Goals

My plan for my next adventure is to bike the Katy Trail. Actually, my plan is to bike it both ways. This is a 237 mile long trail and it has been almost ten years since I last rode a bike so this plan might be overly ambitious. Unless I get a job before next Tuesday though I will at least be attempting an out and back ride of the Katy Trail.

I’m thinking it will take me about six or seven days each way to bike the trail. I’m guessing that I will be able to bike about 40 miles a day. Back in 2005 I biked 17 miles on the Virginia Creeper trail in about 2.5 hours with several breaks. The Katy Trail is also a relatively level, crushed limestone trail so I figure in a full day of riding I should be able to do about three times as much mileage. A bike ride from nine years and 35 pounds ago might not be the best basis for establishing my current bike riding ability though. My other thought is that I was able to hike 14 mile days on my recent hike. Biking should be at least three times as fast as hiking and 14×3 is 42 so that is another basis for my 40 miles a day estimate.

My method of biking the trail does allow me to scale back my daily mileage plan if it proves to be too ambitious. I’m going to ride out and back to my car each day. For example, the first day I might bike from the Clinton trailhead to Windsor and then ride back to the Clinton trailhead. The next day I would drive to Sedalia and ride from the Sedalia trailhead to Windsor and then back to the Sedalia trailhead. The trail has mile markers so if halfway through the day I feel like my initial goal for the day is too far I can note my current mile marker and turn around there for the day. Or if my initial goal was too easy I could push to a further mile marker before turning around for the day, but I doubt that will happen. This method will give me a lot of flexibility on how far I bike each day.

This method of biking will also help keep my costs down since I’ll be sleeping in my car rather than staying at a hotel at night. I’ll still stay at a hotel or campground some days since I won’t want to go more than a couple of days without a shower. This method will increase my gas costs since I’ll be driving each day, but overall the trip will be relatively cheap.

It is costing me a bit of money to get ready for this trip. I’m borrowing my girlfriend’s bike which has the advantage of being free. Unfortunately, it also has the disadvantage of being pink. It is also a cheap Walmart bike which might not be reliable for such a long ride. Since I’m riding back to my car each day it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle to make any needed repairs or possibly find a replacement bike.

That is my plan for now. Since I’m returning to my car each night I’ll be able to continue blogging and I’ll keep you updated on how the plan works.

Since I’m back from my hike and currently unemployed it is a good time to set some goals for the month so that I’m not completely lazy. I’m only going to set two goals for this month and they are both pretty easy.  If these seem too easy after a couple of weeks than I will add another goal or two.

My first goal for the month is to exercise at least a half hour every day.  Now that I’m no longer hiking I need to keep exercising or I will stop losing weight or even start gaining weight back.  This goal will usually be met by walking, but I might also get some biking or running in this month.  It will also sometimes be completed by doing yard work.  This goal should be simple since I can just walk around my block a few times while listening to a podcast to meet the goal for any particular day.  Since I find walking and listening to a podcast to be enjoyable I don’t think I will have too much resistance to meeting this goal.

My other goal for the month is to write 1000 words a day Monday through Friday.  Since I’m unemployed I have lots of time to meet this goal.  I think it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours to meet this goal each day.  I didn’t pay any attention to how long I spent writing today, but I am pretty sure it was less than two hours.  I haven’t done very well at writing goals in the past so I am looking forward to finally getting on the right track with writing.  My current writing streak is one day since I just started this goal, but I plan on keeping the streak going for a while.  I am giving myself weekends off from the goal, but I might go ahead and write on the weekend too if I feel like it.  I’m also giving myself one more out for this goal.  On days that I exercise for 4 or more hours I am excusing myself from meeting the writing goal for that day.  You might be wondering what I have planned that would lead me to exercising for 4 hours or more in a day.  The plan isn’t set in stone yet, but I will tell you about it in my next post.  A couple of hints: It isn’t a hike.  It involves a form of exercise I mentioned in this post.  Feel free to make a guess in the comments.

I thought I would post one more update on my goal progress for the month. The next goal update after this will be a post in early April reviewing how I did on my March goals.

My goal of exercising twice a week is still being met. If I had set a goal of exercising three times a week I’d be failing this goal. My exercise hasn’t exactly been intense either. I am meeting the goal I made though. Now that I know I can meet this exercise goal I can set a more difficult exercise goal in future months.

I’m also meeting my goal of posting a post on Bank Bonuses every day. These posts are done in batches and then scheduled ahead of time which makes it fairly easy to meet this goal. The posts are about deals so I don’t have to put much original thought into them. I just write about whatever the deal is that I’m posting about that day.

My goal of selling, donating, or trashing 31 items is not going well. So far I’ve trashed a couple of items and sold a couple of items. I managed to lose money on the items I sold since I underestimated how much shipping would cost. I probably should have donated those items instead. I’ve put a couple different lots of comic books on Craiglist and have gotten very little response. I don’t have much else to sell other than comic books so it doesn’t look like I’m going to meet this goal. I did have one person tell me they would buy the comics on the first if I still had them. If that happens and I count the comics individually rather than as a lot I’d meet the goal. That isn’t what I intended when I made the goal though so I think I’ll count the comics as a lot. I’ll have to figure a better way of selling them after this month.

As you can probably tell by the lack of posting here I am not meeting my goal of writing 300 words a day. I’m way behind on this goal and I don’t think there is any chance of me catching up on it. I do have a three day vacation next week, but I want to spend it recreating rather than writing. And I doubt my girlfriend would appreciate me spending all of our vacation on the computer so the vacation won’t be a time to catch up. I’m going to set a writing goal again later this year. Once I’m not working I won’t have any excuse for not meeting an easy writing goal.

It looks like I’m going to get half of my goals accomplished this month. That is better than getting nothing accomplished, but I know I can do better. We will see if I can improve by the end of the month.

This is my first update on my progress – or lack of progress – on the goals I set for myself this month. I set a goal to exercise at least twice a week. That was a pretty easy goal and I did manage to exercise two times this past week. I didn’t exercise more than that though. Since I did at least meet the goal I’m fine with my progress on this goal.

My writing goal for this month was to write 300 words a day and also write a post for Bank Bonuses every day. I did manage to at least get a post done for Bank Bonuses every day. I didn’t manage to write 300 words each day though. I only hit my writing goal three days in the past week. That means I’m 1200 words behind where I should be at this point. This isn’t good, but I think I can make up the missed days and get back on track. This goal was halfway achieved for the last week.

My final goal was to get rid of stuff by selling it, donating it, or throwing it away. I didn’t do any of that this week. This goal was a complete failure. It is still possible to get this goal back on track since it is early in the month. I have dug myself a little bit of a hole though.

This week I am off Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. I plan to have a marathon writing session on Thursday to get myself caught up and hopefully get ahead a little bit. I also plan to put some stuff up for sale and go through my stuff to see if there is anything to donate or trash. If I don’t get caught up this week, my odds of making my goals are pretty long. I still think I can do it. None of my goals are overly difficult. They just require a little time and self discipline to achieve.