First try at a jog

Walked a little over 6 miles today. Actually, I squeezed in a first effort at jogging today. I jogged half a mile this morning and almost another half mile this afternoon.

After that little bit of jogging I am sucking wind like a big dog. More jogging later? Maybe.

First jog effort

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50 miles

After this morning's walk I have now walked a little over 50 miles in 12 days.

3 mile

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Grocery run and 7 miler

Yesterday morning I decided to walk to the grocery store and library. I hauled Stephen King's new 1000 pager up to the library, so that should win me some bonus points. (For the record, I was too intimidated by the size of the book to read it . I knew I didn't have time to get it done in the 3 weeks allowed, so I turned it back in.)

On the way home I hauled two gallons of milk, a loaf of bread and a much more reasonable sized book, so that has to count for something. After the 3 1/2 mile grocery haul I was tired, so I did not finish 5 miles for the day.

I am still on track though, I did 7 today and am on track to finish more than 30 for the week.

7mile with a side of groceries

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Walked fast, 'cause I was skeered!

I made a 5.5 mile trip today form the house and out towards one of the major shopping areas in our part of town. In the back of my mind I was thinking given a little more conditioning and a few more miles under my belt, maybe I would be able to walk to the grocery store for small shopping trips.

That still might happen, but not on this route. The sidewalks are lousy and generally nonexistent. The bike lanes look wide enough to walk in, until someone zooms past you at 60 mph in a F350 Ford truck. And the dicks pulling into and out of parking lots don't pay a bit of attention. I told a few of them so, later in the route!

Anyways, when I want to walk to the grocery store, I'll head to the opposite end of our neighborhood, where we usually shop. And I'll make it home alive!

One positive out of this trek, and the reason I went ahead and finished it up: I drive this road many times a day. and I bet there have been one of the dicks not paying attention to a biker, jogger, walker or whoever wasn't wrapped up in 3500 pounds of sheet metal. Hopefully next time I am in a hurry around here I'll remember this lousy route!

Where the sidewalk ends

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5.3 miles aroung Great Hills Golf Course

I cruised from the house this afternoon and did 5.3 miles in 1 hour and 19 minutes. Already 10 miles into my 30 mile goal for this week.

FYI, I have modified my maps a little bit. I now have them begin at a nearby intersection, instead of at my front door. After all, this is the 'netz and no telling what some jerk could do if he knew where I actually lived...

Around Great Hills Golf Course

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Everytrail and GPS Visualizer

This past week I started walking 5 miles a day. I posted a few times about that on my main blog, AtHomeDaddy,

When I have gone walking I have hauled my Garmin etrex Venture HC hand held GPS with me. It has worked like a charm! Since the kids are at school while I am walking, I like to keep up with the time of day. Don't want to miss the school bus in the afternoon. And I like to keep an eye on my average speed and my distance from home, just in case I need to head to the house in a hurry. Also, I like to start the tracks feature new each walking trip.

The Venture HC does all of that, and a ton more. But I think I am totally in love with hauling the Venture HC with me on my walks now that I have discovered a couple of new websites.

gpsvisualizer.com and http://www.everytrail.com make it possible to upload my track file from my Garmin hand held to Google maps. Then I can see exactly where the day's walk has taken me.

I did have to register at everytrail.com, but it is free and I can always use a little more spam in my email box.

After messing around with the website I also realized that everytrail.com will push your maps straight to Blogger or Facebook (and some other sites, too). Super cool utility!

Check out the 5 miles I did today.

5miles

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5 for 6

I hit the geocache trail the other day for the first time in a long while. I went 5 for 6 on the day, but the one I didn't find is really starting to become a bother.

This is the 3rd time I have gone after Rustic in the Woods without scoring the find. I think I am all over the dang thing, in fact I am quiet sure that I have stood right there, staring at the "rustic" old car part that should be hiding the cache. Still, no find.

The first 3 I hit were a lot of fun. I was out on the trail before 8am and I had scored my first find in less than 15 minutes. Within an hour I had found 3 and I had fallen harder on my backside than I have in years.

The Kindle2 came in handy later in the day. I was going after Boatright I and I could not find the trail crossing along a really busy two lane road. I knew that some of the land on the opposite side of the road is parkland, but not all of it is and I don't want to trespass while looking for a find. I was able to log in to geocaching.com and read up on the hide. At the end of the cache info was the coordinates for the trail crossing. Bingo! I found the hide and this has to be one of the coolest spots in Austin geocaching!

At the end of the day I had fun, I had a sore butt from the fall and I still had not found my nemesis, Rustic in the Woods.

Paperless Geocaching

The Boss Lady was given a Kindle electronic book reader as a going away gift from her old job. I have been messing around with it this week and today it hit me. With the 3G wireless acess built in, this bad boy would make a great geocaching companion.

You can view cache info and log visits while on the trail. You can even pull up a basic Google map of the hide site. Heck, you can even write up your blog post trail side.

(I did not post this from the trail, but I did post it from the Kindle. Honestly, I did not even carry the Kindle with me today since I am still worried about breaking the wife's new toy.)

'Cache maintenance

I was out on a hike early this morning, enjoying the cool of the morning, so I decided to stop by our two geocaches to make sure they were still in good shape.

AtHomeFam 1st Hide is a small cache, in a modified Altoids tin. After we placed it I read that the tins do not work long term, because they rust too quickly. But this one is less than a half mile from our house, so I decided to leave it and just check on it once in a while. When it comes time, it will not be much hassle to swap out a new tin.

AtHomeFam 2nd is about a mile further up the trail, but the site is right along the trail for my usual Sunday afternoon "Cigar Walk". The geocache is an old peanut butter jar that the kids helped me camouflage. Unfortunately, the jar is just big enough that it seems to collect all sorts of trash and paper scraps inside. I removed the trash and as I was setting the container back in it's hiding spot I realized that there was a geocoin in the bottom of the jar.

I remember seeing it on an earlier visit this summer, so I brought the coin with me, to hopefully get it moving along again. Hopefully today I'll get out to find a nice, busy spot for the coin In honor of Spec. Michael J. Wiesemann.

Catch up time

It has been too hot to geocache all summer long. Almost 70 days in a row of 100+ temps, so the kids and I have stayed inside as much as possible.

We went on a road trip to California back in June and early July. I did a little geocaching along the way, but mainly I hit a couple close to my Aunt and Uncle's house in San Clemente, California. We brought back one travel bug, Eyela the Travel Bug Elf, from the trip.

The bug stayed here at the house until today. The Princess had carried away the Bug and little elf fairy that was attached to it. Once the Travel bug turned up last week I realized that we needed to get it back into play ASAP. This morning I walked to the closest cache to our house and dropped the Travel Bug Fairy in. I hope she makes some good miles now.

For my birthday Father of Five sent me a Travel Bug tag of my own to activate. I have been thinking for a while about what to send out into the world attached to my Travel Bug. This morning I decide to make a little wooden chicken to release to the Geocaching wilds, but I broke the chicken before it was finished.

I decided to go with a simpler design and I found a left over wooden wheel from back in my toy making days. Once appropriately decorated, stained and clear-coated, it was time to release my own Travel Bug.


I was going to release Rolling Along from Austin, Texas by leaving it in one of my own geocaches. Instead, I went in search of a hide that I could not get to last Spring. Tallyran Temptation turned out to be a tough hide, but I found it and dropped my Travel Bug off for another 'cacher to move along for me.

Hopefully the travel Bug and I can both keep on rolling now that the summer heat is starting to dissipate.