These Boots Are (Not) Made For Walking

~ Yesterday afternoon I went for a long walk, and in the process discovered just how incredibly unfit I am.

I walked down Military Road to Cambridge Terrace, then down to the Esplanade, before walking back along the beach path and up Semaphore Road to home. I mapped the route on Google Maps today and found the total distance is eight kilometres/5 miles (click image to view route full size).

By the end of my walk I was tired and sweaty, and almost limping. In fact, my calf muscles are still aching today.

It occurred to me last night (in what had to be the understatement of the day), that I am not as young as I used to be. In fact, when I go travelling again next year I will be pretty much exactly two years older than I was last year. Then, I was a mere lad of 59. Next March when I set off, I will be 61, and as far as the government is concerned – a Senior Citizen. Not an old aged pensioner, mind you – just a Senior. I still have some years to go before I officially become an OAP – not that I’m in a hurry to reach that landmark.

However, just as I wanted to improve my overall fitness levels before I travelled in 2008, so too do I want to improve my ability to walk reasonable distances before I again set off next year. Given that I spend far too long sitting in front of a computer, and given too, that the amount of physical activity I undertake each day is quite frankly minimal, I have a lot of work to do before the end of March 2010.

Ok, ok, it’s time to be brutally honest. I currently weigh around 105 kilograms, which translates to around 231 pounds! For a person of my age, that is clearly too much, and whether I travel or not, I have to try and reduce my weight by at least 10 kilograms (22 pounds). It’s a big ask, as they say, and I don’t know if I am going to be able to achieve it, but I have to do something, otherwise I know I will be struggling next year.

The obvious reason I write about this today is because if I am going to enjoy the travel experience as much as possible, I have to be reasonably fit and healthy to do so. Yes, I could take a tour and spend 80 percent of my time sitting on a bus taking in the sites, but if you have read more than one entry on The Compleat Traveller, you will gather that I am not the type of person to engage in that form of travel.

The good news is that down here in the Southern Hemisphere spring is just around the corner, and the long hot days of summer are on the way. This means I can look forward to six months of fine hot weather, and lots of walks along the beach, and even the occasional dip in the ocean. If I have some success in the area of weight reduction and increased fitness – I’ll report back via these pages. Wish me luck.

The Week That Was #9

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Welcome to my weekly collection of The Odd, The Useful, and The Downright Bizarre.

The Odd: Rhyolite, Nevada Bottle Building - In 1906, in the old ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada a saloon owner named Tom Kelly, built a house out of bottles because lumber was scarce at the time. Reportedly he used some 50,000 beer, whiskey, soda and medicine bottles to build the structure which still stands today. Mr. Kelley was 76 years old when he built the house and it took him almost six months to complete. Read more here…

The Useful: The Rule of Thirds. Ned Levi is a professional photographer who points out the rationale behind the “Rule of Thirds”, the concept that the most eye-pleasing photographic compositions split the field of view into roughly equal thirds, and that the scene’s important compositional elements are placed along these lines or their intersections. It doesn’t matter whether you are using a typical consumer-level, point-and-shoot camera, or the most expensive professional digital SLR, the ‘rule’ has been in use for hundreds of years by generations of artists and photographers, and for a very good reason. It works. Read more here…

The Downright Bizarre: The Illegal Border Crossing Tour in Mexico. Yes, you read it right. This tour apparently lets you the experience the drama and the adrenalin rush of being an illegal immigrant trying to cross the Mexican border in the United States. According to a New York Times reporter who tried it, the locals want tourists to understand the experiences and traumas that illegal immigrants face. During the night-time guided hike you’ll be chased in the dark, shot at by (fake) police, and you may or may not make it under the fence. But you’ll definitely have an interesting story to tell the folks back home. Read more here…

Friday Photo #7: My Island Home, Ikaria, Greece

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This stunning view along the south coast of the north-east Aegean island of Ikaria was taken late in the afternoon from the terrace of my sisters house at Partheni. The beach in the foreground is Kampos Beach, and the cluster of homes in the middle distance are part of the port town of Evthilos. The village on the hillside in the far distance is Karavostamo.

Imagine waking up to this view every morning! Or maybe sitting on the terrace at the end of a long hot summer day, with a Greek coffee, or home made wine in hand, and watching the ever changing colours as the sun slowly sets in the west.

If there is a heaven out there somewhere, this would be one of my ideal visions of it.

Photograph: My Island Home, by Jim Lesses

Location: Ikaria, Greece, April 2008.