Ok – Corey and I bought a house and I lost my wordpress password so I completely lost all connection to this site. I have kept all of the hikes posted on flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/athleticphatdyke/ so everyone can see what we have managed. I am getting back to hiking again now that the house is liveable and we are moved in. Expect to see more entries as I have also solved my password dilema 
Sunday April 29th Christine and I hiked Starvation Creek up to the Hole in the Wall Falls. It was so lovely. There we lots of amazing flowers with very short bloom windows so I took a ton of photos. I took so many photos I ran out of battery just after the halfway point of the hike. I was bummed as I had left the spare battery in my other pack.
We got back to the car and I took the camera off of the chest strap on the backpack and placed it on the hood of the car *insert drums of doom here* and opened up the trunk to get place the pack in the car and get out the spare battery. What followed in my head was this sequence: I put the pack in the trunk, got out the battery then walked around the car and grabbed the poles from where they were leaning next to the camera. I placed the poles in the car and Christine placed her things in the car. I closed the trunk and got into the car. I realized I did not have the camera or the cell phone – oops. I hop out of the seat and go back to the trunk – grab the cell phone – hmmm no camera. *hear that drum?*
I check the roof of the car – no camera, inside my brain a little voice says. “I must have tossed it in the back seat. I’ll just put the battery in when we get to the next stop.” *ta-dum ta-dum ta-dum*I close the trunk and get in the car and off we go to our next hike destination.
Sigh. Needless to say what happened in my head was not what happened in the real world. Now the camera is gone and I have lost all of those beautiful flower pictures. I am very sad. I loved my camera very very much and I feel just really stooopid to have lost it in such a totally avoidable way.
I take strattera for my ADHD, it generally really helps me maintain strength of focus and follow through. Sigh – I guess it just did not work on Sunday. Corey says that I really have to accept that I do the “I must have” whenever I get confused about a sequence of event; and that I really should just stop and redo the actions rather then assume that I did anything at all.
So goodbye really really nice Olympus Stylus 800 camera. 
I loved you and I will miss you very much. You took really amazing macro shots and travelled well. You were shockproof and all-weather (which was awesome cause I took you out in the rain all the time). I especially loved your large lcd screen – no more squinting in a tiny eye hole!
So I am going to be doing a lot of hiking this year. I want to build up to 10-12 mile hikes in 1 day by the end of they year. I also want to do a few overnight hikes where I hike in, camp, then hike out the next day. In order to do that I have a few things I need.
Tent: A 1-2 person light tent, something I can pitch with my trekking poles would be cool. I am carrying 340 pounds already, no need to add too much to that.
Sleeping pad – My daughter has a way cool air-bubble one. I am fat – I really need a good cushion against the ground.
Travel pillow- Ok – so I am spoiled
Sleeping bag – I guess a 30-40 degree would be warm enough for me since I am always really hot and we will not be camping out any earlier than April or later than October.
Cookset – a small lightweight stove and eating tools.
Water purification set. Mini first aid pack.
Backpack – Gotta have something to put all this stuff in. My back is 21 inches and I am looking for something around 3000 cubic inches.
Personal Hygiene pack – um, I may miss a shower but that is about all the dirty I can handle
Desireables: These are things I could most likely live without, but would like to have.
headlamp, stuffsacks, booklamp (cause I can not be away from a book for more than 16 hours), knife.
