Week 3 - Day 4 - 883 days to go

I will not give in to impatience again.

I will not give in to impatience again.

I will not give in to impatience again.

I will not give in to impatience again.

But I'm so sick of my hip not being 100%!

I pushed myself a bit too much today during my morning workout and consequently was hurting the rest of the day when running about town, doing errands.  I need to keep in mind that it's slow and steady to get the hip rehabiilitated and that pushing too hard can actually set me back.  It's difficult not to give in to the feeling of "if working hard is good, then working harder is even better, right?" trap.  Patience, grasshopper.  Slow and steady.

I was thinking about medical stuff today.  Late last year I recertified my first aid and CPR.  It was a multi-day class that dealt with cpr, injuries, etc.  As I think about what it would be like to be in the middle of the ocean when something serious happens, I realized how woefully unprepared I am for such an eventuality.  We may be in radio contact with people, but it's still something that we have to deal with ourselves.  We may be days, even weeks, away from external help.  Yet another thing to add to the "to do" list - take some further medical training.

About 60 hours now from departure for the trip around Vancouver Island.  My bag is, theoretically, packed except for clothing.  Still, I'm debating what stuff I can remove from the bag to reduce the amount of "stuff" I'm carrying.  Remember the earlier entry where I showed what was in my bag?  Now there's a little bit more, basically the sextant and knotmeter.  Fortunately, the sleeping bag doesn't have to go and that frees up some space, but it's a longer trip, so need more clothing.

I know have a roll of loonies (a "looney" is a Canadian $1.00 coin, so called because it has a loon on one side of it) to be used for pay showers at some of our stops.  It can get a bit ripe on board the ship after a bunch of days .  Though the boat does have a shower, it also has a limited water supply, so we have to be judicious about water usage.  No daily shower for everyone, even a water-conserving shower.

What's a water-conserving shower?  It goes something like this:

1. Step into the head (which doubles as a shower stall).
2. Turn on the water and direct it towards yourself.
3. Gasp from the cold (since we warm the water mainly when the engine is running).
4. Wet yourself down quickly
5. Turn the water off.
6. Soap yourself up entirely.  Shampoo your hair too if you're doing that.
7. Turn the water back on and rinse yourself (quickly) off.
8. Don't forget to gasp again.
9. Turn the water off.
10. Dry yourself off, as best you can when inside a something that approximates a damp telephone booth
11. Put on your clothes that have, hopefully, remained dry

Alternately, when you put in at a port, they usually have coin-operated showers to use.  You go through pretty much the same process except that instead of turning the water on, you insert a looney.  It will turn itself off when your time is up.  Then it's "Insert one looney for another minute" (or couple of minutes) of warm water.

Oooo, and I probably want to bring some laundry soap too.  It would be nice to be able to do some laundry about half way throuigh, especially if I have a  very limited set of clothing.  That, too, requires coins.

So much to do, still.  I know that 883 days sounds like a lot, but I've already used 17 of the original 900, which means I've used up 1/60th of the time - nearly 2%.  Put that way, time feels like it's slipping past too quickly.

I still have to raise funds too and, I admit, that's causing me a lot of anxiety.  Oh well, concentrate on the coming two weeks and deal with raising funds when I get back.