ShadowLion

Great goals! I think this has been too long of a week, given how I first read your goal of "remove the body from my project car."

Rather than try to cram the lengthy saga of the last two years in the first post, I'm going to serialize things a bit, beginning with my solo road trip from Arizona to British Columbia and back this spring. I'll add flashbacks as needed to show how I got there, and ultimately to here and now. To set the mood, a little road trip music. San Luis is in Colorado, but the wide open scenery with the snow capped mountains in the distance reminds me a lot of some of the area of California I traveled through my second day on the road. While I knew I needed to go, I had no idea of the true nature and impact of the quest I was on...

@Xena - My favorite Valkyrie Ranger Princess! Glad to see you! 🤗 @Elastigirl - Hi! Glad to be back and there will be more pics... @DarK_RaideR - That's a bummer, but sounds like a smart move. Glad you are roaming around the boards, though.

D_R!!!! You doing a challenge this time?

Hi RES! Oh yes, I have tales I will share... Soon.

Thanks for the welcome home, Tank! Been on quite a journey and I'm very glad to be back!

I'd been thinking about doing a challenge to help me in my (suspected) COVID recovery, but hadn't gotten very far on the specifics when I came on here two days ago to see when the next challenge was. Surprise! I went ahead and started a topic to anchor my commitment to doing this one. The last two years have been quite a series of adventures and lessons. And, I have several more big ones planned for the next couple years that I need to get ready for. Expect to see goals beyond simply recovering. I've got hikes and back country travel planned–and plenty of other adventures–as soon as I am able to do so again. Stories, photos, artwork will be sprinkled liberally throughout. This gal has been rediscovering her younger wild nature child self the last couple years! I have also discovered that I have an additional spirit animal as I immerse myself in my sixties. (Ha!) 😄 River Otters at Sequoia Park Zoo, Eureka, California. There will be more pictures of them... Stealthily shot out the door of my rental cottage on the shores of Cordova Bay, British Columbia, Canada, March, 2020 Juvenile Bald Eagle and ravens. So, goals. I got back on the soda and put on weight during the last two years. A sedentary lifestyle of sitting behind a computer for hours on end is not my friend and I've used sugar and caffeine to moderate my moods, energy, and attention span. My programming job is fast-paced and stressful, and there habits are not helping that either,. They are creating a long term form of health debt which, having just recently turned 62, is a really stupid thing to be doing. I want to live to be a healthy, happy, badass old lady, which means I need to reverse course on the stupid ass habits now, and build towards those big items in my bucket list. My health scare the last few months was a much needed wake up call. OBJECTIVES I resolve to use the next five weeks to: 1) Reduce my soda consumption 2) Increase my physical activity 3) Reduce my stress level 4) Create cool stuff GOALS Turning those into specific, measurable goals, each with an associated "WHY" for motivation: 1) Reduce my soda consumption to 25% (or less) of what I am currently drinking, with the end goal of being 100% soda free on or before November 1st, 2020. I'm not even sure how much I'm drinking, but it is a lot, so I need to track it throughout the challenge. Knowing how I am about tracking a bad habit, if I am diligent enough with it, I will eventually reach a tipping point where it's easier to just stop the habit than to keep tracking it. Shadowlion psychology... Make my environment conducive to quitting - have filtered water, ice, green tea, and yerba mate on hand and the ice tea made ahead of time to make substitutions easier. See if I can get D's buy in to purge the fizzy stuff from the house. Or to at least not drink it in front of me. This will help me lose weight and improve my overall health, leading to a faster recovery. I want to be able to hike harder trails sooner so that I can get those Arizona Trail section hikes in! (Hopefully some of the easier ones in Spring 2021.) Why? I want long term health and independence as I age, and to get those long section and thru hikes in before I get too old! 2) Increase my physical activity gradually, and as steadily as possible, given that I am still recovering from COVID-19 and am still quite de-conditioned from it. Increase my daily short walks and/or exercise biking beyond my current walking max of three circumambulations around the backyard or biking max of .5 miles in 30 minutes per day. Increase the variety of my free weight exercises as my costochondritis and joint pain heal. Increase weights, gradually and steadily, as I am able. My goal is to increase either intensity or duration by about 20% per week. Keep a log to help me gauge when I am ready to increase. In keeping with my otter photo above, make it FUN! Why? I want to regain my stamina and ability to do everyday things around the house, to be able to hold up my end of things. Longer term, I want to be able to haul my pack and photo equipment around easily for my hikes and other excursions, and to be able to move back up to the mountains and do my permaculture project, which will require my being in good condition to do physical labor at 7,000 feet elevation. 3) Reduce my stress through meditation and journaling. Keep my current meditation and journal writing, but extend the meditation from 2x a day for 5 minutes each to 2x a day for 10 minutes each. For journaling, keep my 15 minutes in the morning, but add on a 5 to 10 minute daily review and quick plan for the next day session in the evening. Why? The coronavirus (or its evil twin - my tests came back negative, though my symptoms indicated otherwise and my healthcare providers treated it as COVID-19) played havoc with my immune system and triggered off an old autoimmune problem that has been in remission for around 40 years. I am responding well to medication for it and have a good chance of it going back into remission. I do know from past experience that stress is a major factor for both length and duration of an episode, so keeping my stress levels as low as possible will increase the odds of achieving and maintaining remission. 4) Create cool stuff at least 5 times per week for a half an hour (or even more!). Do fun, creative stuff. Stay curious. Play! It doesn't have to be something to hang in a gallery. Sketch, take some photos, play around some digital art tutorials, whatever! If the joints are up to it, play a few minutes of music, too. Why? Life is too short to spend it all working and striving. Creating is good for the mind, the heart, the soul. And, otters - they are the epitome of curious and playful! Bucket List (Ongoing) Arizona Trail section hikes Thru hike the AZT Pacific Crest Trail section hikes Thru hike the PCT Relocate to the Flagstaff, Arizona area Design and build my permaculture paradise in the pines (including my art studio) Draw and paint wildlife and plants, landscapes Learn manual mode on my camera - ha! Take up the mantle of my uncle's woodcarving and art More "Creative Coding" - digital art, VR, games, data visualization Travel - National parks and monuments; wild places, the wilder the better Complete my Permaculture Design course and dual certificates Complete my Octalysis training (game making, gamification, and behavioral design)

It's been an up and down two weeks. Work has calmed down quite a bit and our team's senior engineer is getting a promotion that will insulate me from some management chaos that was trickling down on us, so I am expecting things to stay a bit more sane for awhile. I'd been worrying that he might start to look elsewhere given some of what was going on and he's the kind of engineer that would get snapped up in an instant if he was looking. So that's been a relief. Hiked last Sunday at South Mountain Park again. Was really crowded. Everyone wanted to be out in the nice spring weather! Veggie consumption was down and I've been struggling with my vegetarian goal. I do see a pattern that I create some workarounds for, though. When I fall off the veggie-tarian train, it's because I have not done enough meal planning and shopping ahead of time, and/or I am tired and rushed so I end up eating what D is having just because of the extra time and effort it takes to make two different main dishes. That boils down to lack of both planning and prepping, some of which is also about space. We have a small refrigerator with a really tiny freezer, which makes it difficult to keep enough food on hand, especially for two completely different menus for two rather picky eaters. I am considering buying a standalone freezer so I can batch prep more things. Then each of us can be responsible for assembling our own weeknight dinners and I should be able to cut the number of trips to the grocery store, too. I need to apply some creative thinking to how to mix and match menu items to maximize overlap of meal ingredients. I used to be able to pack more in the fridge when I was using square, stackable plastic containers, but I switched to all glass containers, most of which are round. That has made it more difficult to make the most of the space we do have and to keep a greater variety of quick and easy snacks and sides. ...Wandered off to search for some containers. Found some nice, stacking, square glass ones and some bento box stainless steel lunch containers. Portion control, too, ftw!

@Thom Stépan - That would be great if you could get some pointers from him. It is a big change and I am a bit overwhelmed at all I need to learn! My goals are all intertwined and the dietary changes are where I keep getting stuck. @Tanktimus the Encourager @RES - My two-stick solution worked pretty well and I took things slow. The vertigo varies a great deal from day to day, depending on how my sinuses and ears are doing. I did better as the day went along, which makes me wonder if some of the variation is due to the poor air quality in the city. @Sloth the Enduring - There are some awesome mountain bike trails in the area, and I saw some people on road bikes on the paved roads, as well. Arizona has some great places to ride. @Cheetah - Part of why I'm posting pictures...hoping others can get a little vicarious scenery (and warmth!). For all of Arizona's other ills and oddities, it's pretty hard to beat it when it comes to awesome outdoor views!

T and I went to the Lost Dutchman State Park and hiked last Saturday. The park sits on the western side of the Superstition Wilderness Area (additional trails, interactive map) and the scenery is quintessential Arizona in all directions. (Pictures are swiped from the internet except where noted. I am really bad about taking pictures. Too busy gawking and talking, and I forget to get the phone out.) I almost wimped out as I had been having a lot of vertigo on Friday and it was really bad Saturday morning when I woke up. But I am a stubborn shadowlion and I wanted to hike. I am a shadowlion with en epic quest, after all. And, I thought we were going to do another easy hike, so I pondered how to best do it safely. I have two hiking sticks, though usually don't hike with them. Hmmm. I played around with them a bit and practiced various plants and braces with them out in the back yard. Good enough. Nothing going to keep me off the trail. Treasure Loop Trail: Length 2.4 miles round trip, rated moderate, elevation change of 500 feet. It terminates at either picnic area. Info | Downloadable Map In this picture you are looking east from the trailhead at the picnic area. We started on the northern section of the trail here: The light and colors in these two picture are very similar to what it was like during our hike. We headed west to east (bottom-center to middle of the image), then looped behind the lower two buttes (slightly left in front of the main outcrop), and returned east to west via the trail's southern section: You can barely see the thin, light colored line of the trail coming out from behind the smaller of the two outcrops, about a third of the way up from the center-bottom of the picture. It's a lot easier to see the southern section of the trail in this picture. You can see where the trail comes out from behind the buttes and turns back to the west. Look at the center of the picture and follow the line of the trail left and down towards the saguaro cactus. Past the cactus, on the left edge of the picture, the trail turns to the southwest and heads right to the bottom middle of the image. The portion closest to you is rather flat and smooth, unlike the steep and rocky portions near the buttes. It was a great hike. It was a lot tougher than T remembered it, since there have been some pretty heavy rains since the last time she was there and we were slow as we are both out of shape, me more than T. I stopped frequently to catch my breath, and then kept going! The first third was a fairly easy, steady grade. Then it got steep and rocky, with a lot of twists and turns. Coming back was easy once we got through the steeper part of the descent. I was very glad for my hiking sticks. The weather was perfect and it was so much more fun being out hiking than doing my laps in the stairwell at work. I was very glad for every lap that I've done in preparation, though! This was a milestone hike - I graduated from easy to moderate on just the fourth hike. Just remembered. I do have pictures from the hikes from weeks 2 and 3. I will post those soon. Some more iconic Arizona scenery...

@Thom Stépan Hey, Thom - Good to see you!!! And, a big "HI!" and "Thanks!" to everyone that has stopped by to follow, say hello, and offer encouragement: @Tanktimus the Encourager @Cheetah @Sloth the Enduring @Miaulin @RES @h3r0 @DarK_RaideR @Rurik Harrgath @Edigo @SkyGirl Just knowing that you fellow rebels were out there working your challenges and keeping a straggling ranger in mind helped me stay the course and keep at mine. Things finally started to lighten up at work today, so I should have a bit more bandwidth the rest of the challenge. The vertigo continues, but I have found some ways to work around it. (See next post.) And, I have an additional week to get my part of the home repair/improvement project done before D starts the next round of work. I'm actually a little ahead of where I thought I'd be on it, too, as I have been taking some of the work stress out in cleaning and moving furniture on weeknights, which has made the weekend work sessions go a little faster. Yay! Tiny habits continue. I have modified my vegetarian goal. With as much physical work around the house and with hiking and stair laps, I've felt the need for more protein than I know how to work into a largely vegetarian diet. I am eating less meat overall than I was and I am still determining what the optimum intake levels and sources are for me at this stage. I need more muscle, and while it is much easier to do that when I eat animal protein, I want to be consistent with my beliefs on the ethics of meat consumption, its impact on the planet, and all the beings that live on it. It's something I am wrestling with right now. And I hiked my fourth Saturday in a row! Hardly a sacrifice, as this is the time of year to get outdoors in Phoenix.

Once Again, It's Truck Porn Tuesday and there are no pictures... I promised a lesson on the Wildland Engine Typing System in a previous Truck Porn installment and I will do it at some point, but I've had a lot to deal with the last week and a half. Beyond a lot of extra stress and pressure at work, a home renovation project on a deadline, and some major health and financial problems in the family, I've been completely overloaded. It's a bit of a mixed bag for this challenge so far. I have made it a priority to keep making home cooked meals and taking my lunches to work. My veggie consumption has dropped somewhat from my average of 6 servings a day in late December, but is still at a pretty consistent 5 servings a day. I was hoping to get to 7 this challenge, but my grocery shopping has been too sporadic to make that viable. I am doing what I can. The vertigo, like what I was having a year ago, has returned. Not quite as bad, but still pretty disruptive to my daily stair laps, though I have taken two easy Saturday hikes the last two weeks. I have been stretching and doing a few body weight strength exercises, kind of maintenance level, not the more structured and strenuous version I planned for this challenge. I've managed to hang onto my tiny habits, but have not added any new ones. One thing I have been doing quite a lot of is observing, listening, journaling. I've been making time to read and think and contemplate. My stress level was getting so high, I just had to draw the line on others' expectations of me and withdraw for some quiet. A lot of it has been active quiet. I've been spending more time than usual doing household chores, cleaning, and rearranging furniture. I can move around, get some things done, and think stuff through.

Just dashing by to say, "Hi!" Up to my eyeballs in everyday life challenges... Will post goals as soon as I can. All I can do the last few days to keep the main practices going! Staying FIERCE and sending good first-challenge-of-the-year vibes!

Last challenge–while the Empress and I were strategizing our path to world domination over tea and crumpets– we decided that I needed to focus on some very specific things to be my truest self in 2019. Definition: (1) (adjective) ruthless in competition; ( 2) (adjective) violently agitated and turbulent; (3) (adjective) marked by extreme and violent energy; (4) (adjective) marked by extreme intensity of emotions or convictions; inclined to react violently; fervid; "FIERCE" is the acronym designed to support this quest, which I am intensely committed to achieving, in ruthless competition with myself, through the following means: FOCUS - Attend to one thing at a time, the most important thing. IMPACT - Choose the most important thing on the basis of its impact, and where its effects will accumulate and compound over time. ENERGY - Trust the Universe and my intuition. Follow the path of positive energy. Invite feedback. RESILIENCE - Proactively seek to become stronger and more resilient by regularly going outside my comfort zone. Balance stretching my limits with adequate rest, recovery and social support. CREATIVITY - Fuel the fire. Nurture my creative spirit. Make cool stuff that energizes me and helps others. EXECUTION - The time for planning and strategizing is done. Execute the plan! 12/31/2018 - My accountability partner and I are meeting later today, New Year's Eve, to wrap up our respective end of year retreats and have a focused work session on our plans for the coming year. I'll report back here with the results and my challenge goals, on New Year's day. The results of the New Year's Eve Accountability Buddy session: We didn't get as far on concrete goal setting as we had planned. We realized in our initial checkin that we were both still a bit scattered and conflicted on some of our goals. We shifted gears after discussing possible solutions, and ended up doing a "Draw Your Future" exercise. and worked with our respective Tarot cards for the day. Mine, of course, was the Empress. I used this particular version, chosen intuitively from a page image search results: Once we had more clarity on our "whys", we adjourned to do some individual work on goal setting and prioritizing during the week, with the agreement to have a followup accountability session next Saturday after our hike. We had planned a hike as part of our session, but it was cold (46 degrees Fahrenheit! ) and rainy yesterday in Phoenix and we were wimps. (Had not prepared adequately.) We made a pact that there would be no more bailing for weather in the future–beyond adapting time or location based on actual hazards like lightning or flash flooding–as we are going to be FIERCE in our training. To be continued. I am getting ready to go back to work tomorrow, so I'm interspersing writing this update with household chores.

Though the minis look like fun, I'm continuing with elements of this prep/prequel challenge here for now. I'm taking PTO and having a retreat from Solstice to New Year's (with a brief break for Christmas with family) as part of my 60th year reboot. My personal "Twelve Days of Nerdiness" is giving me the chance to trial run some challenge (and life) ideas and do some long range planning for my bigger goals, two of which run from now until about April 20, 2020. And, a little early, because I couldn't resist. Something for Christmas Eve... Truck Porn Tuesday Xmas Eve An aerial unit... His aerial unit, including "reindeer" Pretty flashy... It may not be as flashy, but a brush truck can have fun, too

Great observation and attitude on working with kids. They know and respond to those who take them seriously. You've also got a refreshing approach to expanding your comfort zone. Facing what scares you is a big part of being someone who really lives. Bravo!

That section of the CA coast is one of my favorite places to go - love Monterey Bay Aquarium and all the rest. Glad you got to go and had so many great experiences while there. That shirt is the best!

Congrats on the big win on the morning workout battle and doing well with the kitchen sink. Baby steps towards future wins... Glad to hear that the coaching is working out well!

Truck Porn Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday Evening I mentioned in the last Truck Porn Tuesday that there are water shuttles and staging areas where trucks and operations personnel will congregate. Here's a pretty typical example. Below you can see an engine drafting water from a portable tank, and an array of brush trucks, command vehicles and a variety of additional support vehicles. This picture is from an incident near Sedalia, Colorado, USA. An engine at the drop tank, 2 of the smaller, Type 5 or 6 brush trucks and a larger (probably a Type 3) truck on the left; another Type 6 brush truck partly visible in the upper right. (More on the engine typing system next time!) Working your way from the center forward, there is a command vehicle, an ambulance, probably a law enforcement vehicle in there, a couple SUVs for firefighters and gear, with another possible law enforcement vehicle hidden behind the support vehicle in the lower right corner. Looks like they may be getting some food and/or coffee there. If you look in the middle of the picture, at the two guys standing in the road talking, you can tell who just came off the line and is giving an update to another guy who is just coming on shift. That, or maybe he belongs with the command vehicle behind him. He's not geared up and that's a mighty bright brush shirt. Isn't sun-bleached yet. Learn how to identify the 6 different types of wildland fire vehicles in a future edition of Truck Porn Tuesday... And see if you can figure out what type of engine is in this picture from the Mendocino Complex Fire in California and the likely reason why they are positioned where they are in relation to the fire.

Due to a rather nasty, lingering cold, Truck Porn Tuesday is delayed until tomorrow evening. My apologies. It will be a better effort for the delay.

Concerning going to the show with your mom - a little rebellion can be a very good thing! Glad you had a nice time with the guys you went to school with. Will packing up the stock on Monday be the end of your work year? Workshop - Tuesday?

Glad you are feeling better and hope your ear is no longer ringing. Did I miss something about why you are counting down sleeps - is it a countdown to the weekend?

There have been some amazing times made by trail runners, averaging between 30 - 40 miles per day! I will be going MUCH slower - Ha! It's good to feel like a 4 year old, on a regular basis! Along those lines, doing something just for fun... I've had a cold the last 2 days and I'm taking a mulligan for Wednesday and Thursday on exercise and fruits/veggies. No appetite, little energy. Blergh. Off and on, I did have enough energy to play around with a little challenge from IBM CODERS. If you complete their AI/machine learning/Watson tutorial, you get entered into a drawing to win one of these: And the project they had was to use machine learning to use drone photos of burn zones in the WUI (Wildland-Urban Interface - remember that term from the previous Truck Porn Tuesday?) to distinguish and count burned residences from intact residences. While it would be fun to win a drone, I was glad to have an easy, quick intro to their machine learning services and with an interesting project that has got me thinking of other possibilities. One of the ideas I have been tossing around for awhile is how to get scenic views (as in hikes) into VR and some of the things I've found on the web are 360 degree photos and videos made (using a programming language I already know - yay for jump starts!), some taken by drone. Hmmmm...

Aaaaand, it is still Tuesday here in Arizona. Which means... Truck Porn Tuesday!!!! Water on the fire Brush trucks are small, but mighty! This little guy doesn't carry much water, though. (Ford F-550XL 4x4 DRW cab and chassis; Ford Power Stroke 6.7-liter 330-hp engine; heavy-duty aluminum flatbed body; Darley 1.5 AGE pump with 20-hp Honda gas engine; Pro Poly 400-gallon polypropylene skid tank; 10-gallon foam cell; Trident Foamate around-the-pump foam system; Alexis custom stainless steel brush guard with integrated waterway; Akron Forestry front turret monitor.) Notice the hose reel and tank in the top right of the picture on the back of a flat bed brush truck. There are several hose hookups on the lower left of the reel with handles to control the water flow. These would generally not be used unless there was some sort of additional water supply, whether pumped from a natural source or drawn from a "drop tank" or "porta-tank" filled by a tender (what most people would call a "tanker" - more on that in another post) as part of water shuttle operations in rural areas. But add in the little guy's best buddy, you've got a firefighting dream team... Here you see two engines doing essentially the same thing that a brush truck and a tender could be doing. One brings water and dumps it in the portable tank for the other to draft from and deliver to the fire via hose lines. There are numerous variations on the theme. In rural areas, hydrants are a rarity and water must often be brought from some distance away for both structure and wildland fire operations. On structure fires, multiple tenders can drop tanks and shuttle back and forth from a water source to supply several stationary engines. On big wildland fires, where operations are highly mobile and the emphasis is on constructing containment lines, there will be lines of tenders coming in and filling multiple drop tanks. And if the road is wide enough, a line in the opposite direction, on the other side of the row of tanks, of brush trucks filling up before heading out to the fire line. Couldn't find any good wildland lineups, but here are a couple from trainings put on by a company called "Got Big Water." And then there are other ways to deliver water...

@RES - Yes, put it on your bucket list! Some of the most awesome scenery to be found anywhere. @Jakkals - I read Wild soon after the book I mentioned above. I have kind of mixed feelings about it. It was interesting and has a certain emotional power to it, given Strayed's grappling with grief while on the trail. However, I read it at a time where I was much more interested in trail details and how to prepare for and deal with the rigors of such a hike. One thing that kind of amazes me, as I read various accounts of people's treks, is how little most people describe the scenery and how little they know about the environments they are passing through. A few pictures - rattlesnakes, fires, and snow get a lot of attention, as do bears and elevation gains - and a few oohs and aahs. That's about it for nature. Beyond that, most writers focus on the people they meet or travel with and their personal physical difficulties and reactions to the rigors of trail life. Hardly anyone goes into the natural history of such an amazing hike, or the spiritual aspects of the journey. I must really be a nature nerd/mystic. I find those omissions to be a major gap. It does leave something for me to do, though... 7 fruits and veggies, and only 9 stair laps today. I was tired and much more focused on hand rehab today. Last night was a major turning point in my finger recovery. I was finally able to actively grip the steering wheel with my index finger, and on the way home from work used the stop and go traffic to alternately squeeze-grip the wheel and extend my finger a hundred or so times. Today I was doing a lot of mousing, so I took my squeezee ball and did grips and rolls and presses whenever I could. The increase in ROM is really noticeable today! I can now type the r, t, f, and g keys, if somewhat slowly. It won't be long before I can hit the rest.