there were times I fell behind my younger walking partners, although I could still keep up with some of them. I also found that during the year I could still keep up with my friends if I trained ahead of time for a hike that entailed lots of elevation gains.
Continue reading Senior Moments in Backpacking
It’s that time of year where we “fall back.” And the news articles explain how we have an extra hour of time and often ask how will we use this extra hour of time that miraculously appeared out of nowhere.
Continue reading Today You Have an Extra Hour to Use — or do You?
This month I’ll turn 68. Is that old? Are these sayings true?
“Age is just a number.”
“You’re as young [or old] as you feel.”
“Mind of matter.”
To me, these make for good “motivational” or “inspirational” posters — those posters often seen in offices to supposedly get under-achieving people become super stars — I’ve never seen them work however.
I prefer posters like this one but have never seen on in an office 🙂
The past couple of years I’ve fallen several times while backpacking and perhaps this is due to getting older; so the question might be asked,
“Should I do something differently or is it time to consider giving up backpacking, especially since I usually hike alone.” Continue reading “Falling” into Old Age and Backpacking
As we near the end of October, many campers are “winterizing” their campers and putting them into storage. Given our location and easy access to year round camping we “winterize” differently.
This summer we bought a pair of Honda generators as I shared a while back. These were purchased only for use in summer when temperatures are in triple digits (meaning we won’t have any camping neighbors). They also can be used for backup electricity in case of a power outage. We won’t need them for at least 6 months, so it was time to winterize them – meaning to do any required maintenance and prep them for storage. Just in case you have Honda EU 2000 series generators and haven’t read the manual, other than the Quick Reference Guide, here is the maintenance schedule.
You know what I’m talking about — almost every Wal-Mart, Big Box Hardware Store, and even many convenience stores have those cages where you can exchange your 5 gallon propane tank for a “full” tank.
So, is it a good deal to exchange your tanks?
The short answer is No. Continue reading Is it a Good Deal to “Exchange” Your Propane Tanks?
In this post I mentioned that before every camping trip I test the trailer’s breakaway switch. I received several questions about this statement and these questions concerned two very important items:
Adding water to flooded RV batteries can be somewhat difficult as the above picture shows on our 2014 Milan 26RLS. The battery bank is behind the propane tanks and the front of the trailer slopes forward over the batteries. This isn’t a problem if you have sealed batteries that do not require topping of the water. I prefer flooded batteries that can be tested with a battery hydrometer as I shared in this post with instructions on using a battery hydrometer. The downside of these flooded batteries is they periodically need to be topped of with distilled water. As with most things in life, there is a proper tool to add distilled water to a flooded battery — the battery water filler. Continue reading Battery Water Filler
So we got home from our end-of-summer camping trip on September 20th, or two days before the official end of summer, which marks the beginning of autumn. I like to call it autumn because that name is derived from an old Latin word, autumns. Autumn entered the English language about 700 years ago.
Of course when we think of autumn, changing colors in forests and the falling leaves often come to mind. Poets often wrote about this colorful season and soon it was referred to as “the falling of leaves.” So about 500 years ago, in the English language, this was changed to simply “fall.”
In the desert, unless there are cottonwood trees nearby, there isn’t a “falling of leaves” during this time of the year. But there are balmy nights, and the night sky becomes darker and clearer. So with this in mind, I headed to the high desert a few days after our trip to Lake Mead.
Continue reading The First Camping Trip of Autumn — or is it Fall?