Longest Days—Hike, Bike, Paddle
I plan to do three Longest Days this summer.
I want to go out and WALK as far as I can one day. –Get up pre-dawn and set out. See how far I can go, see the little towns I go thru. Not for distance really but just to be out all day. Ideally, even part of the night. Take as many breaks, etc., go swimming off of bridges, stop at fruit stands. —I have this planned already. We’re going camping today at the base of the Leelenau peninsula in Michigan. Tomorrow or the next day, I’ll walk the 25 miles to the tip. I haven’t ever walked that far before. I’ll wear a big straw hat. Big fanny pack. Too bad I can’t take my sweet, loyal, GWP dog Daisy. She’s great, but seems to wilt in heat.
I also want to RIDE as far as I can. —I’m thinking either up the center of the state to Mackinaw (and over to the Island)–200 miles. Or from Leelenau area to Mackinaw (120 hilly miles). I’ll probably use the recumbent. I might suffer big in the hills (or just gear down) but what the heck. It’s just to spend the day OUT. Mack Island is where I first got bike bug years ago. At end of that summer I rode home with a guy I’d never meet who became a pal—in a day and a half—200 miles straight south from the island. We thought we could do it nonstop.
I also want to PADDLE as far as I can. I have a new/old race C-1 canoe. 25 lb kevlar ($1200 > $400). I want to pick the purtiest river I know— the Pere Marquette? Manistee?–and paddle to the sea. All day. –50 miles?
Fingers crossed! No time for bike/paddle this trip north, but we’ll see if I can’t get my Big Walk under way!
*****
Well, now I’m back. I did my longest walk ever in my life!
Got up w/o alarm at 6 a.m. up north in beautiful northwoods Glen Arbor and set off on backroads, two-tracks and pavers to finally arrive in beautiful Leland, 22 miles later. Whew! Longest ever for me. No training either! (Just a couple two-three mile walks.) So here are my observations about such a thing (for off-topic police: note that they apply equally well to cycling)…
**Make sure everything is tested and proven right first.
**I had trusty tennies and trusty boots along, but opted for the tennies. I had a mental flash on several trans-America walkers I’d read about and they all mention walking thru dozens of tennies. So I figger tennies are OK for roads. NOT! 4 miles into it and I’m applying bandages and stuffing papertowel between toes. Stupid mistake.
**Don’t use a sunscreen for the first time either. I used BULLFROG. —EVERYBODY AVOID IT! IT SUCKS! It’s made for swimming ONLY. It gives you a sticky, filmy coating that really won’t come off and almost plugs skin pores—it actually makes you clammy like you’ve applied Gore-Tex to your skin (backhand slam against unbreathability of Gore-Tex). Also, it is SWEET and attracts flies. Do you get the picture? It ain’t pretty!
**Bring bugspray. Somehow. I looked at my big can and thought ‘no room plus I’ll be moving’. Well, I also wanted to stop and read and linger, in my plans. Good thing it was real windy! I got attacked quite a bit as it was.
**A mile is a long thing when walking. Actually, five (5) is the real kicker. It’s a lot. Long. Can be crushing.
**I was fully baked by the time I limped into Leland. NOT A STEP FURTHER. Feet were falling off. I had been eating/drinking OK, but probably not enough. I was bonky for sure. But feet were the real weak point.
**Emphasis on light weight makes for wimps. I thought often about military boot camps where they do forced marches with heavy packs. I bought a fanny pack with room for a few goodies and two water bottles. It felt heavy! I was tempted to do without some things. Bad idea. Be strong. Carry weight. Water weighs a lot. A big apple weighs a lot. Be bold! Maybe instead of pursuing this IMPOSSIBLE lightweight dream we should learn to be stronger and to carry MORE instead of less. After all, if you have all you need for a long outing, you’ll be fairly heavy, so we might as well get used to it! (When you run out of water and have no more food and you’re looking at, say, 4 more miles, you get nervous. You can go WAY under by then. And don’t forget: walking burns up lots of calories!)
**Walking where towns are close together is a real good idea, if it’s rural enough between em. My route was quite lonely. 4 miles b/w towns is ideal.
**Speed-walking is cool. I got the snaky thing going with my hips and elbows. It was very smooth and I could apply STEADY POWER. Like a stream of power. It isn’t galumphing. It’s more like cycling! Just dial it up. Interesting that as my feet and energy fell apart that speedwalk style was the easiest thing to sustain. Bone-on-bone biomechanics are always best for endurance! –This I know from XC-skiing (and I suppose speedskating to an extent). (Ask me anything about it.)
**Walking takes a LONG TIME. I figure I was most of the time walking like a bat out of hell. Even when I was just loping along, I figure I was going fastish for walking. Well, it still took me basically 7 hours to go 22 miles, add an hour or two for proper breaks if you want to know minimum time you’d spend out to get that far. Also, walking burns through hours quicklike. Time flies when you get nowhere. (Actually it was pretty and nice and not boring at all.)
**I saw a recently burned out house in the middle of the boonies. Fairly scary. Small place. To the ground. Brand new trendy dark green curvey pickup parked next to it. Half the truck had bad burn damage, tires clean gone. The other half was BRAND new. Spooky. 5,000 miles on it I saw. Weird to see brand new tires on one side, black rims on the other. Saw a black boat trailer in what was garage area with some blob of what I guess was fiberglass on it. CSN record in corner full of melted vinyl. Saw burned out mattress and bed in what was bedroom corner. Noticed that the exterior wall over there had been pried off for some reason either before, during or after the fire. Scary! Such nice green shrubs just 20 feet away, but no leaves within a perimeter. The ruin was old enough not to be smoking anymore. Less than a week I’d guess.
**Karma note that stayed with me throughout my walk. The day before I took my dog Daisy out for a run at the campground…out the car window. She’d been antsy all day and stuck often in the car with our other pooch, Skeeter. Too many relatives around had cramped her style and she needed big energy unwind. She’s done it before and has done other runs and come rollerblading with me and my fatherinlaw does it with his similar dog. Anyway, she ran like lightning pulling at the leash as I drove. 20 mph. For a couple miles. When she eased up, I stopped and let her in. Where she bled from her paws all over the seats. Got back to camp and put salve on her pads. She’d worn patches thru on several of them. It was kinda gross. I felt real bad. So I guess on my walk I wasn’t hardly resentful of all the friction and blisters that I developed. I should’ve run her slower for shorter time. See, I keep mishandling that test and build-up-to issue. Too bad poor girl had to suffer for it.
**Lastly, I noticed that as I got more tired, I became more mechanical. I went on this walk to do some ruminating. You can only do that with energy. Near the end I was mindlessly whistling ‘Whistle while you work’. It became VERY hard to be creative.Let that be a lesson!
Well, that was it! Doesn’t it feel like you just walked the whole boring way with me? 🙂
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PS: OK, you know how I’ll do the 3 Long Days, but now I have another 3 Days to add to them, the same only different…
Here’s the plan: I’ll go out all day for walking/cycling/paddling but just dally and diddle instead of go-go-go. I’ll float, drift, fish while paddling instead of go for distance. (Same with walk and bike. ) Maybe I’ll be able to do something cool time-wise that way, like, ‘longest TIME outside’. Go from sunup to sundown. I plan to go all day for my Big Days, too, but without much training, the engine does tend to give out at a certain point. It’ll be nice to try a mellow option!
I always get going hard. So this will be cool. Hmmm, we’ll see what fate has to tell me about what order to do these in. I think next I’ll maybe do the All-Day River Float. We’re going back up north WITH TRAILER THIS TIME! for more R&R shortly. I’ll bring bikes and both casual boat and race boat. So I’ll pack a HUGE picnic and books and poles and stuff (mask and fins) into the casual Mad River Malecite canoe (cane seats, ash gunwales, gentle 16’6″) and just dally the day away. On the Pere Marquette or Manistee River.
PSS: I just added a fourth Long Day. —Sailing. I’m going to get my canoe set up for sailing and then just go out all day on Lake Michigan or Leelenau that way. Paddle if it calms. Surf if it gets wild. (On this recent vaca my relatives rented a Hobie. It was really windy and very fun racing across the bay to visit a maritime museum. I like spending LOTS of pure time while sailing. But I’d rather do it alone. I like captaining my own fate. But there were lovely big green swells out there! But my relative was overly-sensible and it’s just not the same when your hand ain’t on the tiller.
