Got a plan for this year? If you don’t, you need one. If you vowed to be better this year, you need to start planning. You need goals to move you along. You need a carrot to get you out of bed and ride on a morning when it’s 25 degrees out. You need incentive to lace up your Asics and do your weekly track workout when your body is…
For a guy who’s dedicated his life to public service and is perhaps the politician most closely associated with forward-thinking transportation policy, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-OR, says it’s not elected officials who drive progressive thinking when it comes to creating livable communities. And Blumenauer knows livable communities, having lived his life in one of the nation’s most living-friendly — Portland. He went to Portland’s Lewis & Clark College, served in…
My idea of a good time when I can’t be outdoors? Sitting around a big conference table with the head of the state’s largest trail system and a newly minted map. Wednesday, Kate Dixon, executive director of the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail attended a meeting in New Bern about the path the MST would take from New Bern to the Outer Banks. Thursday, she took a few minutes to…
A glorious experience in a Dismal place, riding with the polar bears, avoiding getting lost (but what to do if you do). Just another diverse weekend of outdoor adventure in North Carolina. Coast “Remember that resolution you made to get outside and exercise more this year?,” asks Dismal Swamp State Park. (Hey, if companies are people and are entitled to a voice, certainly a great natural area is as well.)…
I was thinking I’d just had a bad day on the wall. Then I opened my climbing journal to record my workout and discovered that my last workout, a week earlier, had been “a bad day.” Likewise, the workout before that, during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, had been “somewhat aimless.” Aimless and anti-productive, I discovered upon further review: Had it really been nearly two months since I’d…
While most of you are staring down Day 3 of your 2012 New Year’s resolutions, I find myself with less than five months to go on my annual birthday resolutions. Make that “first” annual birthday resolutions: When I turned 55 last May 11 I got to Googling and discovered that 55 is a somewhat pivital year for a male. Among other things, our muscles and organs begin to atrophy; we…
I was reclining in the endodontist’s chair yesterday afternoon, my mouth going mercifully numb, awaiting a surprise root canal and eavesdropping. “Did you get lunch?” one dental hygienest asked the other. “No,” answered the second. “I bought a dress that’s a size too small and, well … .” She went on to explain that she’d bought if for an event on Friday — the day after Thanksgiving. “ ‘at’s a-mer-a-ble,”…
Benefit events — runs, rides, walks, hikes, whatever involves movement to raise money — are a dime a dozen. Provided, that is, you’re in pretty good shape. Witness the plethora of 5Ks on the market for runners, the MS 150, or the Ultimate Hike, which I recently was involved with. For the latter, a 12-week training program was required — or very highly recommended — to help participants complete the…
We were on a post-sundown training hike for the Ultimate Hike last month when a beam of bright light began gaining on us from behind. I turned and saw two headlights bearing down on us, still maybe 75 yards down the road. “I’ll do the talking,” I said, since I was the hike leader and since I may have forgotten to mention to my fellow hikers that, technically, we were…
You ask questions, I try to answer them. Among your recent inquiries: Forest Ridge Park, Raleigh Lance was noodling around on the site, discovered an old post about Forest Ridge Park-to-be in North Raleigh and wondered “if there is any news there. It looks to me like things are moving toward construction starting next spring … .” Things are, in fact, finally moving along with the 586-acre park along Falls Lake,…