[Gocamino] Fwd: Prep time & the Mice and Men factor

[Robert Spenger]

Message sent to my trip list.

Begin forwarded message:

From: rspenger <rspenger at earthlink.net>
Date: April 25, 2009 9:17:24 PM PDT

Subject: Prep time & the Mice and Men factor
Reply-To: rspenger <rspenger at earthlink.net>

Just a little over a week before departure time. I have been  
assembling my gear a few items at a time – mostly sticking to last  
year’s list. This will certainly be lighter. If for no other reason  
than that I will need only three weeks of medication instead of the  
nine or so that I prepared for last time. That bag of prescriptions  
and supplements was one of the heaviest items in the pack. I know -  
everyone says that you are not traveling in the wilderness – you  
should be able to get anything you need there. Well, after having been  
burned more than just once, I don’t take that chance anymore. This  
time it is not that big a deal anyway.

My subject heading is a result of a recent message from the  
Santiagobis group which had the famous quote from the Robert Burns  
poem about the plough and the mouse. All this planning and preparing  
is fine, but you never know when something unexpected is going to  
shove it all aside. This almost happened in that last couple of weeks  
and I am still not sure if I am in the clear. Most of you know that a  
knee problem last fall cut my trip short last year, just 70 miles  
short of the goal after 44 days of averaging 10 miles a day on foot.  
Well the knee problem is sort of under control now, so I feel ready to  
give it a go – with a cortisone injection just before I leave to help  
improve the odds. What is giving me trouble this time is a backache  
that showed up on about ten days ago. It wasn’t really bad, but I went  
to a chiropractor after a day or so just to get it cleared up. That  
was on the morning of Friday, the 17th. It was a bit better and that  
afternoon I did some yard work and a fairly intensive workout on the  
rowing machine. Neither of these appeared to cause any problem, but  
there was still pain there Saturday and Sunday. Sunday was probably my  
big mistake. I did a fair amount of yard work, but tried to keep from  
anything that would put too much strain on the back. Monday was more  
of the same and another rowing workout, not as intense as Friday. To  
give these some numbers, the Friday workout was supposed to get my  
heart rate up to 87-91% of what I just to be my maximum heart rate and  
on Monday it was only 81-87%. Well, by Tuesday morning, the pain was  
back and much worse than it had been before. The chiropractic office  
was closed that day, but I did have an appointment with a massage  
therapist and the deep massage that I got helped quite a bit. There  
was still a lot of pain, but my back muscles were no longer all  
knotted up. The chiropractor wasn’t available Wednesday, but I was  
able to get an appointment on Thursday. That seems to have done the  
trick. For a while there, I was wondering if I was going to have to  
fight the insurance company to try to collect on a flight  
cancellation, but, after the spine crunching session, I felt that I  
was able to continue with my plans. The chiropractor said that the  
rowing was probably not too bad, but that I should definitely layoff  
of the shoveling that I had been doing. Just as a precaution, I have  
postponed the rowing workout schedule that I was on until I get back  
from the trip. That called for about 40 minutes a day, three days a  
week. I skipped the Wednesday and Friday sessions and don’t plan to do  
any next week. I am still doing my regular 10 minute “wake up” row  
each day but at a very light pace, but I skipped it on Wednesday and  
Thursday. I would have had trouble just sitting down on the seat of  
the machine and again trying to get up again.

It is still iffy. As the chiropractor said, the hardest part of the  
trip will be all the sitting that I will have to do - driving to  
Lancaster, riding the express bus to LAX, waiting on the benches at  
LAX, the long flight to the east coast, and then the longer flight to  
Madrid. Once I get on the walk - if I am able to walk by then – it  
should be easier than all the sitting.

I am just keeping my fingers crossed that my plans don’t suffer the  
fate of those of Burns’ mouse.

Regards to all,

Bob