Friday, February 16, 2007

Germs




I've not been hiking since the 7th, I've got a cold or a flu and it's really dragging me down. My head feels like it is full of cotton wool. My entire family is ill but I seem to be the most ill. My oldest missed one day of school and is feeling better. My youngest still has a fever and is driving me up the walls. My SO is grumpy and ill but he is usually grumpy and ill. My SO feels well enough go to the store everyday so he must be feeling better then I am. I have a fever right now.

I hope to be well enough to hike on the 24th, that's a full week away.



From time to time I feel well enough to stumble out to my shed and work on my pop can stoves.

These are ultralight alcohol stoves for backpacking. I have a large beer can for my cook pot. with this set up my entire Kitchen (stove, pot, windscreen, reflector) weighs 4.5 ounces. Using two ounces of HEET this will boil two cups of water in about ten minutes.

I've not taken this cook pot hiking with me yet. My normal cookpot a Wal-Mart Grease saver is heavier it weighs 4.5 ounces all by it's self. But it has the advantage of having a handle and lower more stable profile .


In the middle of being so ill my oldest daughter's sperm donor, a middle aged Bachelor with 4 children by three women, has decided that I should provide all the transportation for his twice monthly visitation and is dragging us all in to court yet again. He won't get his way, he never does but still what a PITA.


On a lighter note: Thanks to Geocaching I've learned of well in Olympia. People line up to fill their water bottles at this well. I tasted the water and it had an aftertaste. At first it tasted like water from a mountain stream but there was a metalic aftertaste. Maybe the taste was from the pipe it comes out if.

Maybe the water is clean and over 2000 years old, or maybe the water has been poisoned by one of the 14 nearby toxic waste sites.




1 comment:

Skookum Ouzel said...

Saturday is approaching - are you feeling better? Well enough for a hike? I hope so!

I finally got out Monday, and I feel so much better for it. I walked at Big Creek, which I had never been to before (???) and have decided that next weekend I am doing Mt. Ellinor, rain or shine. For all the years I've lived here, and the hundreds of visits to Staircase, I can't believe I've never been to Big Creek and/or Mt. Ellinor.

Oh, how I wish they would open up the road to Staircase!!!

You found the downtown well in Oly! I've been drinking from that well for many years now. It was relocated from a few feet away a few years back, but it's the same water. Locals are very proud of the purity of the water, and it is tested regularly by a group who endeavors to create a public park out of the well. To be honest, downtown Oly is dotted with many of these little artesian wells.

I hope your cold goes away in time for a nice walk this weekend. The Indian Plums are starting to leaf out, and that means Spring is almost here. Woohoo!