Today I hiked the Wells Gulch trail in Lory State Park, Colorado. It was a good little hike, with plenty of variety. Hiking on an overcast day in March, spring hasn’t quite emerged yet, so a lot of the great spring color and wildlife wasn’t present. There was, however, still some icy spots which made things more interesting.
Every year BYU in Provo, Utah hosts a run around campus to raise money for cancer research. It is named the Rex Lee Run, after one of BYU’s former presidents, Rex Lee, who died from cancer. It is one of the most popular races in Provo. Last year there were over 2000 runners.
This year’s race is slated for this Saturday. The weather is suppose to be pretty decent and I’m predicting a great run.
I operate the Rex Lee Run website, where you may sign up online.
School was good today, I actually got some good studying done on the train to school. Solid state physics is all about crystals. Mostly silicon crystals, although sometimes we talk about hard carbon ones. 
Its another rainy, blowy, Oregon day. I really like it, especially with the new waterproof coat that I bought myself. It is a little chilly, but I just put my hood on, and all the wind and the chills and the rain stay outside, and the good warm feelings stay inside.
As soon as I got home, I got this incredible desire for pie, specifically, pumpkin pie. The Sara Lee pumpkin pie went even more on sale this week, and is now less than a dollar fifty per pie. But the thing is, I know I should be cutting back on sweets and things so I don’t get fat. I mean, what girl is going to marry a fat Jacob? So I want the pie, but when I compare the options of a piece of pie against eternal companionship….. but there are no promises that the pie will make me fat or that I’ll ever get married, so it’s not really a competition like that. I don’t think I have any whipped cream, and that could be a problem. What I really want is just for someone to give me permission to eat the pie.
I wouldn’t feel so guilty about eating pie if I was more active. I really want to hike a mountain, but I have no one to go with me.
We talked about the creation in institute class today. I can’t believe how much people on both sides of the evolution topic get worked up. I know I’m a child of God. I exist. All the little details about how Adam was created…. well, if it was important to my salvation, then it would be in the Book of Mormon.
The frequent readers of this site know that I like to look through the search engine statistics for the site and comment on things I think people are looking for. Tonight’s question comes from a Verizon DSL user in California who went to Google to ask: Are otter pops safe?
Otter pops are not made out of spinach, so they are at least a little safer than packaged produce at the moment. The otter pops I buy at Costco come in a box which says, “Pasteurized for purity and wholesomeness.” I assume that means that at least the juice is safe. However, sometimes the plastic rappers break open, which might not be the safest thing for your fine upholstery. Additionally, otter pops do contain sugar, which could make them unsafe to those with sugar sensitivities. Finally, as with all things, eating too many otter pops in too short of time might not be the safest thing.
Thursday I went out to hike the Y. Of course, this isn’t my first time hiking the Y. I think perhaps it is the 4th or 5th time this summer. Last time, I hiked it in 29 minutes, which was really difficult and at the time I didn’t think there was any way that I could make it in less that 30 minutes, but I did. This time, I was a little more confident after hiking Kings Mountain in Oregon last week, so I set a goal for 15 minutes.
I set my stopwatch, and decided to only take my one liter water bottle. I started at about noon, and the temperature was about 80 degrees. I hiked solid, only stopping for a few seconds at a time to swallow some water. With the stopwatch as a constant reminder to my 25 minute goal, I kept up a solid pace, and if anything, increased my pace over the duration of the hike. I reached the Y at the zeroth second of the 25 minute of my hike, with about half a liter consumed out of my bottle. I was pretty tired when I reached the top. My heart was going pretty fast and I definitely needed the 10 minute rest once I got up there. The hike back down lasted just about as long as the hike up, mostly because I was taking a fairly safe pace for hiking downhill.
Today I hiked Kings Mountain, which is about halfway between Tillamook and Hillsboro, Oregon. The hike was pretty difficult. The total elevation gain was 2500 feet, and I hiked 5 miles (2.5 each way). It took me 2 hours to get up, and about an hour and a half to get back down. In some parts, getting along the trail was really steep and it was kind of a scramble getting up. Today was hot, which meant that the liter and a half of water I took wasn’t quite enough.
Overall, it was a great hike, but nothing for beginners. My shoe wear wasn’t good enough; I wish I had a good pair of boots. I’ll post pictures when I get them developed.
This morning I hiked the Y again. For some reason this morning I just naturally woke up early. With all the found time, I decided to hike the Y, and do it before it got to hot outside. I left at about 8:45am. At that time the sun had hit the valley, but not quite the west side of the mountain. Even though I left pretty early, it was still pretty warm outside.
My focus today was to get to the top as quickly as possible. I brought my stopwatch, so I could time myself and use the time as motivation to get to the top. I decided that I could stop every 10 minutes for a drink of water. The end result is that I got from the trail-head to the the bottom of the Y in 29 minutes, which I think is a new best time for me. Even though the hike was hard at that pace, I felt like I was more energized than on previous hikes.
Today I thought I should get out and get some exercise, so I decided to hike the Y. I wanted to see how fast I could hike it, reasonably. I did the whole thing, up and down, in about 50 minutes, just before sunset. It was warm, but there were some clouds that kept things from getting hot. It was quite pleasant actually. I think if I work on it, I should be able to shave about 10 minutes off of that time without having to run it, just hiking a little faster.
I thought I was in really bad shape, but this hike let me see that I’m not as bad as I thought. A few more hikes and a good pair of shoes, and I should be able to do something that might merit the word, climb.
Today was a weird eating day, especially for Sunday.
At 10:00am, I ate a hand full of honey nut chex.
At 4:30, I spent about 5 minutes with a spoon and a box of Dryers chocolate carmel swirl icecream
At 6:30, I ate a bowl of strawberries
At 11:00pm, I ate about half a dozen chocolate chip cookies that I made, with milk.
Am I going to die?
Here is a college student recipe:
Today’s run was a lot harder than I thought it should have been. I’m not sure if it is because I’ve gotten fatter and had to carry more weight, or that I didn’t have enough energy, or that the air was thinner. I guess the best thing to do is to run again on monday.
I went on another run today. Hopefuly I can get another two runs in this week. I didn’t feel so tired during this run, although it still wasn’t easy. I’m working on just getting used to running. I did a 20 minute run this time, with 5 minutes of walking at both the beginning and end. I found out that it is about a 10 minute (slow) run over to Miriam’s house.
I went on another run today. It was of similar length to my other run I did on Monday, maybe just a little longer than last time. The first half was uphill and the second half was downhill.
It rained for the entire run. I guess one of the advantages of running in Oregon is that there is plenty of oxygen and plenty of rain.
The water in Oregon tastes good.