I’ve never camped before in my life. I’ve slept under the stars before, sure, but that usually had nothing to do with an interest in getting away from it all. So, here I find myself one week away from a 22 day, demanding trek across the Atlas Mountains in Morocco with not a clue as to what I’ve gotten myself into… or what I need to make it through.

My biggest fear (today anyway) is that I’ll be ill-equipped for the trek and get something painfully gross like black toe where I start bleeding out of my feet and losing toe nails… or something worse. With that in the back of my mind, I began the process of researching gear and equipping myself as quickly as possible in order to have time to test everything out before I find myself cold and broken in some desolate landscape with Arabs speaking French.

The first thing I noticed when I began to outfit myself is that there’s no getting around looking like a stereotypical hiker. It was hard to do, but after enough looks from store employees after I asked for an item that “looked cooler” or had “less straps”, I resigned myself to the idea of function over form.

Anyway, here are the spoils of an afternoon spent visiting Patagonia, EMS, and Paragon:

Round 1 Trek Equipment

1. SCARPA Men’s SL M3 Backpacking Boots: I am not messing around with my feet. These seem to be top of the line.
2. Marmot Precip Jacket: I don’t expect much rain next to the Sahara, so I didn’t go wild on a hardshell waterproof layer.
3. Marmot PreCip Pant: I really hope it doesn’t rain…
4. Marmot Afterburner Jacket: Yes, this is my first fleece article of clothing ever, BUT it’s name is “Afterburner”, so that makes it automatically cool.
5. Pearl Izumi Grip-Lite Glove: I’m a little worried these won’t be warm enough when we start getting to altitude…
6. Patagonia Men’s Active Brief: If I have to walk 8 hours a day wearing the same underwear over and over, these things better be made with magic and rainbows.
7. Eagle Creek Undercover Leg Stash: How cool is this thing? Top secret document storage. (I wanted it in black, but oh well…)
8. NALGENE 32-Oz. Wide Mouth Tritan Bottle: Yeah… I needed a water bottle… I still need another one, but “testing” out the Nalgene first.
9. SMARTWOOL PhD Outdoor Light Crew Socks: They were out of medium thickness, so I’m testing out light. Still need to buy 3 or 4 more pairs if they work out.
10. NIKWAX Footwear Conditioner: To help break in the boots with the added benefit of waterproofing.
11. Casio Men’s Solar Atomic Pathfinder Multi-Band Watch: I can’t go to the wilderness without a cool gadget or two. This thing does temperature, barometer, altitude, digital compass and more.
12. CAMELBAK Omega 70 Reservoir: A bit of an impulse purchase based on a recommendation from the guy helping me at EMS. The idea of riding a camel with a Camelback does appeal to me, though…
13. OSPREY Talon 33 Pack: This was one of the most difficult purchases and the one where I truly resigned myself to function over form. It does have a pretty evil looking, skeleton bird logo, so that’s cool.
14. OUTDOOR RESEARCH Helios Sun Hat: “SolarShield™ fabric provides UPF 50+ sun protection”… so I assume that’s good.
15. Adventure Medical Trail Easy Care Kit: Only rated 1-3 days… no problem!
16. Black Diamond Contour Elliptic Shock Trekking Pole: I always thought walking sticks were for old people, but everyone I talked to assured me I would be happy I had these.
17. Men’s Merino 1 Crew: This thing is amazing. Super thin wool feels soft and delicious on your skin. Plus the cut is actually slim instead of boxy. Very nice.
18. Men’s Capilene® 2 T-Shirt: Yes, the wool Merino is nice, but its price is very high, so I thought I would test out the synthetic alternative and see if I could make do.
19. Men’s Capilene® 2 Bottoms: I hope this stuff works…
20. Eagle Creek Travel Towel X-Large: “Extra large size allows for full body coverage.” That’s what I’m talking about… but seriously, this thing better dry in a hurry.

Notice there are no pants on this list. Every pair I saw looked horrible and I just couldn’t bring myself to purchase a pair, but after doing a little more research, it would appear that I have no choice but to look like a dork if I want to be comfortable.

Oh well… once I get the pants, I need to remember to put all this stuff to the test and quickly finish gearing up.

Cheering station for the American Cancer Society on the boardwaylk

In what could be misconstrued as a cruel drive to see her man break under pressure, my woman signed me up for yet another running race. Although this race was only 3 miles more than the previous one she’d signed me up for, those 3 miles plus the word “marathon” in the title had me dreading this challenge up to the second I found myself in a mass of over 11,000 runners and the starting horn blew.

That said,  a big chunk of the course was on my home turf, so 1.5 times around Prospect Park was no big deal. A nice bonus was running with my woman and her friend which made it feel more casual. Then it was off to Ocean Parkway for the last half of the race and that’s a pretty straight shot with an easy grade. The final bit on the actual Coney Island boardwalk was a little rough with runners tripping and falling all around me on the uneven wooden deck, but somehow I managed.

In the end, NYRR Half-Marathon Grand Prix Presented by Continental Airlines: Brooklyn was a tough challenge and a great experience. My official time: 2:05.

I should remember to keep running as it usually makes me feel great.

(photo by: mason13a)

I guess it had to happen eventually… Since I started running this Summer (though sporadically), I was bound to run in an official event. And with my woman being the woman she is, she was bound to sign me up for one sooner rather than later.

That’s how I found myself among a couple friends and quite a large crowd of folks in Prospect Park this morning getting ready to run 5 miles.

I have to admit, the Turkey Trot was a lot of fun. I finished in around 39 minutes and hopefully I’ll remember to do something like it again… although I imagine my woman will remember for me in case I forget.

Update: Turns out I finished 258th out of 1288 runners! Pretty good for my first race, I think. Official time was 39:41.83 with a pace of 07:56.4.

After years of thinking I would never get into running, I’ve joined the whole Nike+ movement. I don’t know what happened. I started running a little at first. Just a hit on vacation. Then, last year, during the Summer, I socially ran with my woman on occasion, but I never craved it… Now, I dunno… I get urges…

I just need to remember to actually get better as evidenced by my second Nike+ enabled run:

 Although I’ve never been that into professional sports, I can’t help but still think about how amazing that Super Bowl win by the Giants was a week ago. Just incredible. The best Super Bowl I’ve certainly ever seen!

Plus taking photos at Tuesday’s ticker-tape parade in lower Manhattan was tons of fun, too.

I should remember to catch a game or two occasionally…

Although last year I did a decent job of securing tickets for the 2006 US Open, this year, I just let the Open sneak up on me with no real attempt to check it out.

Luckily, I got a last minute call from my cousin to join them for taking in a night of tennis. The day games that day had run late, but we managed to enjoy a match with Justine Henin vs Serena Williams (who we had also seen last year). And just like the year before, she lost. Next was Ferrer vs Nadal, and although these guys were great (especially the tenacious Ferrer), it was pretty late by then so we left after watching just 1 whole set. Oh well…

I should remember to try to get as close to court-side as possible next year, just to see how it feels.

(photo by rudsbp1)

In my effort to visit Coney Island more frequently before it get destroyed, I made it out to a nice Brooklyn Cyclones night game at Keyspan Park. I just love that park. It feels so good being right on the beach with the cool sea breeze blowing through it during games. Plus, the tickets are super cheap. (I’ve also seen a Björk concert there ages ago, which was amazing with fireworks and everything!)

This season they’re giving away a full Ms. Pac Man arcade game to the fan with the highest score of the season. Already, that stands at over 300,000 which is a very, very hard score to beat. Still, the high score of the day qualifies for a shirt… so with a score of 147,000 on the day I managed to take the win for my day!

As always the game was a ton of fun for more reasons that just watching the game (although not quite as many reasons as the Tokyo Giants game), so I gotta remember to practice up on my Ms Pac Man and check out the Cyclones all throughout their season.

I ran across this Getty Images photo of the Yankees win the other night on the Daily Intelligencer (one of New York Magazine‘s blogs) and I gotta say, it’s amazing. I wish I could take photos like this.

I need to remember to keep trying… Maybe I’ll be decent one day.