Murphy's Law of Outdoor Recreation

My outdoor adventure starts inside, staring at computer.  I own a Garmin eTrex 20 GPS device.  I have maps on my computer; I can identify a route and key markers and update that information to my GPS and it is handy to have on the trail.  Except I cannot.  The program is throwing "cannot communicate" errors.  I spend about 30 minutes surfing the Garmin and other web pages for help but nothing is working.  I open a case with Garmin tech support but the turnaround time is three business days.

I drive past Kenosha Pass and turn left onto Lost Park Road.  After a few miles of very bumpy road I find what appeared to be the spot.  I see an RV and a man coming in and out of the vehicle.  The RV is making a humming noise and I dislike the intrusion, though I suppose my car is not silent, either.

I put together my pack, and now with the bear-proof container and the bear-spray it is quite heavy.  A 

mini 4x4 proceeds past sign saying "no motor vehicles".  An older couple is hiking ahead of me; they proceed up a path marked "area closed for revegetation".  I hike for about 0.5 miles and see a nice spot.  I decide to take out my camera and realize I had left the camera in the car.  I drop my pack behind some bushes and re-trace my steps and take this picture.

I hike for another half mile and come up against a No Trespassing sign.  I consult my map and there is not mention of this private property.  I return to my car.

I examine again my map and realize that I had hiked the wrong road.  I could continue up the correct road, but perhaps that will be private property as well, so I hop in my car and backtrack to Kenosha pass.

It is now about 7:15 and nighttime is coming on.  The map seems to show a 2-mile hike to a stream.  After hiking for a bit and re-examining the map three miles is the better estimate.

I feel a blister forming but surely I am almost there.

The blister has formed, I discover, when I remove my boot.  It is bleeding, too, so I apply a bandaid and moleskin on top of the bandaid.

I stop again; the bandaid is causing moleskin not to stick.  I apply fresh bandages.

I make it to the camping site and the sound of gurgling water.  I set up in the dark (tent, sleeping pad, pillow, dog pad).  I pump water for tomorrow, read some of my book, and settle down for a cozy night's sleep.

I wake at 5am but snooze until 7:30.  I make breakfast (the stove works!) but the taste (freeze-dried potatoes with tuna fish that I add from a pouch) will not win any culinary awards.  While unpacking my gear I discover that I had packed an extra pot, extra weight I did not need!

I pump more water, assemble my hiking gear, disguise my tent, and set off.  This picture, with my dog and her pack in the foreground, was taken shortly after starting.

Along the way I hear the booming of a gun.  It might be a hunter, but the boom repeats a few times, so it is not a hunter (elk and deer will not stick around for a second shot).  I take out my whistle and blow hard so as to alert the shooter I am there.

I hike to near the top of Jefferson Hill and take these pictures.

That hill is the end of my intended forward progress.  I turn to retrace my steps.  My blister is still bothering me.

Now walking back I hear the gunfire again, obnoxious.  I blow my whistle again.

But now, I hear more:  instead of a boom, it's more of a CRACK, following by whizzing/whistling sound not unlike the movies when a bomb is about to land, followed by a THWOCK as the projectile struck a nearby tree.  I crouch down.  I blow my whistle hard, twice.  Another crack, another whiz, another thwock.  I yell, "STOP SHOOTING AT ME".  More booming.  Another crack, another whiz, another thwock, and I recall early this morning spotting a couple of earplugs on the dirt.  The shooter(s), even if they were inclined to stop shooting as I requested, probably cannot hear me.

I run up the hill in bursts, taking cover behind trees.  The gunfire continues.  Now I am well away from the trail, many trees between me and shooter(s), but still hearing the crack/whiz/thwock.  Eventually I make my way over the next hill, and with the earth between me and nitwits I feel safer.  I encounter a couple of hikers and tell them what happened.  One of them has a mobile phone which I use to call 911 and alert the authorities.

I make it back to my camp safely and I am not hearing any gunfire.  I pack up and start my hike to my car.  

On the hike back I stopped to take some pictures.

And a couple I met took some pictures of me.

When I arrive at car I see that a large pickup truck, towing a 5th-wheel, has blocked me in.  Luckily the driver is with his vehicle and very friendly.

I undress and discover blood on my sock.

My Lip: Epilogue

My lip healed fully, with some scarring that I could feel and could barely see.  With that milestone I was ready for chemotherapy:  Fluoroplex.  I shuffled down to the neighborhood King Soopers with my prescription and insurance card in hand.  An little bit after placing my order King Soopers called (I was still in the store) to say that my insurance would not cover the cost and that the retail price was $375.  I prepared myself to call the insurance company the next day and wade through the voice-system prompts.

I checked the Internet for Fluroplex:  perhaps there would be a cheaper generic.  In stumbled upon a coupon allowing me to purchase for $10, which was probably my co-pay anyway.  Very strange.  Imagine going to a yard sale where the owner is selling a lawn mower with a listed price of $37.50.  You say, "I'll give you one dollar for that lawn mower".  The owner replies, "Sure".  Same ratio.

Like most chemotherapy, the medicine kills cancer kills but also kills normal cells, too.  (Think of hair loss for cancer patients.)  So, my lip is scabbed and bleeding, I'm taking ibuprofen, and I'm unhappy.

To The Rescue

Yesterday I used some of my VTOP (Volunteer Time Off with Pay) time at the Denver Rescue Mission's warehouse.  I brought a friend, a management consultant from Accenture, and together we packed boxes of canned goods from piles and piles of donated items.

The good:  we put together perhaps a dozen boxes.  I am grateful to my employer.  VTOP is not necessarily common in the corporate world, and if each employee's fully-loaded cost runs $50/hour and each of the 2000+ employees donates the alloted eight hours per year my employer is donating $800,000, a pretty nice chunk of change.

The warehouse acts as a distribution center.  Volunteers sort items into boxes (for example, 48 cans of vegetables) that are loaded onto pallets and then onto trucks and then onto food pantries throughout the Denver metro area.

People donate all kinds of things.  For example, glass jars of pasta sauce, or those cardboard soup containers (just add hot water).  Those items cannot be safely shipped, so they are used in the local kitchens.  Some people donate bottled water.  This is not useful; Denver's water is clean and plentiful and basically free, bottled water can come from anywhere and contain anything; most importantly, water has no nutritional value.

The Rescue Mission uses an automated, though puzzling and isolated, scheduling system.  The web-site presents a customized, Javascript-free form that displays volunteering opportunities and allows folks to register.  The opportunity that interested me showed 18 open slots a month back.  I signed up and indicated a party size of one.  Then a few days before my shift I decided to invite my friend.  I returned to the website and tried to increase my party size to two.  The website rejected my request, informing me the offering was full.  I sent an email to the address on the page asking for special dispensation, which was granted the next day.  When we arrived at the warehouse we were by ourselves.  I wonder what became of the other 17 people?  And, the shift manager had no idea we were coming.

The not-so-good:  I'm not sure how valuable my contribution was.  I helped pack a dozen boxes, perhaps a week's worth of food for a few families.  The warehouse was full of pallets of from-the-factory boxes of food, such as Campbell's soup.  Maybe 10% of the food in the warehouse was from the one-off contributions that folks drop in cans and boxes scattered throughout the metro area.  My friend and I wondered whether our volunteer hours would not be better spent hounding the Campbells and Krafts of the world to donate more food, such food already being uniformly boxed and labeled and ready for distribution.  Or better spent lobbying Congress for larger food stamp benefits, so families can shop for exactly the kind of food they want to eat, when they want to eat it.

And, even if the drop-boxes are worthwhile, my friend and I were eager to apply our professional skills to the problem.  He dabbles in supply-chain management and has colleagues who have been doing nothing but supply-chain fifty hours per week for the last twenty years.  I enjoy wringing efficiencies out of anything.  The packing was complicated.  Vegetables go in this box, but tomatoes go in that box, and tomato _sauce_ goes in a third box, and the 15 ounce cans cannot be mixed with the 25 ounce cans, except for soup, where the 25 ounce cans are loaded on the bottom and are topped by 15 ounce cans.  Beans are separate, and pork and beans are not beans.  Sloppy joe mix is neither.  Could bar-code scanners and gravity-fed chutes streamline the effort?