This Makes No Sense At All

Walking through the French Quarter A few posts ago I wrote of This Ain't No Mouse Music and our Louisiana addiction that was displaced by long distance hiking. We've been restless this year, grounded from hiking, no walks through Spain or France. When we spotted a cheap flight to New Orleans, that old obsession beckoned. Five days. Arrive Weds midnight and return Monday afternoon. Our plan was a musical pilgrimage with days to be determined. A 3 day Jazzy Pass for $9 gave us unlimited trips on buses and streetcars (provided they came). Thurs 8:30pm Rock & bowl Chubby Carrier - did this  Fri 6pm dba Tuba Skinny       8pm Snug Harbor Maria Muldaur 8 and 10pm - did the 8pm Sat 6pm Three Muses Hot Club of New Orleans - did this     10pm Tipitinas Art Neville and Treme Brass Band - did Mulates instead Sun 5:30 Rock & bowl Bruce Daigrepont fais do do. - did this This all coincided with a few days of sun and an arctic blast of wi...

When Susan and I are training, or these days, when Susan is still recovering and my body needs to walk, we have a local walk of about ten miles. The incentive is a local bakery, five miles away. A croissant and a coffee primes us for the return. The bakery is at 300 feet elevation, we are at 1100, so mostly down for the first half, and up all the way back. This is a two or three times a week trip, so we seek out little variations, always keeping in mind the distance to the nearest restroom. That means keeping tabs on any construction going on midway either direction, and the associated porta-potty. One of the variants goes down the bear route, where three wood sculptured bears are to be along the way.   This last walk was my day for yards with character or at least interest: They continue up the driveway, representing many happy hours We are having a drought year, so this brown metal sculpture blends right in. A block or two further on This rout...

This sock had elasticized top Chances are, you hot weather hikers have seen something like this. That's my leg you're looking at, yesterday's view, and not much of a concern to me since I knew what it was. The first encounter was a scare - on Susan's leg while hiking in France, and we had no idea what it was. Just it came on while hiking in very hot weather, and was right under the elasticized band of her sock, warm to the touch and puffy, but not painful. A wider, more brilliant band than you see here on my leg. A few days later, the whole foot started swelling in a major way, all the way from toes to half way up the shin, and extremely painful. That ended up with us going to emergency, where a severe infection was diagnosed, treatable with antibiotics, but we had to cancel the trip and it took two weeks for the swelling to subside. The doctors were unable to determine point of entry for the infection. They did x-rays for hairline fractures - none. Final though...

I love hiking and traveling. Each trip brings experiences I want to remember forever. I'm sort of shy though, about assuming others will share the same feelings. Galapagos is the exception, and possibly Torres del Paine . If a trip to the Galapagos Islands is in your realm of possibilities, do your best to make it happen. The Galapagos part of our expedition was an organized two week trip by Wilderness Travel . We added on Otavalo and Quito, Ecuador on our own, since we had gone so far anyway. Since we've got back, I've looked at a number of Galapagos trip offerings from various companies. There is a huge range of content, and I'll make some comments later on what to look for in a trip. But... first look at a video I put together that is just a series of images from the trip, set to music. Watch it and then decide whether to read further: Galapagos 2014 - two weeks on the Mary Anne Almost the entire Galapagos Islands are in the National Park, and tourism is stri...

More tales from grounded hikers. Susan can walk a few blocks but our normal long distance treks are temporarily on hold. So... our meantime activities. Take my word for it, youngster rats are sort of cute. They're also pretty fast, so don't have a photo to prove it. Roof rats are endemic in this area, at least since the white man arrived. The city even has a department to help control them - vector control. I used to be fairly tolerant if I saw evidence of rats outside. However a number of years ago we got back from a trip and found them inside our house, happily co-existing with our two cats, and sleeping in our bed under the pillow. Susan was definitely not happy. I was not pleased either. That was the end of tolerance. Vector Control came out, pointed out my failings, but gave me instruction. I've thoroughly rat-proofed the house, and rigorously inspect it several times a year for any evidence of rats. This year the neighbors report rat resurgence. Our compost pile, ...

April 2021. This product is still supported but no longer in production. ----------------------------- I have frequently wished that I had a sat phone, but weight and cost considerations have held me back. findmespot.com 's new phone at $499 with monthly and annual service plans caught my attention, and when they offered me a loaner for review purposes, I jumped at the chance. When the phone arrived, the first thing I did was weigh the components. The phone itself was just under 7 oz, and the charger and cord were 5 oz. A spare battery would be another 2 oz. It feels comparable to a home mobile phone. I started charging the battery that evening. After two hours it was still charging, fully charged by the next morning. The phone has a lot of features. A quickstart manual comes with it, but the full manual needs to be downloaded. To get the user manual go to https://www.findmespot.com/downloads/SpotGlobalPhone_Usermanual.pdf and download. 118 pages. Manual is half page size so c...

We've just been doing training hikes lately, primarily on city streets. Our goal is two  or three long hikes a week. (at least 10 miles). We discovered that Semifreddi's bakery is 5 plus miles from our house, depending on route, so we make the journey there, carrying our packs, have a pastry, buy a sandwich for the trip back, and return home. Voila! 10 miles. They give out these little cards, to be stamped once for each visit. Twelve spots on the card. When it is full, we get a free coffee. At this point we are about half way through our 3rd card, representing about 300 miles walking to Semifreddi's. To get to the blog topic, we've also been giving some video presentations around the area, some on Patagonia, and some on the Camino. During setup, for my own entertainment, and to test the laptop and digital projector setup, I run some short videos that I've put out to Youtube. After the presentation I always get a couple of questions about the projection software an...

You may have wondered about my blog name "This Makes No Sense At All". It came about because one of the things we have always loved about hiking is the consistently wonderful community of hikers, when we meet them on the trail. No matter what their circumstances in the real world, on the trail they are without exception, friendly and go out of their way to be helpful. When we got more interested in long distance hiking, and I started following the related hiking online forums, I discovered that this spirit prevailed, but that there was also more than expected angry divisive commentary. It was this that made no sense at all. I could not match it with the people I met on the trail. Last fall when we noticed that our sales of Camino Chronicle abruptly dropped by two thirds, we did some checking and saw that a couple had bought a copy from Amazon, and then posted two very negative one star reviews. Since we didn't have a lot of reviews to begin with, that had a drastic...

Plan A was Geneva to Le Puy - 19 walking days, a fairly leisurely schedule we thought. We flew into Geneva via London. Barely squeaked by on transfer time in London. Heathrow ran us out of our international flight, through immigration, out to the main area, and back through full security. At least the bag with our hiking poles was checked through to the final destination. Geneva airport has a free ticket good for 80 minutes of public transport, bus or train, so we got the train, got off at station Cornavin and walked about six blocks north east to Geneva City Hostel. Spartan but clean 2 person room, and pastry and coffee available on the corner the next morning by 7am. I'd carefully traced the GR65 route through Geneva on my gps map software before leaving home, as well as loading someone's gps track of the entire route to Le Puy, so wasn't concerned about navigating through Geneva. Fired up the gps, saw the city and streets with no problem, but absolutely no trace ...