The Road goes ever on and on; Down from the door where it began;
Now far ahead the Road has gone; And I must follow, if I can;
Pursuing it with eager feet; Until it joins some larger way;
Where many paths and errands met; And whither then? I cannot say.

[JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings]

Wednesday 4 February 2015

Random Witterings

The Permutations of Garmin-Gadget-Failure

On the left side of the following photo is my Garmin Gadget:

Garmin Gadget and Filthy-strapped watch

Filthy-strapped wrist-watch included for scale.

It’s a Forerunner 305, which is quite an old model now, but it does the job I want it to do, which is to measure how far I walked and the timing. The problem is that, on my bony, skinny wrists, it’s not at all comfortable to wear it. Instead, it lives in the mesh pocket on the lid of my day-pack. That means that I often carry my pack when I don’t need it for any purpose other than as a Garmin Gadget carrier.

The Garmin Gadget (GG) has never (yet!) let me down. I have, however, let myself down in respect to using it. Here are the common failures:

  1. Turn on GG before setting out on walk; place by window to obtain satellite signal; forget to pick up before leaving; upon returning from walk, switch it off with nothing recorded.
  2. Turn on GG before setting out on walk; obtain satellite signal; put in top pocket of day-pack; forget to press ‘start’; finish walk with nothing recorded.
  3. Turn on GG before setting out on walk; remember to pick it up and start it; complete walk but forget to stop it; drive off somewhere, very quickly increasing the recorded mileage and speed.
  4. Decide to take day-pack on walk for no reason other than to give a pocket in which to hold the GG; check contents of pack (decide not to take anything out for fear of forgetting to re-instate it later); go out for walk; remember after half an hour that the GG is still sitting, switched off and completely forgotten, in the living room.

I managed number 4 today. On the last trip I managed 2 and 3. On the trip before I managed 1 and 3. Sometimes I do despair of myself.

-------------------------

Mud Season

Mud Season started late this year, but it is now in full-swing, making some of my local walks thoroughly unpleasant to the extent that I’m just not prepared to tackle them. In previous years I’ve resorted to walking the local lanes. This year I’m generally just being lazier.

Gorgeous Day

That’s how gorgeous the weather was today!

This morning dawned a gorgeous crisp, clear winter’s day and I set out in the hope that the mud would be frozen solid. So it was – and all evidence was that the mud on the route that I took was as bad as I’ve ever seen it.

That set me to thinking: I would not voluntarily choose to go out and take a walk that I know is going to be significantly muddy. However, I don’t let Mud Season put me off going to walk in new places, where the mud might be (and often is) just as bad as on my local paths (such as last week’s jaunt up Black Down which was a mega-mud-fest). Why does mud become acceptable (to me) when not guaranteed to be present, but is totally unacceptable when known to be present?

I suppose it’s the same attitude as is common towards walking in the rain: I will seldom choose to set out for a walk in the rain, but if it rains when I’m out then that it far more acceptable.

I’m not sure what conclusions I draw from that, other than that I am a fair-weather-walker at heart, that I can’t wait for the end of Mud Season, and that I’m hoping for many more crisp winter’s day in the interim.

18 comments:

  1. Ah. The GG memory lapse. And I know exactly what you mean about mud and rain, makes perfect sense.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I made sense?

      Mick would claim that to be a rarity!

      Delete
  2. I have two rucksacks. One for day walks and one for backpacking. I wear the day walk one always because it has everything in that I'm likely to need, and I hate tying surplus clothing round my waist or stuffing pockets with gloves and hats and cameras and wallets and compasses and gps units and sweeties and all sorts of other things. Both sacks allow me to attach my camera pouch to the waistband so I am ready for action - another reason for always carrying the rucksack, even on very short local walks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Many of my local outings are just an hour or two long and, in certain weather (like the present cold snap) I can be pretty sure that the only clothing modification I'll need is to take my gloves off for a few minutes, so I seldom take anything with me on those walks. If I'd known that yesterday's walk was going to come out at 9 miles (it was such a nice day that I carried on until I ran out of reasonable extension options) I would have chosen to take my pack for more than just GG-holder-purposes (and I would have put a snack and a drink in it too!), but as it went it sat on my back completely redundant.

      Delete
  3. Let me know when the battery life of your Forerunner shortens significantly, I know a man...
    ;-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A very nice (and generous) man he is too. He made me a cable for my previous GPS unit, you know...

      Delete
  4. I make my local winter walks pine forest walks - the pine needles make a wonderful carpet over the mud.
    I know the distance of each walk so I don't need any electronic wizardry to forget.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My forest walks are the muddiest of the muddy, because they're not pine in these parts.

      I'm so spoilt for choice with route options when walking from the front door that the easiest way to measure any variant that I take is via gadgetry. Retrospectively measuring is made more complicated by many of the paths being permissive and not marked on the map (i.e. guesswork required as to their line).

      Delete
  5. I make my local winter walks pine forest walks - the pine needles make a wonderful carpet over the mud.
    I know the distance of each walk so I don't need any electronic wizardry to forget.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ooh.
      Not sure how that happened.
      :-)

      Delete
    2. ...probably electronic wizardry...:-)

      Delete
    3. You're thread hi-jacking again, aren't you?
      :-)

      Delete
    4. Have you finished packing yet?
      you don't have time to mess about on Gayle's blog!
      :-)

      Delete
    5. I'm good at procrastination though, it's a talent!

      Delete
  6. I recognise most of those GG woes. Luckily mine fits my wrist, but for some reason it doesn't get turned off when entering hostelries, whence it seems to record many extra miles whilst the wrist is simply lifting a glass of beer. Or if it does get paused it doesn't get restarted when leaving said hostelry, and of course it only gets turned off after the first kilometre 'beep' after the car/train/bus journey home has commenced...
    Good old GG! No battery issues though.

    ReplyDelete