Week 186 Update

I woke up this morning just after 02:00, to the phone ringing. It was Dotti calling in tears telling me that her mother had just died. She and her brother had been keeping vigil over their mother during the night, and at 02:05 Dotti's mom breathed her last.

I somehow found my wits enough to jump on the scale (time 02:12), and then write down the results in my journal (184.0 pounds), before throwing on my clothes and getting out the door. I set a record in getting over to the nursing home, and was the first of the family members to arrive. Next week I will write more about this tragic event.

Saturday I weighed 183.5 pounds. I had eaten 50.0 points on Friday, and I was even lower on the scale on Saturday than I had been on Friday. So, I had a big splurge. There was this very large piece of pumpkin cheesecake left from Thanksgiving. Jim had a slice, and Dotti had a very small slice, leaving this very large remaining chunk of temptation and points. I decided to throw caution to the wind and accept Jim’s offer of the rest of the cheesecake. That was 30.0 points. Still thinking of that 183.5 reading on my weigh-in, I also had a large glass of eggnog, for another 20 points. Later in the day we all went to Costco and I had a Very Berry Sunday for 6 points. Later I had 9.0 points worth of coconut covered cashews, some popcorn, a chocolate covered cherry and a few other items. I only had 12.0 points for my actual meals, but I had 76.5 points that fell into the snack column. The result? A personal record setting 88.5 points in one day.

Sunday I woke up and paid the price, as the scale jumped up 2.5 pounds to 186.0 pounds. It gave me something to contemplate as we set out on our trip from Spokane, Washington to Pocatello, Idaho. The trip was 570 miles long, including a side trip of several miles to get some gas in an isolated part of Montana. We set off from Jim and Tammy’s house at about 08:00, got some gas, and hit the freeway about 08:15. The temperature was 22º, and it fluctuated all along the trip. It warmed up to 33º for a brief point on the trip (the last above freezing temperature we saw until Thursday afternoon), but fell below freezing again shortly. As we climbed the mountains in Montana, and eastern Idaho, the temperature dropped to 14º at one point.

The Mountain Time Zone is defined by a line that is anything but straight in the Pacific Northwest. At its northernmost point in the United States it lies on the eastern border of the Idaho panhandle, and follows that border southward, leaving most of the Idaho panhandle in the Pacific Time Zone. While the entire state of Montana lies in the Mountain Time Zone, Idaho is divided up in a way that visually makes no sense at all. Ignoring a narrow exception on its western border, the part of Idaho that lies a bit south of the Washington/Oregon border is all in the Mountain Time Zone, and all of the territory north of that line is in the Pacific Time Zone. Then, for some strange reason, the Mountain Time Zone extends into south eastern Oregon for a ways. It seems really strange to see a portion of a state to the west of Idaho lie inside the Mountain Time Zone, while such a significant portion of Idaho is in the Pacific Time Zone.

Fortunately, for our trip, when we left Idaho and entered Montana, we entered the Mountain Time Zone, but when we headed south and reentered Idaho, the point where we entered the 43rd state, was also in the Mountain Time Zone. So, we only had to change our clocks once, and we wouldn't have to change them back until Thursday, when we were well inside the Oregon border on our way back home.

We saw snow here and there all along the trip, but it was all already on the ground, and off the road. The sun was shining brightly nearly all day long. An occasional solar trip behind a cloud did occur, but each of them was short lived. Dotti put a blanket up on the passenger’s side window to block the sun. We were warm all the way with the heater going in the car, even though we had the sunroof tilted open to give us some fresh air. Around 5 PM, the sun went down over the Rocky Mountain peaks to our west, while more of the Rockies lay to the east. It was a beautiful site!

At Missoula, Montana we stopped for a Subway sandwich. As we approached the city, the Clark Fork River kept snaking back and forth under the freeway that we were on. I was very happy to see that river, since I have read so often about the Bretz Floods, and those floods were created by that very river! During the last ice age, the Clark Fork River was dammed by a glacier. The water accumulated in a huge lake that is called today, Lake Missoula. While driving through Missoula, we saw a hillside with numerous horizontal markings created by previous shorelines of this tremendous lake. When the ice dam broke, the 500 cubic miles of water behind it drained in 48 hours, and went on a rampage unequaled anywhere on earth. It submerged Spokane under 500 feet of water, ripped through the Grand Coulee and created numerous other Coulees across the central part of Washington, and roared through the Columbia Gorge, transporting rocks that were buried in ice blocks that had been formed by the shattering of the glacial dam. Those rocks, many of which had originated in Canada, have been discovered where they were deposited in many locations, including the Willamette Valley. Seeing the Clark Fork River, and the ancient shorelines above Missoula, was very exciting to me.

At 6:45 PM local time, when we pulled into our parking place at the motel in Pocatello, the thermometer read 19º. We unloaded the car, and then walked 0.2 miles over to Applebees restaurant for dinner. We each had a great salad for dinner, and then we walked back to the hotel. That was the extent of my walking that day. The ground had some snow, and here and there were patches of ice. We wore our snow boots and they helped us deal with the lack of traction that our feet were encountering.

My total points for the day came to 39.0. I also finished my seventh journal book. My first weigh-in for Book 7 was on May 13, 2004, (day 1098) and it was 185.5 pounds. So, in 200 days, my weight increased one-half pound.

When we found that ice was on the streets and sidewalks of Pocatello, I realized that I would have to alter my walking routine. When we found out that the motel didn’t have a treadmill, I knew that I was going to have to take a break from walking for a few days. My goal of reaching 1200 miles for the year is looking farther away than ever. We will have to see what I can do in December.

On Monday, the one thousand two hundred ninety-eighth day of my journey, I began my eighth journal book, as I continued to pay the price for Saturday’s 88.5-point extravaganza. The scale read 186.0 once more, when I woke up at 7:25 AM. The temperature outside was 6º at that time, but it warmed up to 26º in the afternoon. Monday was a scheduled travel day to get to Pocatello. However, since we were worried about the traveling conditions, we did the actual traveling the day before, just to make sure that we made it on time. We spent the day in Pocatello, shopping and relaxing. We didn’t have breakfast until late, and so we combined breakfast and lunch. I ended up eating 22.0 points for that meal, but I missed lunch, and ate only 4.0 points for dinner. I had 12.0 snack points, and ended the day with a total of 38.0 points. By 10:00 PM, the temperature had already fallen to 10º.

Tuesday morning, at 5:12, I weighed 185.5. It was 4º outside. Brrr! When I arrived in the parking lot at work my car’s outside thermometer read 10º, but it’s reading had been dropping all the way from motel. The Weather Bug, and Underground Weather both said it was 4º at that time. So, I think the car thermometer might have continued to drop if I had given it more time. The car engine temperature gauge was buried into the cold peg when I first started up the car. It started to creep up as I left the parking lot heading for the freeway. When I got back off the freeway, after only going one exit, the temperature indication was about halfway to normal. I kicked on the heater full blast, and the car temperature took a dive. It never did reach normal before I parked and turned off the ignition. Pocatello is a very cold place in the winter, or fall for that matter.

Tuesday was the start of a major PM (preventive maintenance evolution). I tore my section of the machine apart, and scrubbed it down to bare metal. (The inside was thickly coated with Arsenic and Phosphorus, that had been cooked on.) I then took the parts I had removed from the machine and scrubbed them clean as well.

Next we went to lunch at Sizzler, and I had a hamburger and fries (25.0 points). We went back and put the machine back together. A couple of things came up that set us back, and it was about 8 PM when I finally walked outside into the 24º nighttime air.

Looking up into the black sky was a little difficult because numerous white intricately shaped ice crystals kept hitting me in the glasses. Yes, it had begun snowing. I went walking in the wintry white world, across the parking lot searching for my car. While concentrating on finding my car, I had forgotten about the ice that lay buried under the new snow, from the previous snowfall. I almost took a tumble, but righted myself just in time. I was more careful after that, and there were no more close calls.

When I arrived at my car it was covered in about half an inch of snow already. As I was brushing it off my windshield, and the top of my car, I noticed that the snow was very dry, light as Splenda, and it didn’t stick to my car at all. It brushed off cleanly, as if it was composed of tiny balls of cotton or Styrofoam. Driving home the roads were slick, and the locals had better tires on their cars for snow than I did. I went a little slower than they liked, but I made it back to the motel safely.

I was tired and sore after all the work I had done, and I settled in for a nice quiet evening with Dotti. I had a simple 4.5-point meal, and I ended the day having consumed 41.5 points. I am sure that I ran a deficit on points that day.

So naturally, Wednesday I weighed 187.0 when I woke up. The temperature nearly felt balmy, as it was in the 20s, when I got in the car to go to work. My work day was a busy one, as we found one problem after another on the machine as we were trying to bring it back up after it had been disassembled and scrubbed clean on Tuesday, and quickly put back together. We didn’t make it out to lunch until nearly 3 PM, but Dotti had waited for me, and so I came back to the motel and took her to Applebees. It was nice spending time with my best friend in the middle of a day that had been so otherwise so frustrating. Meanwhile back at work, we worked late once more, and it was after 7 PM before I headed out to my car, but the machine had finally returned to operational status, as it passed its final check.

I came back to the room and had a light snack. I ended up eating 32.0 points for the day.

During the day, after our lunch together, Dotti got word that her mother was nearing death’s door, and that we may have to hurry to make it back in time. So, we made arrangements to hit the road early in the morning on Thursday.

Thursday I rolled out of bed around 3:30 AM. I couldn't sleep any longer, and I knew we had to get home as quickly as possible so Dotti could see her mom. Neither Dotti nor I had slept well. I weighed 187.0 before packing the scale away. We got the car loaded up and grabbed a quick bowl of cereal, and a cup of coffee before heading out. We stopped for some gas, and then were on the road by 4:40 AM. The temperature was in the low 20s but the roads were dry leaving Pocatello.

Miles slowly rolled by. The outside temperature remained low as we passed by Twin Falls, and Boise. We left Idaho, and sometime after entering Oregon, we crossed into the Pacific Time Zone. The time suddenly went from 9:04 AM to 8:04 AM. We continued along with temperature in the low 20s, as we passed through Baker City, and Grande Ronde, Oregon. Our elevation climbed to 3800 feet above sea level, dropped well into the 2000s (and the temperature climbed to 30º) before climbing back up over 4000 feet (and a temperature in the low 20s again).

We had not seen a temperature over 32º since leaving Spokane, and frankly I was kind of excited about the prospect. When it is below freezing, every little patch of moisture is a potential problem. When it is above freezing they are nothing to worry about. The clouds broke, as we were near the summit, and we had blue skies backing giant pines, flocked with beautiful white snow, surrounded by a thick blanket of snow. It was as if hundreds of beautiful Christmas trees were laid out perfectly for a gigantic store window display.

As we dropped out of the mountains, on a hill that had a 6-mile grade of 6% (dropping 317 feet per mile), I was calling out the degrees as they moved up into the upper 20s, and finally into the 30s. When we hit 33º, we finally had broken the freezing streak. We pulled in for lunch at Sharis in Pendleton, Oregon. We were still 200 miles from home, but we had come 450 miles already, and felt like the hard part was over. The temperature was 38º, and it seemed so warm that we didn't even bother to wear our coats in. I had a breakfast style meal, with hash browns and eggbeaters, which added up to 17.5 points.

I had checked the internet before we left, and I was expecting the road conditions to be great from Pendleton on to Portland; but right out of town we hit very heavy fog. We passed underneath an electronic Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) sign that was so shrouded in fog that it was very difficult to read the warning message stating that there was heavy fog ahead. Fortunately the fog only lasted a few miles, and then we broke out into clear driving for the rest of the trip.

I was extremely tired by the time we hit the Columbia Gorge, and I had to fight to keep my eyes open on the last leg of the trip.

Ten and a half hours after we started, we finally pulled into the nursing home where Dotti's mom was being taken care of. We went in to see her, and just her appearance caused Dotti to break into tears immediately. We knew she wasn't doing well but we were not ready for what we found. I won't go into details here, but we both felt very glad that we had left extra early and had hurried to make it. The doctors were not giving any hope of recovery and they were only giving medication to Dotti's mom to ease any discomfort she might be having. It appeared to be a matter of waiting for the inevitable.

I ended up eating 57.5 points for the day. It was higher than I wanted to go, but for the type of day that I had, I didn't feel too bad about it.

Friday I weighed at 6:22 when I woke up, after getting to bed about 1:30 in the morning. The scale said 185.0 pounds. Dotti had spent the night at the nursing home where her mom was staying. Her twin sister, and her youngest brother and sister also stayed with her.

The early part of the day was keeping vigil, and I sang a few songs for Dotti's mom. She indicated that she had heard and enjoyed them. Dotti's youngest sister brought our 12-year old nephew with her when she flew out yesterday from Virginia. His mom was looking for a way to get him away from the nursing home for a while, and so I took him to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. We both had a good time, watching an Omnimax movie (Forces of Nature), viewing a planetarium show on the stars that are visible from the Pacific Northwest throughout the year, touring a submarine ( the U.S.S. Blueback ), working several mental puzzles, and enjoying the general science exhibits. I hadn't seen my nephew since he was about 3 years old, and I was very impressed with how he has developed into a fine young man; intelligent, well mannered, and yet self-assured. He was fun to visit with, in spite of the circumstances that made it possible, I am very glad that I had this opportunity to get to know him once more. I am sure that he will do very well in his future life.

When we got back, things had not really change with Dotti's mom. She appeared to be getting weaker, but she was still holding on. The vigil continued. Dotti's youngest brother and I took a walk down to a Seven-Eleven, because he needed something. It was 0.5 miles each way. So, I got one mile of walking in.

I ate 7.0 points for breakfast, and then at OMSI, I had a piece of pizza and a salad. They came to 10.0 points. For dinner I ate 3.0 points, and my total for the day ended up at 25.5.

3 years, 207 days OP; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

6 '3" 239.5/184.0/180±2/BMI:23.00/WK-186
GRAPHS: Weight Loss/Year 1 Maint./Year 2 Maint./Year 3 Maint./Miles Walked
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