Home > Trip > Dispatches > Daily Dispatches 2013 > Daily Dispatch #61

March 2, 2013: Trip Preparations, Continued

Right now, Pete’s the one who is maintaining trip momentum. For sure, I’m excited about doing Part II of Tolting the Divide. It’s just not fully sunk in that we’re really going to do this. I’m sort of on auto-pilot. Hard to explain. Maybe it’s that the other things that I’ve been doing – various writing projects and tending to horses and cleaning up after them – has been taking up more mental energy than I’ve realized.

Yesterday we went to Anchorage, in part to do some trip shopping. I had to go to the dentist. After 30 years, my Maryland Bridge gave up the ghost. I had put off getting a new bridge for several months because I didn’t think we could afford it.



However, we now have the money to pay for this.

We also went to the boot shop – I need new hiking boots – couldn’t find a pair that fit. And we went to Costco. The latter was Déjà vu all over again. On the way there, I recalled our having, two years ago, going there with a similar mission in mind, which is to get trip provisions. I will soon begin prepping food for dehydration.

Costco is huge. It’s a literal warehouse full of nearly everything imaginable, food wise. You can load up on processed and unprocessed food. The place is so big that there’s a pre-cooled room full of fruits and vegetables. Upon entering the place, I feel as though I’ve stepped into another world, one that I am fascinated by, but don’t want to inhabit. The other shoppers seem to me to be quite alien, and I suspect are from another planet. I’m sure that word has gotten out to those who live far away that this is the place to shop. Gotta bring big screen TVs back to Uranus.

I have learned that I must have a certain mind set when I go to this place, which is I must be selective and focused. It’s would be too easy to fill the shopping cart with packages of processed seaweed and amaranth tortilla chips. And it would be too easy to stop and watch the hordes sidle up to what I call the grazing stations, and grab for the handouts, energy bars, cheese bits, and Vita-mix samples included.

I had a list in hand – this helped with focus and made us both more efficient. And we stuck to this list. One of our items read “camera.” Oh oh. But Pete and I agreed beforehand that we needed two cameras for our upcoming trip. This is because I was the sole photo-taker the last time around. There are now many, many photos of Pete, doing various things, but few of me.

We finally selected a small Lumnix with a Leica lens. It’s a nice camera, has aperture and shutter speed adjustments. We’ll have to find a way of recharging the battery when out on the trail. But then we’ll also have our back-up camera with us. Whatever I use, I can keep it in my fly fishing vest.

Pete and I were talking with a salesperson when I was distracted by the sight of a boxes containing a robotic vacuum cleaner – it was called a Roombah. This, I thought, is a wonderful name for such a thing. Of course, I had to check it out further. You set it up and it hauls itself around the room and picks up crud. How cool is that? I talked with Pete about getting one – the consummate shopper rightly said that this would distract the dogs. Jenna would bark at it and Rainbow would become distressed.

I’d like to have one of these things for picking up horse poop. This would save me considerable time. If the future is to be now, I’m all for it.

The future may not be now, but it is drawing closer. We’ll be leaving here June 15th. And in the meantime, we have a great deal to do. Somehow, it will all get done. I’ll be having my new bridge put in in a few weeks, and at that time, we’ll be making another run to Costco. The next time, I’ll take my new camera with me.

Next: 62. 3/3/13: Horse Injuries