Hiking out of town while staying in town

I hope everyone had a great Easter this past Sunday.  We had a training hike for our boys that are heading to Philmont this summer.  We are trying to get these boys out on the trail once a month getting that team mentality with each other and also breaking in their backs with a full load in their packs.  Since this was Easter weekend and doing a campout was out of the question our faithful leader put together a ten mile training hike at a local trail.  This was a great time to get the boys used to the heat.  Philmont is in Cimmaron, New Mexico and they are headed there in August so doing some quality heat training is a must. 

This trail we took on Saturday was real nice, shaded, and also a mountain bike trail.  Wow, I have never backpacked a mountain bike trail before.  OK, yes I have hiked a trail that was also open to mountain bikes but did not come across any on the trail.  This trail since it is in the heart of Dallas (Grapevine, TX) and the warm weather brought out all the local bikers.  The first thing the boys had to learn was trail etiquette.  I was the last person in the hiking file and was the first person to get a biker in the back.  Alot of the bikers were nice and if I did not see them they would ask to pass or some even had bells on their bikes to let me know they were coming up on us.  When a biker came to us I would yell: "To the right" and all of the boys would yell back: "to the right" and everyone instantly took to the right of the trail.  This is good practice for everyone to understand that no single group or person owns the trail and trail courtesy goes along way.  The nicer you are to others the nicer they are back.  Now I did get a few times where I would hear the skidding of tires before I knew a biker was coming on us.

Here I am testing my blood sugars and I had to take a picture of an epic 100!  There is something great to hit that number.  Now I like to keep my numbers around 150 to 220 but most of this Saturday was 56 to 110 all day and let me tell you what, I was sweating back to the oldies.  I definitely need to reduce my processed foods and try to add more fresh food to my diet.  We finished the day doing around 11 miles.

How scary is this photo?  My friend Charles took this photo as I was in mid changing my sweat soaked shirt into a fresh shirt to wear on the ride back.  The boys yelled at me to get my backpack loaded so we could get some ice cream.  So I threw my pack on and was taking it over and Charles was like, Hey Dave let me get a picture of your pale white diabetic self.  Then he asked my son to get in the picture with me.  I need to go on a diet, just wrong in so many ways.

So to take it one step further I decided to suck in my gut and have Charles take another picture with me.  Do you like my farmers tanned arms?  Nice huh?  This is now my motivation to get back into shape and not be so white and fluffy.