No More Hobbies

62 miles and over 11,000 feet of climbing

Last night I opened a fortune cookie that could not have been more wrong. "Now is a good time to start a new hobby". While the restaurant is having it's third best week of sales ever and I am trying to get my bicycle training in and I am finishing the extension of my drip irrigation to the four corners of my yard and I am trying to write an article for CDA/SPO mag and I am trying to maintain my bicycles (three flats, one broken spoke, leaking shocks, broken pedal, loose bar end and worn brakes all in one week) and I am trying to get things in order before a trip to Portland this weekend; I decide to buy a GPS and some Topographical mapping software.
I love gadgets and like the challenge of learning how to use them but I was a little nervous about this latest piece of technology because it doesn't follow the logical menu/layout/keystroke patterns of any other piece of software I have used. After a long weekend of hacking away at both the GPS and the mapping software I can finally use it albeit I still have a couple of rather important functions I can't do (when freehanding a route I can't figure out why it won't let me erase mistakes when I follow the keystroke actions the manual suggests).
I have been using the software to help map out long routes in the CDA N.F..AS much as I want to justify the importance of this activity, in the face of all the other work that needs to get done I am forced to set it aside and keep to the tasks that have pressing deadlines.
All of this puts next year into perspective. I realize that at some point this Fall or Winter I will have to eliminate all responsibilities not related to feeding my family or preparing me for the Great Divide Race. I am going to learn to say No to things I want to do. For now I have to finish a some writing, weed the garden, Fix yet another flat, get a bike ride in and maybe there will be some time to dust off the guitar.