My biggest problem, or at least in my top five, is that I can easily find ten things wrong in my day while struggling to find one thing I’m happy with. I’m sure the problem is not unique to me, but as Red Skull quipped to Captain America in the first MCU film, “…I must say, you do it better than anyone.”
I have reached the end of camping season, with the travel trailer at the very least. I need to get it cleaned out, a few last repairs done, and winterize it. Following that it has to be dropped off at the RV storage lot just outside of town where it will hibernate until next May when the lot re-opens. The exciting summer of camping in the beauty of nature and nearly unlimited paddling I had originally envisioned crashed headlong into reality. Of course, it did.
Everywhere I have gone there has either been driving rain, high wind, or both. By mid-August I had actually reached the point where someone thanking me for bringing rain and ending their local drought triggered my gag reflex. And the wind, OMG. I think my near daily paddle outings I originally saw happening turned into averaging about one a week at best. Hiking has also been lacklustre as I avoided the crowding of the Rockies this year. The prairies lack good hiking opportunities.
I’m currently in my trailer on a friend’s acreage, about 8 km outside of Nanton, Alberta. They were kind enough to let me park in their yard at no charge and they have been wonderfully supportive, also quite tolerant of my whining about the wind, which has been … substantial (the whining and the wind – large gusts of both). I’ve been trying to paddle the nearby Chain Lakes and failing at it more than I have succeeded. This my second run at them this year and I’m not having any more luck than I did the last time.
The truth is that I have hit the lake a few times and one of the paddles is the kind of success I can be very proud of because it was under incredibly challenging circumstances and I performed much better than I thought I would be able to, despite my serious heart condition.
My weight got away from me and it peaked at 365 lbs in 2020 during the pandemic. Y’know, when everyone just sat inside and ate a lot. Which I certainly did. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired and having been working hard to get to a sustainable place ever since. I’m not there yet, but I did hit 189.5 lbs this AM. This means I have gone from a BMI class of Morbidly Obese III to Overweight, and the truth is now I’m closer to the Normal side of the Overweight class than the Obese side. I lose just seven more pounds now and exactly half of the person I was in 2020 is gone. How many people lose 50% of their body weight? Damn few.
It’s a fact that my heart is not getting better, but, as my weight drops, it is doing less work, and has more spare capacity to help me Do The Fun Things. I paddled into a lesser wind last year and I maxed out my circulation. That was a 1 km stretch that nearly floored me. This past Thursday I paddled 6 km into a bastard wind hoping to coast back with it. Nope. Maybe 15 min into the return trip the wind flipped on me and I had to claw my way back using a kayak paddle. My arms were on fire and I temporarily lost feeling in the fingers on my left hand because of how hard I gripped my paddle. But cardio problems? None. I kicked ass for over 12 km without breaks and without my limbs starting to fail on me or my vision edging white as I pushed past my circulatory capacity. That is a fuckin’ amazing feat that I never thought I would be able to do. So you’d think I’d have better things to talk about than how my summer hasn’t gone how I wanted.
This summer was not a disaster. It was one of the best goddamn successes of my life. I threw caution to the wind, embraced a childhood dream, and did something new. I mostly made it work despite some challenges between weather and the travel trailer needing unexpected fixes, which I learned to do myself. I got to have some adventures with my wife that we talked about having for a quarter century and then only got around to this year. But we did it! That’s a fucking huuuge win.
And, Jesus Christ, can we talk about how I donated all my old clothes to the thrift store because I’ve gone from 3XL to size LG and am now crusing toward M? How I feel twenty years younger? How I can do things physically that I never imagined were possible when I was Fatty McFatFat? Most of all, how Ray, who I miss every day, would have been ecstatic over this accomplishment? I’m not someone who tears up often, but when I realized on Thursday exactly how much I had lost, and how much I can do now, I also realized how proud Ray would have been of me and the love I would have gotten from him for it. He openly feared my weight would take me out and that he would lose a friend. (Boy, did he get it backwards on who left first.) And here I go tearing up again.
I need to work on my shit attitude and I need to stop dreading this winter. I’m now in the kind of condition that will let me hike trails and have fun that I couldn’t do for decades. New photographic opportunities are open to me, and there are lots of adventures to be had with the trailer parked and the paddle board stowed. I need to stop moping and reach out for the next adventure. I’ll winter over from camping some and recharge and plan better for 2026, but there’s fun waiting for me in the coming months and I need to focus on that rather than the opportunities I missed.
I didn’t miss that much, if I’m being honest. I’m mostly cheesed off because I have an autistic habit of demanding that reality live up to my plans. Life doesn’t work that way. The bottom line is that I’m still here, I’m fitter, I still did amazing things, I got to spend time with my amazing wife, and the occasions I got on some water, I kicked ass and chewed bubble gum.
It was a good summer and it’s going to be a great winter. I can totally handle this shit. More gratitude and less attitude from now on. Well, I promise to try at least.
All images from my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra phone. What, you were expecting something else? You’re spoiled.