Excercise and working together

Today was an interesting day. Our meeting was postponed, we did half of it last night and the other half will now occur tomorrow. Not bad, but not what we had planned for the weekend. The good news is that we kept the weekend open for just such a change in plans. We have learned that it is easier to build in flexibility when planning, instead of planning and when changes occur, everything falls apart because no flexibility was built in. Steve still has problems with rolling with some punches, but he is much better about accepting plan modifications.

Since our plans changed a bit, we opted to hike a local mountain (which we were going to do tomorrow..) this morning. This local mountain is easily accessed, and has several trails ranging in length and difficulty. The mountain's name is "Silly Mountain" and it really is a funny looking mountain. So, since we had time this morning, we opted to begin our exploration of Silly Mountain. To backtrack a bit, since my first knee surgery (I have had 2 to date), my knee was always a bit tricky. I picked up the habit of carrying a walking stick every time I knew I was going out on a hike. Over the years I have picked up several walking sticks and have them stashed all over the house and in my car (you never know when a good hike may appear while driving...). As we were getting ready to hike this morning, I grabbed one of my more visible walking sticks (can't find all of them right now, too many moves...) and asked Steve if he had any duct tape. He had no idea what I had in mind (hmmmm.....)

The duct tape was for the bottom of the walking stick I had chosen, the rubber "bumper" had broken off a while ago, and since I have not done any real hiking, didn't bother replacing the rubber "bumper". As I was putting the finishing touches on closing up the house, Steve was lovingly taping the bottom of my walking stick. We get to Silly Mountain and at the trail head find the various paths that can be taken. We also grabbed a paper map of the mountain and trails and sights so that we sort of know where we are going and what we may be looking at. So, here I am with one of my trusty walking sticks and paper map, and we start walking in the direction of one of the easiest routes on the map.

We didn't want to try a more strenuous path until we had both gotten used to hiking again, but by allowing Steve to lead, we ended up not following the easiest path out there...(those of you who know Steve, know exactly what I am talking about...). We zigged instead of zagged and ended up hiking an intermediate trail. Not really so bad when you are walking up hill, the trail was relatively well maintained and we could see people walking up ahead of us. What got Steve a tad uncomfortable was when we were about half way up the trail, and starting to do some serious panting, there were a few younger people actually running up the trail. I pointed out to Steve that he would have been one of those younger people running up the trail when he was in the Marines, but that didn't seem to make him feel any better.

Anyway, we get to the top of this intermediate trail and really enjoy the views it afforded. At the top of the trail was when we discovered that we were on the wrong trail (really???). After some resting and attempts at finding where we went wrong, we decided it was time to head back down and back to the house. That was when Steve finally realized how nice it would have been if he too had a walking stick. He then started wishing he had taken one of our broom handles and used as a walking stick. That wasn't bad enough, but when I said "Oh I didn't know you wanted one, I have several at the house" all heck broke loose...

Steve whimpered and whined the whole way down, "You don't Love me anymore", "you are trying to kill me, you with a walking stick and me with NOTHING...", "I want a walking stick", "after I change my insurance policy, NOW you want to HIKE without giving ME a walking stick...you are trying to kill me", "Whose bright idea was it to take THIS trail, remember I don't have a walking stick?", "why didn't you just bring a walking stick for me..."(with the appropriate whimper and quivering voice). You get the drift... I couldn't stop laughing, and almost tipped over several times down the trail because I was laughing so hard.

I can't imagine what the other hikers were thinking about as they heard our banter. Honestly, it didn't occur to me that he would want a walking stick, he made no comment as he was taping the bottom of my stick, he didn't say anything as I took it out and carried it up the hill... but wait, the minute he saw how useful it could be to us old farts going down hill....oh boy...

You can bet that next time we hike Silly Mountain, or any other local hike, I will be sure to always have TWO walking sticks available for use... Since I forgot the camera today (we will discuss that oversight another time... ;-P), I will post pictures of Silly Mountain at another time, but did find one picture from the web to post tonight...

Until tomorrow...