Planning: Appalachian Trail Food

When I came back from my 2019 AT attempt I was diagnosed as Diabetic.  I suspect this may explain why my body didn't feel like it was recovering each day.  I also suspect the carbohydrate heavy diet I ate on the trail contributed to the high blood sugar, high insulin resistant state I came home with.  When I planned my food then I only looked at the calories, if it could survive in my pack, and if I liked it.  Now I have to be more careful where those calories are coming from and this means I need to replace carbs with fat and protein.

I started by looking at what I was eating in 2019 which I posted about here.  I replaced the Clif bars and builder bars, Belvita Breakfast biscuits, and Snicker bars which are all high in carbs.  I replaced these with Keto friendly (i.e. high fat, adequate protein, low net carbs) to help reduce the number of carbs in my daily diet.  These include the Quest protein bars and peanut butter cups, caramel fat bombs (love the name), and beef jerky.  I have kept other high carb items including the honey buns (for a breakfast high carb boost), the tortillas (for a base for the peanut butter and they were my favorite on the trail last time - yummy), and the trail mix.  Here is a list of the typical days worth of food: 

Item	Qty	Total Calories	Fat (gms)	Protein (gms)	Net Carbs (gms)
Mountain House Dehydrated Meal	1	530	20	12	40
Quest Protein Bars	3	600	27	63	12
Beef Jerky	4 Snack Bags	200	4	28	16
Caramel Fat Bombs	4	360	32	4	4
Quest Peanut Butter Cups	4	360	30	22	2
Honey Bun	1	350	19	4	40
Trail Mix	159 grams	819	56	23	56
Chicken	2 Pouches	140	6	26	0
Tortillas	2	420	12	8	66
Peanut Butter	4 Tbsp	380	32	14	8
TOTAL		4,159	238	204	244

After the substitutions I ended with a 35% Fat, 30% Protein, 35% Carbohydrate split (compared to the roughly 31%, 19%, 50% split I had in 2019). I'm hoping this will work better for me.

So my meal breakdown will be a Quest protein bar and a Honey Bun for breakfast; two tortillas with peanut butter, a Quest protein bar, and a pouch of chicken for lunch; the Mountain House meal and a pouch of chicken for dinner; and the remaining eaten as snacks throughout the day.  My issue usually is not eating enough while hiking.  I will have to try harder to eat everything allocated for the day.

One day of AT 'food'.

During my 2019 attempt I pretty much grazed throughout the day.  Stopping to rest becomes an opportunity to eat a snack and eating a snack forces you to take a more substantial rest break.  I learned this on the Camino, if I didn't eat a snack I would just stop for a minute or two at most before I moved on which was never enough.  Eating slowed me down and gave me a better rest.

My friends on Discord include several foodies.  I'm sure they are cringing reading this list of overly processed junk food.  Multi-day hikes have limitations when it comes to food.  Anything that requires refrigeration is a no-go.  Everything in my food list is shelf stable and, in some cases, will last forever.  The food has to survive being crammed into a food bag.  Anything that would crumble is a no-go. Also, at the end of the day I'm usually very tired and I don't want to spend too much energy preparing a 'real' meal.  In 2019 there were days I was too tired to boil the water for the dehydrated meal.  I have ideas for fighting that issue as well.  More about that when I actually get on the trail and try it out.

Weekly Ephemera #22

This weekend my anxiety level has started to go up.  Between unwanted medical numbers to finalizing my Appalachian Trail (AT) transportation (thus making it 'Real') I've been on edge. 

• 

  Hitchcock Butterfly.

  I took another PSA test this week in preparation for a trip to the urologist on Friday.  My PSA number went up since my last test in April.  On Friday, while I sat in the doctor's waiting room, I was told he couldn't meet with me and had to reschedule so ... I will be talking to him next week. *sigh*
• I'd been holding off buying my AT travel and hotels until after the Doctor's appointment (just in case) but I decided to go ahead after the appointment was rescheduled.  Airline ticket from Omaha to Boston on 7 July ✔  Bus ticket from Boston Logan airport to Gorham, NH on 7 July ✔  Cheap motor inn in Gorham, NH not too far from the post office ✔  This last part was not on my original plan.  I was hoping to stay at the Rattle River Lodges & Hostel where I'd ended my 2019 AT attempt.  The hostel was right across the street from the AT and would have been very convenient.  Sadly Rattle River is permanently closed (A few weeks ago I visited their website ... on Friday the URL was unused and I could buy it if I wanted to).  I will have to hire a shuttle or Uber/Lyft to take me to the trailhead.

  

  Hail on our deck.

• We had some weird weather on Tuesday.  We had a significant hail storm.  Our house only got mass quantities of pea sized hail but some places got ping pong ball sized that damaged siding and window.
• I watched the 1/6 prime time hearings on Thursday.  It was very well organized and put together well but there was nothing there I hadn't already heard.  It was a coup attempt then and it is still a coup attempt.  Sadly I believe that those who watched already knew this and those who needed to know this didn't watch.
• I hiked twice this week.  The first was a city walk.  The parking app said that the parking spot I was in was not available (actually all spots were unavailable) so as I walked I was all paranoid that I would get a ticket or, worse, have my car towed.  As a result I cut my walk short.  Turns out no meters were taking money so I didn't really have to worry.
  
  My second hike was at Hitchcock.  I was hoping to get over seven miles going up and down the hills with my pack but I pooped out near the end and cut the hike short.
  

  

  What appears to be tiny moths on coyote scat.

  For the week I hiked 13 miles (20.9 km).  Next week I have my rescheduled doctor's appointment and temperatures above 90℉ (32℃) getting in the way.  We'll see how much I can hike.
• Last Sunday was the Poetry Out Loud finals.  Unfortunately the Wife's student didn't make the top three (tho she was in the top nine out of thousands of students who participated).  The Wife and I really didn't agree with the judging.  Judging poetry recitation can be so subjective.
• This coming week the Wife is doing a service trip to Rosebud Indian Reservation.  She will be chaperoning students from her [former] school.  I dropped her off this morning and will be holding down the fort while she's gone.

Book: David Graeber And David Wengrow's "The Dawn Of Everything: A New History Of Humanity"

I am a fan of science.  My latest read was in a field of science that I wasn't too familiar with, anthropology.  I never realized there was so much tension in what I thought was a rather sedate branch of inquiry.

David Graeber and David Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" starts off like the authors are ready to pick a fight.  The book goes on to call out many experts in the field by name for errors or erroneous assumptions on the way to trying to upend all the accepted principles of the field.

I am not knowledgeable enough to come down on either side of the arguments included in the book.  Is the path hunter/gatherers - farmers - cities - states the correct one or is that an overgeneralization?  Are there multiple paths to modern civilization?  Were early pre-agriculture groups egalitarian or are there other options?  I have no idea but the authors definitely do.

One thing I liked about this book were all the cultures used as examples.  Native American, Aztec, Maya, Inca, Mesopotamian, Far-Eastern Europe, Egyptian, and many more.   I learned enough that I now know I have a lot to learn about past cultures.

One interesting take away I had was how prehistoric civilizations, despite being physically adjacent, were often so different.  Some of these pairs - one male dominated, slavery practising, warfare worshipping, competition driven culture, the other a pacifistic, egalitarian, gender equal, freedom promoting, almost democratic culture - remind me of the current American Republican/Democratic Split.  It was a bit disconcerting since it implies the current schisms in our political system have been around in some form for at least the past seven or eight millennia.  Makes the possibility of progress look a lot less likely.

I gave this book four stars out of five on Goodreads.  I would have gotten more out of it if I were more current on the field of Anthropology but I still managed to get some benefit from it and it opened up directions for future explorations.

Weekly Ephemera #21

• I managed to hike three times this week.  I did a city hike on Monday, I returned to Hitchcock on Wednesday, and drove down to Indian Cave State Park on Friday.
  
  It's been a while since I've been to Indian Cave.  The last time I camped there was in 2016 after the elections (I let out a few screams into the void on that camp).  I went back to train there for my 2019 Appalachian Trail attempt in October 2018 three and a half years ago. I wore myself out going up and down the hills which made the ninety minute drive back home seem like it took forever.
  
  Note to self: Don't wear shorts while hiking.  It was not pleasant, when I had to go off trail to walk around a fallen tree, to walk through stinging nettles with bare calves.  I also didn't like the four ticks I found on my bare legs nor the bites that are making me itch in the middle of the night.  I always hike in long pants.  Not sure why I hiked in shorts on Friday but that won't be repeated any time soon.
  
  For the week I hiked 20.8 miles (33.5 km).
• This week we contacted a healthcare broker and signed up for health, dental, and eye care for when the Wife's work coverage ends.  It was surprisingly easy.  It seems a bit expensive but it is cheaper than what we were paying through her work and we will be getting the maximum subsidy so it won't be anything we can't afford.  Our coverage will pretty much remain the same as what we currently have.  Thank you Obama.
• We had a guy come out and check our air conditioner.  It's all ready for the summer.  That service was also more than I expected but I expect it will be worth the peace of mind.  Bring on Summer!

Happy Birthday Mom!

 I am very lucky to have such a well seasoned Mother.  😄

Happy Birthday Mom !!!

Another Type Of Retirement

When I returned from my 2019 Appalachian Trail hike I was a bit adrift.  A few weeks after returning I stumbled on a game.  I started playing.  The Game was a dungeon crawler with different solo and group events. You gained gold, gems, and gear grinding dungeons.  Before long I was hooked.

I played every day.  I even played while we were on vacation in Patagonia.  The game gives rewards for everyday you logged in.  I never missed a single one.  Not a single one over the next nine-hundred and fifty-five days.

Six or seven months ago I started losing interest in the grind.  I was now an endgamer.  I had mythic gear, mythic mount, mythic runes, and mythic enchants.  I grinded dungeons until I had two fully stabled mythic familiars.   I even managed to make my first piece of ancient gear.  I still had a long way to progress - there was always something new to chase - but it was no longer fun and it was feeling more and more like a chore.

The Game keeps track of how long you were logged into the game and I ended up with two-hundred fifty-four days and seven hours of gameplay.  Doing some sad mathematics I discovered that since 15 October, 2019 I'd spent 26.62% of my time playing the game.  I can't say I was proud of that number.

What kept me going for so long, besides the fun of the early, pre-endgame grind, was the players I would chat with while playing.  Over the past couple of years I gained friendships in the game chatrooms.  The game devs decided to drop the chatrooms this year but, seeing the writing on the wall, one of my friends, VagabondZebra247, set up a chatroom server on Discord nearly a year before.  Our little corner of the gaming universe has since accumulated, what a recent addition described as, an eclectic group.  Just how we all like it.

With a way to stay connected with friends outside of the Game and with the Wife retiring, I decided it was time to retire from the Game. So last Thursday was my last day. It feels weird at times.  The feels were not as hard as the Infernal Game most likely because I was still connected to my friends.  There is definitely a great sense of freedom as I no longer have to plan my days around resource regeneration.  My attention feels less divided and more focused.  Once again I am free to enjoy the Real World distraction free.

Weekly Ephemera #20

• 
  On Friday the Wife officially retired.  Mom and I attended the Wife's going away party and school Mass.  It was obvious how liked the Wife was at her place of work.
  
  As a surprise parting gift, the school athletic department renamed the school mascot "Sherri Skyhawk".  I think she was happy. 😊
• This weekend being Memorial Day, Mom and I went to put flowers on the family graves on Saturday.  We enjoyed having lunch with my favorite Uncle and Aunt.  It was a beautiful day to be out and about.
• This week was a rainy one and, between that and my laziness, I only did one 4.7 mile (7.6 km) hike up at Hitchcock.  I've been skipping hikes a lot lately and it can't continue.   Not if I want to get stronger and make my Appalachian Trail hike less painful.

Huzzah!!! The Wife Is Officially Retired!

Today is the Wife's last day at her workplace after a steady wind down of official duties.  Today, after Mass at school, some official speechifying, and a goodbye brunch, the next stage of life begins for the Wife: Retirement.

We are both looking forward to more travel, both planned and spontaneous, for as long as our bodies hold out.

I'm guessing retirement won't sink in until August when She would normally be preparing to return to school.

You have devoted your life to guiding multiple generations into their futures.  It is time you devote the rest of your life to yourself.  I can't wait to be there with you and to see where we go together.

Congratulations Honey Bunny!!!  Happy Retirement!!!  You've earned it!!!

Planning: Appalachian Trail Resupply Or ... What The Heck Is A Bounce Box?

When I did my planning for my 2019 attempt I noticed several stops where there were few places to resupply food.  To resupply I had the Wife mail pre-packed food boxes to a few locations along the way.  On the trail I learned about how other people handled this situation using a Bounce Box.

A Bounce Box is a box of resupply that is mailed to yourself farther ahead on the trail.  If you don't use all the supplies in the box you can bounce the box farther ahead where the supplies could be used, the box refilled, and bounced ahead.

I used bounce boxes twice, once in Fontana Dam in Georgia and again Killington, VT.  I met many people using them including one couple using a five gallon bucket as their box.  They told me it was cheaper to ship the bucket than it would a regular box.

I will be using one (or two) this time around since resupply along this sections seems a bit limited and the reduced carbohydrate food I am interested in packing is not that easy to find in smaller stores. 

Weekly Ephemera #19

•  I changed up my walking slightly.  I decided to do shorter, more strenuous, hikes up at Hitchcock and other parks with hills.  When I'm on these rural trails I carry a 25 lb (11 kg) pack and hiking poles which strengthen my legs more than flat city walking does.
  

  

  Hitchcock flowers.

  This week I hiked twice at Hitchcock and did one city walk for a total of 18.2 miles (29.3 km).  It seems to be doing something since my legs feel like toast.
• I'm continuing to plan my July-August Appalachian Trail hike.  I suppose that's obvious based on the posts I've written lately.  I have a good handle on the stages and the gear.  I have a weaker grip on the food.  It is not easy to switch out carbohydrates for fat and protein.  This is especially true if you want food that tastes good.
  

  

  Hmmm ... Nice pairing.

  I put my tent up in the basement and cleaned it up, inflated my sleeping pad, and generally checked to see what I had and what I needed to replace/refill.
• I did some spring cleaning and took old paint to the hazardous material disposal place and took old electronics (both mine and my Mom's) to be donated at the Goodwill Goodbytes place.
• I noticed some white flies on our hibiscus so in a lark I ordered some Ladybugs to combat them.  I spread them on the two plants and ... like the other times I have bought ladybugs to combat insects, they all disappeared in twenty-four hours (the ladybugs that is).  You would think I would learn.