I'm thinking about this because of a phone app I've been relying on to chart my progress to climb 70,000 feet over a 10-month period while I train to climb Mount Adams for my 70th birthday--and raise money for the One World Futbol Project.
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Mount Si as seen from Torguson Park. Little Si is tucked against Mount Si on the far left. |
The app is called Map My Hike, and it's supposed to track the distance, time and elevation gained when I'm hiking, and then record that on a Web site. It also estimates calories burned. Now you would think this would be rather straightforward. According to the app, I started at an elevation of 531 feet and ended up at an elevation of 1,423 feet, for a total elevaton gain of 892 feet.
However, Washington Trails Association (WTA) says Little Si is actually 1,550 feet tall, and the elevation gain in the hike is supposed to be 1,300 feet. But according to Wikipedia, North Bend has an elevation of 440 feet. So if you subtract 440 from 1550, you get 1,110 feet elevation gain. And if you trust Map My Hike's 531 starting elevation, you end up with only 1019 elevation gain. So who do you trust?
Oh, and WTA says the hike is 4.7 miles long, while Map My Hike says I hiked only 3.81 miles. This makes my head hurt.
Why 5,280 feet?
By the way, You can thank the Romans army for the length of a mile.
The Roman's were an organized bunch. They marched in cadence to move fast and stay organized in a tight formation. And they kept count of how many paces they marched. A pace is two steps, and each step was about 2.5 feet. So a pace--two steps--was about five feet. I've tried this; it's pretty accurate.
When the legions had marched 1,000 paces they had covered "mille paccum." That word, "mille", is where we get our word for mile. It's from that same Latin word that we derive the term, "mil," which you probably are familiar with if you pay property taxes. A mil is the amount of tax per thousand currency units of property value.
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A landslide from Mount Si covered part of the Little Si trail. |
The 20-minute mile.
On a good day, I can walk the mile to the downtown library in 20 minutes. Since 20 minutes is one third of a mile, I'm walking three miles an hour, which by some authorities, was the universal speed limit until the invention of the internal combustion engine. The Roman soldiers and Napoleon's troops all marched at the same rate, the story goes.
Of course, it depends on who's keeping time. The British cadence was a little slower, but Napoleon trained his troops to march 120 beats a minute, about the speed of a slow Viennese waltz, for you ballroom dancers. A fast Viennese can be 180 beats a minute, but I don't think anyone wants to do that while they're carrying a musket and provisions.
Napoleon and John Philip Sousa
Anyway, Napoleon's method of moving troops helps explain why Stars and Stripes Forever is performed at 120 beats a minute. The French played an important role in the American revolution and John Philip Sousa, the composer of great American march music, was of German and Portuguese extraction.
"Be kind to your web-footed friends..."
With that in mind, I tried to surpass my record on Little Si by humming Stars and Stripes Forever as I tramped through the woodland, around the boulders and up the inclines of Little Si. Instead of the more familiar parody lyrics for the song, I created my own: ("Oh, be kind to your blue-skinned fut- bol, 'cause he may be somebody's play thing...") As you might guess, I ran out of lyrics pretty quickly.
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Wilson makes a fruitless effort to befriend a nervous Zoey Papillon, who greeted us at a switchback. |
But my momentum was pretty good, until Wilson spotted Zoey, a furry little pure-bred Continental Toy Spaniel who greeted us at a switchback. This breed is also called "Papillon." which is French, for butterfly. The name derives from the long and fringed hair on the breed's ears. Wilson tried to make friends with Zoey while his mistress held him, but Zoey wanted nothing to do with the Blue Indestructible. He just wanted down.
About that time a couple with a golden retriever came along. The retriever got excited and wanted to play with Wilson, but the trail was steep, and setting Wilson down probably would have resulted in a mad down-slope scramble to get Wilson back. (I've since acquired a tether to keep Wilson from taking off.)
However, the dog's owners decided right away that having an indestructible ball for their pooch to play with was a grand idea, and they said they would be purchasing one. Afterward, I noticed that one more futbol has been purchased in the last couple days, so maybe that retriever is going to have an Indestructible for his own personal amusement.
So I may have made a sale, but I lost my momentum, and fell two minutes behind my former Little Si record.
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The One World Futbol takes a break to read some Tibetan Prayer Flags left at the Little Si summit. |
At the top of Little Si, I helped Wilson read a set of Tibetan prayer flags someone had strung up between a couple of trees. With each flap of the breeze, the flags apparently send off a prayer somewhere or other. Since The Indestructible is the One World Futbol, I thought a little familiarity with a foreign language might be useful.
The day's outcome:
According to Map My Hike, my average time was only 1.7 miles per hour, far shorter than the universal pre-industrial revolution speed limit. Of course, if I actually hiked 4.7 miles (WTA statistic), then I was hiking just slightly more than two miles per hour.
However, if I had maintained Napoleonic speed of 120 beats a minute, that would be 60 paces a minute. At five feet per pace and 60 minutes in the hour, I would be traveling 18,000 feet an hour or a blistering 3.4 mph. So I should have done the entire hike in just a little more than an hour. Well, more damn lies and statistics.
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Map from my personal page at http://www.mapmyhike.com |
Wednesday's Hike: 3.8 miles
Time: 3 hours
Today's elevation gain: 1,000 feet
Packing: 13-pound backpack
Accumulation to date: 49.4 miles, 13,498 vertical feet
Wow! 13,498 feet. One more good hike and I will have done a Rainier. (I'll explain what that's about after my next hike.)
If anyone wants to join me on any of these hikes, don't be bashful. E-mail me at dancingpotter@gmail.com.
Love,
Robert,
and Wilson
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