Camping and the Outdoors

I generally find that tents are an annoyance.
I have had some great tent experiences out camping, of course, but most of the ways tents touch my life have been irritating, fiddly, heavy, leaky, flappy, cold, trip-uppy, zip-faily, baking hot, broken poley, can’t fold correctly bugbears.
Tent technology has improved a little - I can erect a […]

Last weekend I went walking on a whim in the Mount Cheaha National Park.
It was cold, the air was crisp and cold and the carpet of trees extending to the Alabama horizon was a dark, sleepy green, with spots of autumn russet.
We drove up a small hill, sort of a mountain-in-training, but in reverse, of […]

One of the key changing points in my life was learning about the type of calories I was eating and which calorie types were best to eat.
I found out that it’s best to eat foods with a low glycemic index. This means that wholewheat bread is a little bit better for you than white bread. […]

I am currently able to walk to work, a wonderful bonus for me.
My walk is 15 minutes of pavement, through the fringes of the downtown area in a largish Southern USA city. I walk through a small nexus of restaurants and shops and past a library and a large church, through a university campus to […]

Yesterday a work colleague of mine was killed in a car accident. On reflection, there is a lighter side to this sad time: walking outdoors very rarely results in fatalities. I’ve scratched myself painfully, bruised myself, with falls, but on the whole, I’ve got this walking thing down! Walking is not difficult - left foot, […]

Here, for the weekend, a list of the things I’ve left behind on camping trips and why their loss really irritated me!
Toilet paper.
A fresh pair of socks for each day’s camping. Socks can get away with questionable absorbency when being worn to work. When one is outdoors walking, they don’t: socks take a soaking. And […]