Real walking thru ice; Your doctor will never approve

 I never listened to my doctor, he knew absolutely nothing about stroke recovery! I challenge myself a lot, this is walking on my trails thru 6-8 inches of water with 1/8-3/8 ice thickness.  It required me to lift my left leg properly; up and completely above the ice. The walking stick was mandatory.  If I don't challenge myself now I'll never be able to get to age 90 in any sort of decent condition. And thus not able to do any  traveling. I just signed up for a Madeira Portugal trip with Road Scholar.

Hard to tell that  I've been thru this

 

The trail before I walk thru it. Only 6-8 inches deep. I cut thru those logs in the background with my chainsaw. A total of 5 logs in that stretch.

Trail walking - ice water

 After 6 weeks gone the trails didn't have much snow but the low lying areas had water again with 3/8ths inch of ice on them. I don't suggest you do this, I've been walking these trails for 9 years, it helps with challenging my balance tremendously. I have yet to fall in one of the water sections compared to the dry sections with the the roots and rock tripping helpers.

At least on the second day thru it became much safer, didn't have to break thru the ice

This particular trail is only 6-8 inches deep, walking stick is required for stability.

My walking stick, diamond willow, made by my dad and uncle. The rubber cap is on the top rather than the bottom, allows me to flick small branches out of the trail. Also water doesn't remain in the cap rotting the bottom.

Turkeys

 Don't see these too often, but about 12 were running around in a pack. Deer are much more common. Getting the zoom on on my smartphone is very challenging one-handed, which is why the pictures are awful.

 

Walking sights in the woods

 With the sixty and seventy degree weather last week, the snow is almost all gone and the trails have very little mud. I'll just have to wait for the spring rains to occur and flood the trails again. The juvenile deer don't get anywhere near as close now that the snow is gone. With the snow gone and dry trails I can get my 4 miles in in about an hour.  The ice cleats I ordered will not be needed this year.

A garter snake came out

Mushrooms popped up already

Two days prior this whole corner was covered in snow, now even this is gone.

 

Dangerous deer

 My walking trails are interesting at times. Haven't seen turkeys in the past year at all, deer are usually running across the trail 50 yards in front of me. But today I encountered juvenile delinquents, obviously without any parental supervision. These all were obviously born last spring. Luckily they didn't gang up and run me over and then use those sharp pointed hooves to  teach me a lesson.

The first one got within 4 feet, I had to push him away with my walking stick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walked 20 yards, turned around and now there are 4,↑

 

Walked 100 yards to the next corner, they kept coming and more joined.

4 in this picture

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7 in this picture

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walking in the woods

A 124 acre natural area is next to my apartment complex with unmaintained trails. It is very wet and the drainage takes forever to dissipate.  I have two pair of high(14 inches) waterproof boots. Tho old pair has flex cracks 7 inches up, vinyl and rubber patches did not stick.  The new pair had the heels separate from the soles which led me to wondering why I had ice cold water inside my boots when I was walking thru 2 inches of water. So now I still wear the old boots and try to not go above 7 inches. Last night it rained and the pools over the trails swelled even farther. This led me to bushwack around one of the largest ones. Deer trails are not the greatest to follow, they can easily squeeze under trees 3-4 feet off the ground. I can't do that very well any more.  Now when you meet someone coming toward you where an actual trail exists, they turn around and walk back. I assume to not get within 6 feet of you.  

I have given up on the 10,000 steps a day, it was hard to get it in and do all the social events I had in the evening when we still had social events. Now I do an hour which gets me about 5-6,000 steps, except when I am wading through pools or bushwacking. It took me 4 hours to do this and only got in 8846 steps, normally I would do this in 2 hours.

Bushwacking looking backward

Bushwacking looking forward

This is the trail, some of the trees in the distance have orange paint dots on them signifying the route.

Walking in freezing water

It rained the other day before we got 3 inches of snow. This means that the low areas in my walking trails create quite a few pools. I wasn't worried since 3 months ago I got a brand new pair of 15 inch high Galeton rubber boots. It became immediately obvious as I waded through the first 2 inch deep puddle that they completely failed. I had ice cold water in each boot. I had to cut my walking in half, only 6415 steps.  Toady I went out with my old green Wellies, the reason I bought new ones is that these have a hole 7 inches up on the right boot. Since the ground hasn't frozen yet the pools never got more than 4 inches deep so I was good and got in 8821 steps. Didn't really like these anyway since there was no steel shank on the sole, I could feel roots and acorns as I walked on them. 

Update: They refunded my money but said that I should have bought insulated boots. Nope. You can easily see that the heel is not in one piece with the sole. That is the failure point. Bought a different pair, Dunlop 8677512 Chesapeake Boots, the only thing I dislike is the waffle stomper treads, they hold too much dirt.

You can see that the heel has separated from the sole

Tree removal

Don't follow me.

2 large 14-18 inch trees fell across the paths. It is a 20-30 minute hike back to them through 3 mudholes. My 14 inch electric chainsaw only lasts for 4 minutes when cutting logs this size. I don't trust myself to use my 16 inch gas chainsaw. My Dad quite a few years ago when cutting down a butternut tree told me that chainsawing would be good therapy for my arm/hand. I can't see hospital lawyers approving any type of release form for survivors to participate in such therapy.
This tree needed to be cut in multiple pieces and took two weeks to accomplish.

The very right limbs of this were cut by hand

The 5 foot middle section is rolled off the trail in the middle of the picture almost out of sight

The before picture

The next tree was even larger, I sometimes walked back here three times a day since I only managed 1 inch in depth for each battery charge. I had manged to get maybe halfway through when I walked out there one morning and heard a chainsaw running. It seems a neighbor uses that trail to dump grass clippings and leaves and needed to get thru. The six pieces he cut it into would have taken me all summer. Today I got thru a 7 inch tree in three cuttings, it had been dead quite a long time.

The before

The aftermath

Nightime trail walking

Last night I went out at dusk, needing 5,000 steps yet for the day, midway thru the walk it was dark, put on my headlamp which was quite weak due to staying on in the daypack. Barely enough light to see the path. Luckily I only stumbled over 2 branches but managed to stay upright. Today when walking the same trails I flipped dozens of small branches off the trail. I do challenging stuff I probably shouldn't. No deer turkeys or foxes seen today. I always carry two lighters in case I injure myself and have to spend the night outdoors huddled over a fire.
Don't do this.

Walks in the woods

I've been trying to catch up clearing the walking trails through the 124 acre natural area near me. Traveling this past summer for work really set me back. The waist high weeds and grasses obliterated some of the trails.  The grass scythe mostly worked except that I lost the trail several times and wandered through the woods trying to pick the trail up again. The GPS on the phone was pretty useless, you don't walk fast enough to update very often. But the phone compass and dead reckoning worked pretty well. The only time it didn't work was the hour I spent after dusk trying to find my way out switching from the flashlight to the GPS to make sure I was heading south. Luckily the phone battery had enough juice to finally get me to a trail I recognized.  All this is to help me get 10,000 steps per day and in winter use it for cross-country skiing. My electric chainsaw is not working and I haven't screwed up the courage yet to use my gas one, so small pruning saws are used to clear limbs from the trail.

Walking in the woods at night

Tonight I needed 4,000 steps to get to 10,000 so after dark I decided that the standard walking on sidewalks was way too easy so I strapped on my headlamp and headed out on the single track trails. Since the light lit up the trail 5-6 feet in front of me by the time I was planting my feet they were in the dark. Great for proprioception.  I kept up the normal pace I do in daylight, 15-1600 steps every 15 minutes.  This got a little hairy a few times when walking on frozen muddy areas. Kicked up two groups of deer and heard them crashing thru the woods. Made it 3/4s of the way around before I tripped on a tree root with my bad left foot and crashed directly on my left knee. Hobbled out and finished up the last 2,000 steps on sidewalks. Got in 6,000 steps in 90 minutes. Don't even consider doing this, I'm crazy and will eventually damage myself from some of my rehabilitation ideas

Success at 10,000 daily steps via Fitbit

In the past week I managed to get 6 out of 7 days of more than 10,000 steps.
Weekends are not too difficult, I walk the natural area behind the apartments, depending on the loops I do I can get 3-7 thousand steps done in an hour. Weekdays I have to do 3 5-10 minutes walks during the workday and for lunch walk a half mile each way.  That usually leaves me with needing 5-6,000 steps after work. That's doable by changing into walking shoes, grabbing several cigars for smoking as I walk and purposely striding along. Cigars are necessary as that forces me to look ahead rather than down at my feet as I walk. This challenges me a lot since the trails are covered in roots, branches and leaves and you have to react to balance problems by proprioception rather than visual sight. Soon this will become even more difficult as I will be doing this in the dark. This is an incentive to get in more exercise since in the process of getting socially connected here in Michigan I joined lots of Meetup groups, with lots of dinner and drinking get togethers. As a result I'm 35 pounds over what I should weigh. At 10 o'clock I check to see if I need to make a 500 step loop around the apartments or even more.  A PT would tell me my walking does not look good and is inefficient. I'll correct that whenever the hell I get my spasticity stopped

Saturday October 18

Sunday October 19

Monday October 20, not a good day, I spent 8 hours at work solving another coworkers problem and had a 2 hour wine class immediately after work. Not enough time to get in 10,000 steps and I didn't feel like even trying.

Tuesday October 21

Wednesday October 22

Thursday October 23

Friday October 24