Tickytactics

My tick obsession has not faded, despite kind reassurances by experienced Challengers. I won’t be walking in my usual shorts at least until I cross the Corrieyairack.

I’m clearly not the only one concerned, since there is a thread on the subject on the TGOC Message Board. I’ve just posted there about what I’ve learned to help keep ticks away from my succulent flesh. I’m repeating that info here, with a couple of links:

“The US Department of Defense has done studies on the best ways to avoid tick problems (I bet the MoD has, too). Inspection and physical removal turned out to be the least effective approach to avoid problems. The most effective steps to take are these three:

“1. Treat clothes with permethrin. There are two approaches. The short-term one I’ll take involves spraying clothes — not while you’re wearing them :-) — with special attention to collar and cuffs, and hanging them out briefly to dry completely. This treatment is good for just about two weeks. Perfect.

“2. Treat exposed skin with DEET. (I’ll be using something called Ben’s 30, which has 30% DEET, the amount recommended by the Center for Disease Control as being best to repel ticks.)

“3. Wear long sleeves and trousers, tuck shirt(s) into trousers, tuck trousers into socks or gaiters.

“I know many people are wary of chemical insect repellants. Having seen the possible results of tick infection, I choose to use them for relatively infrequent periods of relatively short duration.”

Actually, the first recommendation is to avoid tick-infested areas, but that sounds like wishful thinking, for my route at least.

That’s it. Hope it helps.

Hotel child

A few of the playlists on my iPod include numbers by a band called “Ingrid Lucia and the Flying Neutrinos”, which bills itself accurately as “a New Orleans style jazz and blues swing band.” The title of their 2000 album, above, has been popping into my mind over and over lately. Coming from the States for the Challenge, I’m having to consider a set of clothes to travel in, not to mention what I’ll wear to the soirées I expect to be attending along the way. My “Hotel Child” clothes. Working this out has actually made me change my mind about an important item of walking clothes.

Hotel child clothes have to be comfortable, clean, dry, and—perhaps most important—light as a feather and highly compressible. I’m bringing Crocs anyway, for wading and camp, and they’ll be fine for town as well; perfect, actually, in tasteful orange. I usually manage to keep a pair of sox clean and dry for evenings, too. I had been planning to walk in my usual RailRider Weatherpants when I needed long trousers, but they seem like perfect HC items, so I went looking for a walking replacement. What I came up with is a pair of Patagonia R1 Pants—heavyish tights, basically—which lend me a bit of the Alan Sloman look so many fashionable outdoors people are affecting these days. On top, I’ll wear a Patagonia Capilene 1 T-shirt, probably under my windshirt, since I don’t want to carry my dinner jacket (just think of the wrinkles).

This clothes horse stuff is right up my alley. One of Ingrid’s songs on the album is “Mr. Zoot Suit”:

He’s got great big feet, he’s jumping to the beat
he’s been dancing in the street
he’s dressed so fine, got lots of loot
we like to call him Mr. Zoot Suit

He drives a great big car, smokes a big cigar
looks like a king, and he acts like a star
when we see him drive by he goes “toot, toot”
we all shout, “Hey, Mr. Zoot Suit!”

In a later verse, she even mentions the spats. I didn’t know we’d ever met.

Map drops

I use a Mac, which is great in every way except the map way. I don’t typically use GPS, which is a good thing, since much mapping software runs on Windows only, and most GPS makers don’t show a lot of interest in OSX. As far as I can tell, this Mac aversion is shared by Anquet, Quo, et al. with regard to the Ordnance Survey maps I’ll be using in Scotland. So mapping my way electronically and printing off custom map segments seems not to be in the cards for me. I can live with that.

I like OS maps, and really like the National Grid Reference system, which we don’t have over here. My route will require five or six OS Landranger maps: 33, 34, 35, 43, 44, and maybe 45 (though, as a son of Rogers and Clark, I naturally have both the superb backcountry skills and the raw courage to force a route mapless through the savage waste between Edzell and St. Cyrus). I’m planning to strip the covers, but to bring the maps entire, on the grounds that I’ll inevitably get off-route—possibly even on purpose. I’ll have parts of two days in Glasgow before hopping the train to Mallaig, and to keep bulk and weight down, I think I’ll mail maps ahead to the Kingussie campground and the Braemar YHA, and send used ones home.

I think I’ll mail some food ahead, too, though my route will allow me to buy as I go, and I’ll be doing a lot of that. Many, if not most, American long-walkers rely on Lipton Sides, now Knorr-Lipton Sides, but in the next few weeks I’ll be testing some of the less chemical, more interesting, much-praised dehydrated meals from Enertia Trail Foods. A report will be the topic of a future post or two.

Snow day for boot testing

Out this morning with temps in the low 20s F (around –6°C), which has been pretty normal for a while. But there was 2-3 inches of snow already on the ground, which we hadn’t expected quite so early in the day. Paul and I took our walk as usual, but it was quieter (few cars—school was canceled—and the general dampening effect of a layer of white) and more beautiful than most mornings. A gorgeous day, really. We did Loops today rather than River, and this took us through the cemetery.


A few weeks ago, I decided I might not enjoy having wet feet all the way from Inverie to St. Cyrus, and decided to try a pair of lightish Montrail GTX boots that are supposed to use a different manufacturing process to let the GTX breath better. I’ve heard this is a true improvement, but the jury is still out on this footwear. I have high arches and a high volume foot, and these boots didn’t seem to agree with that profile. But I trashed the original laces, got a pair of six-footers, and have been fiddling with different lacing schemes that would give me foot room without ankle flop (now there’s an advertising slogan for you) and the inevitable rubbing. They’ve been feeling pretty good. This morning, in the invisible ruts under the snow, they felt stable and secure. Fingers crossed (or toes), but I can always fall back on my comfy Hardrocks, and live with the damp tootsies.

I look out my office window now, nine hours later, and it’s still snowing. The governor has sent all state workers home. The police are on the radio urging people to stay in, or to drive very carefully if they have to be out. The ambulance has been by three times, the police twice and a fire truck once. We’ve canceled dinner with friends this evening. It’s nothing close to a blizzard. It’s not too cold, not windy at all, and we’ll probably only get six to eight inches of snow. Snowstorms like this are only a big deal because so many of us have to travel so far in our cars to work, and because so many of us no longer know how to drive on snowy roads—once a New England specialty. (People my age can all hear their fathers saying, at various volumes and intensities, “Keep your foot off the brake! Pump it! Pump it!” and “Steer into the skid!”)

We’re both working at home today, tucked in warmly, drinking tea, and having seen Paul off home this morning so he could enjoy his oatmeal,



we’re expecting him back later for the pickup meal that will replace our snowed-out dinner. I’m off to make my grandmother’s cinnamon rolls for dessert.

Walking poles

The Black Diamond Flicklock hanging on my office wall met its end coming off the Col du Bonhomme on the Tour du Mont Blanc in 2006. I seldom use walking poles. I’m a devotee of wristloops, lengths of webbing that I’ve tied through rings near the tops of my pack’s shoulder straps. I don’t actually put my wrists through them, which would be stupendously dangerous in even a minor fall, but holding onto them is comfortable, and they help me avoid the dreaded sausage fingers.

I have used poles occasionally to ease my old knees down difficult descents, but my experience has been mixed. Sometimes I think, “Wow, good thing I had those along.” More often I think, “Boy, are these ever more trouble than they’re worth.” Needless to say, I wasn’t too thrilled with them on the Bonhomme, where I wound up on my back, head downhill at the edge of a small drop, wriggling like a flipped turtle until H helped roll me over. And I never use them in my home mountains, which are routinely very steep.


On the other hand, there is my injury-induced fearful hesitation, mentioned a couple of posts ago, when I need to hop from stone to stone now and then.

So I’m debating the utility (for me—I know many more swear by them than at them) of walking sticks for the Challenge in May. I’d leave them home for sure except for the knowledge that I’m going to have to ford the Kingie at Kinbreak (and while we’re at it, can someone tell me the correct spelling of Kinbreak? I’ve seen that, and Kinbreack, and even Kinbrake, which I’m sure must be wrong). But is it worth the weight and fuss for a 20-foot wade and the occasional rock hop? I’m leaning against, but this is another choice I’ll agonize over, then probably make on the spur of the moment just before I leave.

Can’t account for it

I just discovered that my profile over there to the right has been listing my “Industry” as “Accounting.” Oh, the horselaughs if my friends ever saw this! In all the list, there isn’t another possibility that would be as far from an accurate representation of my inclinations and whatever skills I may have. “Investment Banker” would be less absurd. “Fashion” would be dead-on by comparison. I do dress myself, after all.


I changed the box to “Consulting,” which some people I know think sounds grand, but which, like “freelance writer” more often than not means “unemployed.” “Communications or Media” is as opaque as Consulting, and I suppose is just as flabbily accurate, but it sounds so grubbily Fleet Street (that’s actually the accurate part). “Publishing” inevitably makes me think of losing money...and we’re all the way back around to Accounting.

Consulting works best, especially on the understanding that for purposes of this Challenge blog it reflects being the consult-er rather than the consult-ant.

Adequate

I wrote in a very early post that I couldn’t make up my mind between Paramo-style raingear for the Challenge and the stuff I’ve got. I’ve decided: The stuff I’ve got. A Scot helped me make the decision.

H. did a term at the University of Edinburgh in 2001 (most of which I think she actually spent in the mountains), and we visited for Thanksgiving. At some point, I went off to Tiso’s looking for a pair of boots. After the usual sorting, fitting, wandering, and pondering, I narrowed it down to two possibilities, and the salesman had a preference. He set one pair aside and presented me with the other. “These,” he said, clearly bestowing what he thought was very high praise indeed, “are adequate.” I bought them, and they were ... adequate.

I’ve decided that my Marmot Precip jacket and Red Ledge Thunderlight full-zips are adequate, too. They are reasonably light, reasonably ventable, and reasonably breathable under the right conditions. And I own them, along with reasonable things to wear under them. Getting outfitted Paramo-style would cost almost as much as my flight, and though I’m persuaded that for Scottish conditions the gear would be superior to what I’ll be wearing, the fact is I don’t walk all that often in Scottish conditions. My summers are warmer, my autumns are drier, and my winters are colder. (I don’t talk much about spring: mud and black flies—a good time to repair what’s broken.)

So adequate it is, and onto The List they go.