Author: Steve

 

They look like this:

 

Do you wonder why that little trailer is so far back?  Me too.  So I googled it.

 

The little trailer is called a Pup.  That long hitch is to create extra length.  Length matters.  You can be an 80,000 pound rig on highways, but if your load is heavy and you’re too short, you’ll have too much weight over too small an area.  If you’re carrying something really dense, where you could overload the roads and bridges, by federal regulation you’re limited as to how much you can carry, unless you make yourself much longer than you otherwise need to be to spread the load out over a larger area.  Mystery solved; thank you google.

 

There are other solutions to the weight distribution problem.  Some cement trucks have wheels folded up high.

 

That they can lower when they have a full load and spread the weight out over a larger area.

 

This dump truck has multiple solutions.  There are extra wheels in front of the drive axles that can be lowered.  There is a tax axle in back that can be lowered and locked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life on the road!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nah, make that here for a week!  We’re at Mustang Island State Park.

 

Dinner at Snoopy’s.

 

 

Where I did my long walk.  There is a seven-mile paved loop road.

Vehicles are no longer permitted on the road, so it makes for a quiet smooth walk.  That was worth a couple laps.

 

Then it was time to wander the dirt trails.

 

 

 

 

Past plastic tubes sheltering seedlings planted to reforest a huge section along the river.

 

 

And a section of trail that had been churned up by something.

 

I was running through my mind what animal might do that much damage to dirt.  Javelina?  Wild boar?  I discovered the culprit a couple of bends in the trail later when I startled an armadillo engaged in destroying the trail.  He got off before I could get a photo of him.

 

Past local history.

 

On a trail out to the river I found where the rangers had marked an owl pellet

 

A pellet is what owls regurgitate once they’ve done all the digesting they can of teeth, skulls, claws, fur, and feathers they’ve eaten.  The gizzard compacts the indigestibles into a solid pellet and sends it back out a less dangerous route for the bird than passing all the way through the digestive tract.

 

And bobcat scat.

 

Right along one edge of the park, broccoli as far as the eye can see.

 

And onions.

 

Into the evening light.

 

And back to my little car waiting all by itself in the parking lot. 

 

Last one out.

 

 

I decided to walk a marathon distance again.  The last time I did this was in 2013:

 

https://steveandjudystravels.com/marathon/

 

For the past several weeks I’ve been doing my normal walks during the week and a longer walk each Saturday for conditioning.  My longest walk so far has been 12 ½ miles, over a time of 4 ½ hours.  Last Saturday was scheduled for a 15 mile walk.  While I was out though, I got to thinking; half a day or more at a time is a lot to devote to slightly longer walks each week, creeping toward the ultimate goal.  Maybe completing a marathon at a walking pace might be more about determination than physical conditioning.  The conditions were perfect.  The weather wasn’t predicted to get too hot.  With these thoughts in mind, I just went ahead and walked the entire marathon distance; 26.2 miles.  10 hours and 1 minute.  26 miles; the distance from Long Beach, California to Catalina Island.  The distance from our house in Louisville, Colorado to our office in Denver; my daily commute for many years.

 

My last marathon walk; it wasn’t fun all the way.  The first 20 miles were a lark, but I was shocked when I hit the wall at 20 miles.  The last 6.2 miles were agonizing.  This time I put more thought into hydration and nutrition.  Hydration is the easy part; all it takes is water.  I scheduled a trip back past the car to replenish supplies every 8 miles or so.  Two new water bottles each time did the trick.  Nourishment is a little more difficult for me.  I often do a food-fade after lunch, so normally anything energetic has to be done in the morning.  I can’t limit an entire marathon to a single morning though, it’s an all-day affair, so I needed a food solution.  Last time I took a ham sandwich along, ate half of it about lunchtime and the other half later in the day.  Maybe less than optimal nutrition was what made me hit a wall.  I already know that energy bars are not good for me either; they sap my energy; I crash after.  There is something just right about an oat and honey granola bar though.  It must be just the right balance of protein, fat, and carbs for me.  So to keep my blood sugar stable for an entire day, I carried a handful of granola bars to munch throughout.  That strategy worked perfectly.  No wall.  The entire walk was fatiguing, but it was fun the whole time.

 

I did the entire distance within Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge.  There is a 7-mile scenic loop.  I walked that a couple times, along with every other trail in the park a time or two, tracking my progress with GPS so I’d know when I got to the exact distance.  The last time I walked this distance I was still in my sixties.  Now I’ve walked a marathon distance while in my mid 70s!  I should probably do this every decade…  I’d better hurry up and turn 80.