Kindle Once Again - this time for Walk, Hike, Saunter

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 Last time I did this was Dec 2017. At the moment, memory of how to do it is pretty foggy, but luckily I have my earlier blog posts on this to refresh my memory so printing them out to review. (look for Kindle label in this blog to find).  This book is a little easier than the others - text and inline photos, a table of contents, but no index. Susan has promised it will be out in two and a half weeks, so will try to do that. My immediate issue is that I remember that I have to make some changes to the Indesign file before putting out the epub file that I will update for Kindle, but don't remember quite what they were. Pausing to read my prior posts, and to review Kindle code for Healing Miles . From my 2012 notes I saw that to get reliable chapter breaks, each chapter had to be a separate xhtml file. The default of Indesign is to put out one big xhtml file, but it will break on a style, so I need to be sure the current Indesign document (for Walk, Hike, Saunter ) has an appropriat

Pacific Crest Trail Section or thru-hiking - an extreme sport

No doubt about it. Consider your normal recreational backpack - hike six hours, find a beautiful campsite, hangout, bag a peak, read, swim, photograph, etc. Definitely a vacation. Active, yes, but if asked what you did for vacation, you answer "went backpacking" with no hesitation. Now, our recent 300 mile section hike on the PCT. Up at dawn - roughly 5:30. On the trail by 7. Gorp break at 9, PopTart break at 10:30, jerky, powerbar, dried fruit & cracker for lunch, Gorp breaks thru the afternoon & finally finding a suitable camp spot at 7pm. A dry camp of course. You only hit water once or twice a day, and rarely is it when you want to camp. So, on the last water, pump about 3 liters extra for supper and breakfast at the dry camp. Some days we might stop at five pm. On those days the thru-hikers will be going by, sometimes saying "stopping early?" as they go on to complete their 30+ mile day. So why do we do it? Because it feels so good to stop? Possibly because the food tastes absolutely wonderful whenever we have a town stop. The views sometimes are fantastic, but if I had to analyze a typical trail day, I'd say the first four hours are pretty nice, we feel good, views are good, not hot yet. The next three are so-so. from 2:30 to 4pm is usually pretty awful. Too hot, we are tired.It's uphill - don't know why, but this seems to be the case. Four to seven it's cooled down, so conditions are good, but by then our feet are wanting to stop, but we hobble on. Sticking © 2009 backpack45.com in here to foil blog bandits. This goes on day after day. Finally, weeks later, we are in the car driving home. Our topic of conversation - how we are going to do the next hike, when should we do that missing 300 mile part of the California PCT that we have left - that part that happens to include the Mojave desert. Stay tuned. Anyway, to the title of this entry. This was not a vacation. It was certainly demanding on our aging bodies. I suppose you could call it one more diet plan such as "Timecheck's PCT Diet", since I can now look down and see my belt buckle, but I think it is valid to classify section or thru-hiking the PCT as an extreme sport.

Comments

  1. I love knowing those devilish details about the progress of your day. The first paragraph (wimp hiking) is definitely my niche. I can now cheerfully cross one more extreme sport off my wanna-be list!

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