In training

A couple of months ago, I mentioned that my conversations with Debbie about hiking the West Highland Way have moved from "some day" to "this spring." It's really going to happen.

• We have fixed dates for the trip: leave the US on April 15, and return home on April 30. This year. Six weeks from today.
• Debbie contracted with a travel agency that has secured us lodgings all along the route.
• We've bought plane tickets to Scotland and back.
• I had a long, necessary, and totally predictable conversation with Marie about our plans, during which I assured her—more than that, I committed to her—that Debbie and I wouldn't fuck while we were in Scotland or en route. I think my exact phrase was "no sex and no quasi-sexual activity."

Remember when I first mentioned this trip, that I said I was woefully out of shape? Well, now I've got six weeks in which to get in good enough shape that I can hike 96 miles across the Scottish Highlands.

In fairness, I'm not just starting now. Debbie created a shared spreadsheet where we could each record walks we'd taken, in the spirit of "training," starting January 1. And indeed I went on a five-mile walk on January 1. But it took me a while to get engaged. In total I recorded only 9 days of walking in January. And then 12 in February. But I've also started swimming again, typically on the days I work at my consulting gig. (I mention this job briefly here.) That's because the pool where I have a membership is just down the street from the place I work, so it is easy for me to connect the two. I didn't swim at all in January, but I went swimming on 8 different days in February.

Now it's March 4. So far, I have walked every day in March; and I swam one of those days as well. The day I swam, I walked just a little over 4 miles; each of the other three days it has been over 8 miles. I have done some kind of exercise (walk or swim) for each of the last seven consecutive days. My feet hurt, and I think I might take a holiday tomorrow (Sunday). But in general, I know I need to keep it up all month. And into April as well, to be sure. All so I don't buckle when it comes to the actual hike in Scotland.

But you know something? All this exercise takes time—a lot of time—and leaves me tired. (I was grousing to Marie about how much of my day was going into walking each day and she just laughed at me. She said, "When you are in Scotland, the plan is for you to spend all day walking, each day. So if your training program now didn't take most of your day, then it wouldn't be very much use, would it?") And the consequence of that, of the time and the tiredness, is that I don't have a lot of time, energy, or intelligence left to focus on writing blog posts. It's one reason that after writing 12 posts in January, I published only 2 in February. (And I think 1 over on the Patio. Oh wait, that's dated in March.) From time to time it occurred to me to write about this or that … I had an extended argument dispute discussion with Marie that turned on some fairly interesting fundamental points. I was going to write about it for that reason. But I didn't get around to it, and I no longer remember why it seemed so interesting to me at the time. Also half the discussion was live, over Skype, so I doubt I could reconstruct it from emails alone.

Anyway, the point is that I might be pretty quiet here for the next two months. Even if I have things to write about, I might not have the leisure or attention or focus to sit down and do the work. Please don't take it personally. And I'll try to make notes so that I can come back to any important ideas later. 

Of course, I've got years of notes I haven't written up yet, so that promise might not be worth much. But it's what I can commit to.

It's probably time for bed. Maybe one more whisky first. But I am tired. 

Night-night.