'Cooba Divin

Well I never made it out to the Long Path last weekend.  Chris was moving out so we spent Saturday moving stuff around the house and Sunday I had the worst hangover in the history of the world...stupid wine.  We did get to do go to the range and go diving so that made up for it.

This was the first time we went to the shooting range in Norwalk and it was great.  The target system is fully automated so you can specify how far away you want it and set it to turn at intervals, and move forward and back if you want a moving target.  I'm having trouble with the .380 - a piece actually fell off and I had to ask someone to help me.  The guys exact quote - "Well at least you didn't bring the gun out with you."  Do people do that?! Dear lord... Other than that it was fun.  Nice to get back out there.

We also made our debut into the cold water diving world.  We went to Rex on Thursday night to pick up our gear.  Up to this point we have never worn anything thicker than a 3mm wetsuit.  Now we're trying to get into a 7mm farmer john and and a 7mm shortie over it.  If you've ever seen "A Christmas Story", you know how I felt.  I was just walking around the dive shop saying 'I can't put my arms down...'.  Either way, got our gear, put it in the car, and went home for the night.

Ready to go!

 Get up next day, drive to Dutch Springs - which is in Bethlehem, PA about two hours away from where we live.  Issue No. 1 - We pay and go down to the parking lot to set up.  As I connect my regulator and turn on the air, it leaks.  A lot.  So we figure out it's the regulator itself, not an o-ring so we have to load up again, drive to a nearby dive shop and have them fix it.  Luckily it was just a leaky hose and didn't cost us any money.  Issue No. 2 - We get back, unload again and set up our gear.  We squeeze into our wetsuits and are now sweating profusely.  As I try to put my weight belt on, I realize the now 14mm of neoprene over my midsection makes me too fat for my goddam belt.  Luckily we have the old fashioned kind that they put the weights on for transport, so Mike gave me his and used the crappy one.  Issue No. 3 - As we're loading up the weight belts with the 24 lbs they told us to use at Rex, a "helpful" lady comes up and tells us she's on her 300th dive and this is way too much weight.  We only need like 12 lbs.  That's what she uses.  So we compromise on 16 lbs each.  Tank up.  Get all the way to the water.  Put on mask and fins and...can't get below the surface because we're too damn light.  Mike took everything off, went back to the car and got us both 8 more lbs.

FINALLY we get to descend and the visibility is awful.  Probably like 8 feet.  The guy who works there says it's normally much better but they've had a lot of rain lately.  Mike and I lost each other twice and had to come up to reconnect, and once we lost the 'attractions' and had to come up to figure out where the hell we were. When you look at the lake from the shore, you think 'Oh it's not that big - how hard can this be? But with such low viz and feeling like an overstuffed sausage - it was tougher than I though.

Dutch Springs Quarry

After coming up for lunch and refilling the tanks, we planned out our second dive.  This time we took the right weight, and had a definitive plan.  They say plan your dive and dive your plan and they're right.  The second dive went great.  We went down to 75' where the water temp was 53 degrees and stayed pretty warm.  The park has a whole bunch of planes, cars, trains, etc. at the bottom to look at so that was kind cool.  I saw some bass, bluegill, trout and koi.

Overall, it's a good place to try out new gear and test your resistance to cooler water.  There's not a ton to look at but it was really nice to get some mid season diving in.  It is a place where you have to know what you're doing, however.  There's no one to guide you, no boat captain to advise you.  YOU are responsible to make sure you stay safe.  As long as you keep that in mind, you're good to go.

P90X: Back to Basics

So anyone who has been around me during the past year and half knows that I've lost about 35 lbs total by doing P90X and Insanity.  And no I'm not a Beachbody coach.  The programs are solid and I hate the gym with a burning passion.  I'm not coordinated and suck at any type of cardio, so when the girl on the treadmill next to me looks like a glistening gazelle I tend to lose my motivation.

Either way, this past summer I ate a lot of delicious food and drank way too much beer and somehow managed to re-find about 15 of those lbs.  So now that I'm back in school and my pants are a bit *ahem* tight, I'm getting back on the wagon and starting up with P90X classic. I've done Classic, Insanity, X/Insanity hybrid, and a few weeks of X2.  P90X is by far my favorite.  It's well rounded and really gets the job done as long as you don't eat like crap.

I did day 1 today and holy moly am I out of shape.  I used to be able to do this with some semblance of competency but today kicked my ass.  Pull up are my arch nemesis and even with the pull up assist bands I can still only get up like 5.  All I kept thinking is 'I remember this being easier...'.

Fries bad! Shakes bad! Cheeseburgers bad! 

Day 1 is in the books, and hopefully by posting on here I'll actually stick to it and it won't end up like 10 or so P7X's that I've done in the past.

Section 8: 9.2 Miles

Alright well I finally filled in the holes and have officially hiked the entire "Hudson Palisades" section of the Long Path.  I really thought I'd be farther along by this time and this may be the 2013-14 project instead of just 2013, but I've really enjoyed doing it and am happy that I've gotten this far.

We brought the dog this time - he had a good time and thankfully didn't get any raw spots on his feet.  He also got to try out his new backpack.  It held two water bottles, some snacks, his leash, and his water bowl.  It also rub Riley raw like his last pack which I'm sure he was really grateful for.

Me and Riley at the top of High Knob in our matching gear.  

We hiked North to South, starting at a commuter lot.  The trail heads away from the lot on a short road walk.  Later, it cuts into the woods by a lake and the rest of the trail is off the road.  It's great that the Long Path organizers are working to move it off the roads as much as possible.  There are some cool buildings in Gonzaga Park that are left from when the property was a Jesuit retreat.

The stone wall around the retreat plus some cool old buildings.

Almost the whole trail is co-aligned with the Highlands Trail (light blue) and inside the park, it's also co-aligned with the Jessup Trail (yellow).  This makes for a lot of blazes, and the trail is not always marked with all of them, sometimes just yellow, so it's important to pay attention to where you're going.  The Highlands and Jessup trails split from the Long Path about 3 miles from the Woodbury trail head, so looking for that turn off is key.  The views from the top of High Knob are fantastic.  There are a whole bunch of overlooks in a row.  I do caution that there are some steep climbs and descents getting there.  We had to do some scrambling and had to grab Riley's harness and lift him down at times to keep him from going flying down the side of the mountain.

View from High Knob.

Beautiful hike with some great views.  I'm hoping to get up to the Catskills for this (Thank you Rosh Hashanah) 4 day weekend and cross over the 100 mile mark.  :-)

Section 6: 9.4 Miles

Out for another trip in less than two weeks!  I think that's a record.  I'm always so busy it's hard to fit these overnights in.  It was another out and back which amounted to about 17 or so miles.  We parked at Lake Skannatiti and hiked south towards Mt. Ivy.  The section leading up to the shelter we would later stay in was great.  The Long Path Guide said this whole section was "gentle" so I wasn't surprised.  After the shelter, however, it wasn't so nice.  The next several miles were almost entirely descending, sometimes steeply.  All I could think was "Frick frick frick we have to hike the whole way back before the end of today."

After a few miles, the trail leaves Harriman and enters Letchworth Village Cemetery.  This place was utterly haunting.  It is a cemetery with graves marked only by numbers, because the occupants came from a nearby, now shut down, home for the mentally disabled.  The numbers are very representative of the way people with special needs were treated at the time - committed and then forgotten.  The whole hill had a sad aura around it.

After finishing the section in Cheesecote Mountain Park, the crappy section of the trail starts.  The trail follows the Palisades Parkway for a mile or two in the woods next to the freeway.  We were essentially bushwhacking while following faint blazes.  It was slow going and very tiring.  When we finally arrived at Mt. Ivy, we (thankfully) came out in town and bought some Gatorade from a Shell Station and filled our water bottles in the bathroom. (Yay no filtering!)

For most of the trail, we had pretty much been walking in a veritable cloud of gnats.  They were EVERYWHERE.  I ended up tripping over rocks because it was dim in the woods but if I didn't have my sunglasses on they got stuck in my eyelashes. We decided to take a road walk partway back because of the bushwhacking and the bugs.  We were offered a hitch, but Mike turned it down (much to my chagrin...I hardly thought the family of 4 looked like serial killers).

Big Hill Shelter

When we trudged (that was the only speed I had left at this point) back up to the shelter, we were greeted with a completely empty shelter with beautiful views and no bugs!  It was by far our best camping experience to date.  We could see the NYC skyline in the distance as we ate.  We even got a fireworks show.  (Why there were fireworks on July 27th I'll never know).

Making dinner at the shelter

I was sleeping peacefully until two guys trudged in at midnight, argued about where to camp, cooked food loudly, and ended up sleeping in the shelter.  The shelter's not on the AT or anything...I guess some people just like night hiking...  We woke up at the ungodly hour of 5:30 and were hiking out by 6:15.  Finished the 4 miles to the car by 7:45 and were home by 9am. :-)  Nature sightings - An entire family of turkeys and a coyote.

Section 5: 10.15 Miles

Long Path Section 6 at EveryTrail

EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking in New York

     So the mileage for this route is a little misleading.  I only have progressed 10.15 miles down the long path but this trip ended up being closer to 18 miles between the two days.  We started out at the parking loop on Route 6 and started our hike towards Lake Skannatati.  The plan was to hike out to the lake and then retrace our steps the 4.5 miles back to the Cohasset shelter.  Because of stuff we needed to get done at home, we didn't get on the trail until noon.  The hike out went pretty well.  It wasn't too difficult and there actually wasn't too many steep ups and downs.  We saw some nice views, and some interesting bones on the the side of the trail.  I think they were from a deer.

Some bones chillin' in the trail.

     The second half was actually pretty flat, plus it was well marked.  This section has crossings with many other trails, including the AT so it's really important to pay attention to the blazes.

AT/LT Intersection

     Because of our late start, by the time we got to the parking lot of the lake, it was already 6pm.  We decided to take a shorter route using a road walk, and go to the Fingerboard shelter instead of Cohasset.  By a bit after 7, we got to the shelter and set up our tent.  There were a few AT thru-hikers spending the night but other than that it was pretty empty.

     30 minutes later, a mother showed up with her 8ish year old son, who was shouting out compass directions randomly and tripping over rocks all the way into the site.  He was literally the kid from "Up" personified.  The mom started to set up 10 feet from our tent.  *sigh* I don't dislike kids (obviously, I'm a teacher) but I spend so much time with them and camping is my peace and quiet time.  I don't know the name of the thru hiker who suggested they move to a nice clear spot on the other side of the shelter, but I am forever grateful.

These little guys were all over the trail.  It's a Red-spotted Newt.

     We slept, well I slept and Mike dozed occasionally (he sleeps like crap in tents) and woke up at 6 to hike the few miles out.  Overall, nice trip.  It was also cool to be able to hike on the AT for a bit.  *Someday...*

Big Agnes Pearl Sleeping Bag Review

I have been using this bag for about 2 1/2 years and it has served me well during this time.  Most of my trips have been weekend trips instead of long, continued use.  I have used the bag down to 35 degrees, and I was decently warm wearing my thermals to bed.  However, I am a warm sleeper so a cool sleeper might be a bit cold right at the 30 degree rating.  The zipper goes almost to the foot box so it makes for good ventilation for warmer nights.  It does not have a true footbox vent, though.

The fit is nice and loose without being too far from the mummy shape.  I don't feel constrained as I do in most mummy bags - I am a very restless sleeper.  I have the petite version - I am 5'1 so no length issues there.  I can't attest to how it would fit a taller person.  It's really easy to get in and out with the full zip.  

The bag's shell has some moisture resistance but it will wet out pretty quickly if water accumulates at any corner of the tent or seeps in as condensation and the bag does not dry in a hurry.  The bag is down so once the down gets wet, it will lose much of its warmth factor.  If you are spending a lot of time in a wet climate, some of the new drydown options might be better for you.  The bag compresses down really well, especially with a compression sack.  I can get mine down to about the size of a football, maybe a bit smaller.  It takes a little time to puff back up and might need a little coaxing - but I pack mine down REALLY tightly.  

The zipper doesn't seem to have a catching problem and everything works the way it should.  It has a neck baffle that helps keep cold air out of the body of the sleeping bag, but it does not cinch around your face.  It has a little sleeve attached to the bag so you can stuff a fleece or a camp pillow in it and it stays put.  I love it because I can just throw a bunch of random clothes in it to use as a pillow and they stay together.  

The bag has lasted 2 1/2 years and hasn't gotten any rips or tears, and the zipper has held out well.  Remember that Big Agnes bags do not have insulation on the bottom - just a sleeve for a sleeping pad.  It helps cut down on weight and keeps your pad in place if you toss and turn at night.  It is a discontinued bag but can be found in a lot of clearance sales, so it's a great bag for someone looking for a good deal.  

Pros

• Very light
• Durable
• Pillow sleeve

Cons

• Does not repel water
• Needs a sleeping pad
• Cold sleepers may be chilly

Review of the Keen Targhee II

I've been hiking in these shoes for over a year and I've really like them.  There's virtually no break-in time.  They never gave me blisters and are comfortable even after big miles.  The laces are a little short so if you use custom lacing methods, purchase longer ones.  I do find that really fine gravel sometimes finds it's way in and needs to be emptied which is a little annoying.  This is a low-cut trail shoe, so if you prone to ankle rolling, perhaps the Targhee II Mid's would be better for you.  My ankles are usually pretty stable, so these have worked well for me.

The sole goes up a ways on the sides, which helps keep water out.  They are relatively water resistant when walking through small puddles or mud, but expect to get wet feet if you miss-step during a stream crossing.  They do dry quickly, though.

My favorite part is the toe protection - it is really great when you're worn out at the end of a hike and keep kicking rocks.  The soles are very grippy and are very stable even on steep slopes.  I have been using them for over a year and they have held up very well.  They are well constructed and feel very durable.  Even in chillier weather, they work pretty well.  I've used them in light snow with a good pair of wool socks.  Obviously they won't protect you from deep snow, as they don't be past the ankles.

Pros

• Protected toe
• Strong gripping soles
• Comfortable

Cons

• Will let deeper water in
• Little ankle support