So here we are, at Issue #1.   I didn’t get everything in that was mentioned in the preview post. In fact, in retrospect, I didn’t get any of it.  Instead, I got important stuff:  Content!  So there we go.  Twitter is gone, the moblog section still lives until I can find something else to go there, no new recipes made it into In the Kitchen, and the library section’s CSS still needs massive work.

Instead, enjoy the content.  You get new music, prelim new fitness stuffs, and two new hiking trails + photos.  The rest will come in due time (Issue 1.5?!)

On a deeper level however, fitness is more than just simple beauty jealousy.  It starts that way for most, but I think in many cases it ends up being more about being generally healthy overall.  Once you start, you can’t stop.  You get addicted to the endorphins and then.. there ya go.  Fitness is the new drug of America.

So here’s my testimony to my own fitness.  I was poking around on a random runner’s blog site the other day and he mentioned how much it helped him.  It gave him documented goals and an enormous support network of people who came by and encouraged him.  While I have my own support network in real life, I did want to be able to encourage others in their goals too.  I was already tracking my exercise, food, and weight routines via spreadsheet, but I decided to put it all together here.

Going forward, on the first of each month, I’ll be posting stats here.  While I try to exercise in some form or another (swimming, hiking, lifting, etc) at least 5 times a week, there’s no way I have time to update this site that often.   Once a month I’ll post the latest figures from my spreadsheets and we’ll see how we go from there.   Even though there won’t necessarily be a new issue every month, you can always click the fitness tab on the front page to see the latest post.

I’ve listened through a bunch of her songs on Youtube, but to be honest the only two that impressed me were “I Kissed a Girl” and “Ur So So Gay”.  I think both of these are awesome: the music itself is catchy with a good beat, and the lyrics tell a story and are superb.  I just wish the other stuff I heard was as good as those two.  They’re not necessarily bad, but I don’t think they’re on the same level with those two.

Her YouTube channel is good, she does some video blogging as well.  It’s amazing (to me) that she comes across as “genuine” as she does, but I think that’s what helps sell her image/message so easily.  Either way, it comes across in her video blog and her songs, and I think it’s refreshing to see a non-manufactured entry into the music business.

I did this park twice over two weekends, to hit all of the trails.  Day 1 was the Jeff Friend Trail and the Centennial Trail, and Day 2 was the Pine Beach Trail.

Day 1

I started out heading for the main trail for this refuge, the Pine Beach Trail and instead stopped when I saw the sign for the Jeff Friend Trail. I decided it was short (1 mile loop), so I’d do it first.

People hike for different reasons: exercise, just to be outdoors, bird / animal watching, photography, the reasons are countless.  The Jeff Friend Trail is just about only good for exercise, as it’s completely graveled so any sort of walking scares off any animal or bird that might be in the vacinity.

About halfway around I found a sign for the Centennial Trail, which is supposed to be a 2 mile trail between the Jeff Friend Trail and the Pine Beach Trail. It was a normal trail through the woods, so I decided “why not” and off I went. Apparently I had the bad luck all around to be out during the wrong time of day and the wrong season- about the only wildlife I saw was millions of lizards and a few birds.  I don’t really count the billion + stinging flies.

The trail was fairly flat and easy, and swaps between sand and dirt, but the area has a fairly high water table as it stretches the length of the very narrow Bon Secour penninsula. It’s so low in fact, that in some areas water was seeping up through the ground to make little saltwater ponds.   The water throughout seemed to be brackish, and there was even some fairly large bodies of standing water about a football field in size.

Overall, there just wasn’t that much to see.  I ended up being on the trail between 10 and 2, so most wildlife (if it was there) was hiding out.  It was also miserably hot, and no shade since most of the trees were broken off from hurricanes or fires over the years.  I understand the environmental value of wetlands, but they’re just not that fun to visit in summer.  I reached the Pine Beach Trail around 1, but turned around as it’s 80% sand and hiking boots just aren’t made for that.

Day 2

Since I had read that the Pine Beach Trail ends at the beach, this time I packed a back and decided to make a day of that.  I got there earlier (cooler!), so  the walk was pleasant and I ended up doing the beach section barefoot.  Some better pictures this time around, there was definitely better weather, but still not much in the way of wildlife.

The first trail I began from Hiking Alabama was a tiny one- Black Willow Trail: end to end is barely 1 mile, and it’s almost all boardwalk.  The park itself is REALLY tiny at only about 1300 acres.  The park is stretched across multiple islands, so if you’re planning to explore it fully, bring a boat. I don’t recommend much off trail action as land turns to water very quickly, and there’s a large population of black bears and American alligators.

To be honest, this was probably not my favorite park. I will probably never be my favorite park. If you’re into fishing, this is a great park for you. It has the barest necessities, with easy access to local fishing and boat ramps. It’s also on a 5 mile strip of road that has some of the area’s best seafood restaurants. For the nature lover in all of us, the dense undergrowth and marshy area make it almost impossible to go off trail, and there’s always the danger from snakes, alligators, and bears. I can’t repeat enough- bring a small boat!

I will say this about the park- it has easy access to wildlife, so if you’re into wildlife photography that’s an easy one. I got plenty of pictures of an alligator, not 5 feet from the shore. I didn’t see any bears (I’m sure they’re not on the main island much, too many people), but I saw at least 5 or 6 different types of birds.

All in all, I only spent about 2 hours total in the park. I managed to make the hike 2 miles by parking at the far end from the Black Willow Trail, but that’s about all there was to see. There was a brief trail through a pine forest, but it wasn’t more than a quarter mile. It was apparent someone had been using it as a dumping ground which really detracted as well.

6/5/2008 edit: Apparently, more of the park extends north across the highway. There is absolutely no indication of this, which is a bit dissapointing.  Also, everything through there would be off trail, which I wasn’t prepared for anyway.

• More Recipes! Bachelor cooking for teh win.
• More fitness bits! This will tie into my hiking and photography sections as I document my way through “Hiking Alabama“. Please ignore the crappy library function / design.
• Redesigned library functions, with the library added back to the site.
• The death of the twitter function. (done)
• The death of the moblog section. This should be replaced (hopefully) with guides and walkthroughs.

Only a few more weeks to go…

Well, I’ve decided to release content on my website in content blocks, magazine style. Issue #0 is just a way of summing up all the content from my old site, plus a few posts from this site.

Issue #1 should be along shortly

You can find Issue #0 here.

I went grocery shopping this morning hoping to beat the crowds. Good thing I didn’t need eggs. There was about 2 boxes of egg beaters and the rest was gone.

I’ve been bed/house ridden for the past four days, and I’ve been going stir crazy. I haven’t been able to work out for two weeks, due to my Omaha trip and being sick, so I watched lots and lots of reruns of Sell This House. Why? Mainly just for her. Rawr. And she’s single! I did manage to get out to meet Mom, Dad, and Lena for lunch so that helped a little. I need to massively go grocery shopping, but I think I’m going to try that tomorrow morning while everyone’s in church for Easter.

Work on my websites sorta ground to a halt during my week o’ sickness- I couldn’t even manage to sit up for longer than an hour without a coughing fit, so I tended to sleep for most of it. I did manage to get my VMWare server up and running, including my 4 virtual machines (yah!). So far I have two Windows 2003 servers (AD/DNS controllers), a Windows XP test machine, and a Fedora Core 8 (linux) server for php/mysql learning experiences.

I got interviewed as an artist (hush, it’s not funny) for a friend’s college class, and it made me realize how much I missed sketching. I’m going to try and get back into it more, another one of those “non-computer related hobbies” I keep trying to find.

So I’m shooting for Monday to resume working out. Hopefully this stupid pneumonia and pleurisy are gone, because if not I can’t strain my left arm and I can’t do any heavy breathing. That would make me a sad panda.