This is a vegan, gluten-free smoothie recipe that I do not believe will change your life. Or will it? Just make sure you follow the directions.

Ingredients

• 1.5-inch ginger root
• 录 cup raw pumpkin seeds
• 鈪� cup hemp hearts
• 1 apple
• 1 cucumber (sub 1 large carrot during winter)
• 2 cups frozen chopped spinach
• 2 cups flax milk
• 1.5 cups water

Directions

1. Get out your blender and assemble your ingredients.
2. Break or cut off a chunk of ginger root and put it in the blender. You can peel it if you鈥檇 like, but the whole thing is edible…and it鈥檚 going in a blender. (I just rinse it with some water.)
3. Measure the pumpkin seeds and hemp hearts and dump them into the blender.
4. Cut the cucumber into chunks, cut the apple into fourths, and remove the core and stem. Put them both in the blender.
5. Measure your frozen spinach, flax milk, and water, and pour them into the blender.
6. Turn on the blender on a low setting at first, then higher. As you watch the blender pre-digest all those healthy ingredients for you, think about what this smoothie represents: a commitment to clean eating and living, a promise to yourself to make better dietary choices, and unlocking the secrets to longevity and eternal youth. It could change your life. Or maybe you like your life? Or at least enough of it that you don鈥檛 need to change the whole thing and become a completely new person? Things are OK, for the most part, right? You鈥檙e good at some stuff, some people like you, maybe some things could be a little better, but that鈥檚 true with everyone, probably. You鈥檙e doing just fine in the grand scheme of things. (Some fruits and vegetables and fiber and micronutrients and vitamins can鈥檛 hurt, though.)
7. Split the contents of the blender between two 32-ounce jars, one for today and one for tomorrow. It makes a lot. But then you only have to wash the blender every other day.

Nutrition Info:

440 calories

25 grams fat

28 grams carbohydrates

11 grams fiber

11 grams sugar

25 grams protein

527 mg calcium

9.8 mg iron

527 mg calcium

824 mg potassium

Want more of听国产吃瓜黑料鈥檚 Health stories?听.

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My wife, Hilary, was essentially handing me a gift, and I didn鈥檛 know what to do with it: She was taking our toddler, Jay, to the Oregon coast for a week, and I was invited to not join them.

Meaning: I had a full week to do anything I wanted, for the first time since Jay was born 14 months prior. No toddler wrangling, no constant vigilance to make sure he didn鈥檛 fall off something, or stick his finger in something, or eat something indigestible. I could stay up late, sleep in, eat takeout, whatever. OR: I could go on a big adventure somewhere, like I used to do: I could fly (by myself!) somewhere for a few days, or take a road trip, or pack a backpack and spend five days in the backcountry. What should I do?

One of my favorite memes of the past five years is the . It started as someone revisiting their childhood memory of asking their mother to take them to McDonald鈥檚, only to have their mother say, 鈥淲e have food at home.鈥� And then the meme of course evolved from there, in incredibly diverse ways.

I鈥檇 lived in Missoula for about five years of my adult life in total (over two stints), and I still felt like I hadn鈥檛 seen that much of it鈥攇rad school, then Covid, then pregnancy, and a new baby kept me around town (or that鈥檚 what I told myself).

And then with an entire week off to go exploring, I got choice paralysis, and finally just decided to stay home. Luckily, we have trails at home.

I picked out some mountains, some close, some a little farther away, some legit rocky peaks and some just really steep tall grassy summits, and asked some friends to join me for different ones. I shot some video every day, put it on a hard drive, and thought 鈥淚鈥檒l make sense of this someday.鈥�

When I finally sat down with all the clips, I found myself digging way back in my own history to figure out a through line. As you鈥檒l see if you watch the video, it goes up.

The post I Just Like Standing on Summits. All Summits. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

I have run and bicycled a certain one-mile section of the paved riverfront multi-use path in my hometown probably at least 200 or 300 times. A handful of times, I have thought to myself, 鈥淚 should really stop and read some of these historical plaques along the trail.鈥� I believed there to be two or three of them, and in four years, I never made the minuscule effort to pull off the trail even once for the 60 to 90 seconds required to read them.

A few weeks ago, though, I finished reading what I think is now one of my favorite adventure books, and I got inspired. Because books can do that.

Dean Karnazes鈥檚 Ultramarathon Man inspired hundreds or thousands of people to try ultrarunning, Colin Fletcher鈥檚 books inspired probably thousands of people to take up backpacking, and Cheryl Strayed鈥檚 Wild inspired a generation of thru-hikers. My friend Alastair Humphreys鈥� new-ish book was the catalyst for one of the least epic, but most satisfying adventures of my recent life.

The book is called Local: A Search for Nearby Nature and Wildness, and the concept is this: A guy who lives in the suburbs of London looks for adventure on the 400-square-kilometer map with his house in the center. This particular guy has bicycled 46,000 miles around the world for four years, rowed a boat across the Atlantic Ocean, and walked across the Empty Quarter Desert towing a giant homemade cart. It鈥檚 no Into Thin Air, or story of survival in Antarctica, or tale of the first human forays into some unexplored corner of Earth. But Al got this map, decided to spend a year essentially 鈥渟taying home,鈥� exploring one randomly-selected square kilometer per week, whether or not it looked interesting on the map.

Here is one of my favorite paragraphs in the book, on page nine:

鈥淲hat if where I live, this bog-standard corner of England, which had held no surprises for me, was actually full of them, if I only bothered to go out and find them? Not known, because not looked for. This was an opportunity to get to know my place for the first time and to search closer to home than ever before for things I鈥檝e chased around the globe: adventure, nature, wildness, surprises, silence and perspective.鈥�

I imagine having to write a book about the experience pushed Al to try to dig up interesting things about each grid square he explored鈥攚hich, in my reading, often resulted in me looking up from the book and saying to Hilary, 鈥淒id you know 鈥︹€� And it reminded me of some of the best tour guides I鈥檝e met on trips, who remain enthusiastic after repeating the same facts and figures hundreds of times鈥攐r my sister-in-law鈥檚 father, John, who has lived in the same town in Wisconsin for almost his entire life and seems to have a million pieces of local trivia ready at all times. And how last year I traveled to a spot very close to my hometown鈥檚 , but still hadn鈥檛 read the goddamn signs on the riverfront path I鈥檓 on five times a week.

So Tuesday morning, after riding my bike to drop off our little guy at daycare, I pedaled down the section of path I鈥檝e traversed so many times on foot and on skinny tires, and I stopped at every single plaque. There are 10 of them in the span of that one mile, detailing the human and geologic history of the valley here dating back 16,000 years: the lumber baron who built a mansion near the mouth of the creek (and whose widow, more notably, donated the land for the city鈥檚 first park), the bridges that washed away in floods, the glacial lake that flooded and carved out the valley several times in 鈥渙ne of the most significant geological events in the history of the world,鈥� and did you know we used to have a streetcar here? I mean, I guess not really 鈥渨e,鈥� but the people who lived here a century ago.

Several years ago, at an American adventure film festival, I saw a film of an expedition to climb a mountain in a country halfway around the world. In one scene, as the team of climbers slogged onward and upward through the jungle under ridiculously heavy backpacks, they passed through a village and a few local children and adults watched them. The characters in the film were of course far from home, very 鈥渙ut there鈥� in many ways, and struggling against great odds for a goal and a story about trying to reach that goal. But to the people who lived in the village, it was just Wednesday. Maybe a notable Wednesday, since these weird people with colorful clothing and backpacks were passing through, and that didn鈥檛 happen every Wednesday. But I found myself thinking more of the contrast: Eight people having a capital-A adventure within ten feet of other people sitting in their front yards. Which is something that never happens in my neighborhood, because people don鈥檛 fly halfway around the world to climb the mountains near my house.

But should you have to spend several days and thousands of dollars traveling to have an interesting experience? Seems a little elitist, doesn鈥檛 it?

My friend Forest and I have spent time together in many beautiful places, usually as photographer (him) and writer (me). I have picked up a handful of camera tricks from him over the years, but have no illusions about switching careers to photography. I asked him one time to tell me how I could improve my photography, based on what he鈥檇 seen, and he gently suggested that I should try to get closer. Of course he was right鈥擨 always default to the 鈥渢iny person in huge landscape鈥� shot, which is easy for me to see and feel (we鈥檙e so small out there!), but hard to replicate without a long lens. Being able to look closer, to zoom in, is something I still struggle with, literally in photography and metaphorically in life. Isn鈥檛 it harder to experience wonder the closer you are to where you live and work and get stuck in traffic and take out the trash, or is that just me? I aspire to be someone who can find wonder anywhere.

I鈥檓 not saying that reading a handful of plaques has now made me some sort of expert. But it did send me to the library, and to Google some things鈥攚hich I wouldn鈥檛 have Googled without having my interest piqued by what was on those plaques (the environmental disaster behind the old dam) and what was not on those plaques. (Okay, but what about the history of indigenous people in this area?) Which is something we are lucky to have the ability to do nowadays, to follow up on our interest(s) .

Another paragraph from the introduction of Local:

鈥淚鈥檇 imagined this would be a year of poking around rabbit holes in the countryside, but it became a year of falling down internet rabbit holes about hundreds of obscure topics, as well as reading dozens of books about history, nature, farming, and the climate emergency. Anything clever you read in the following pages, and almost every fact and figure, was new to me when I began this book. Do not make the mistake of thinking I鈥檓 a clever person who can stand in an empty field and see biology, geology, and every other 鈥檕logy, while you merely see a field. I, too, saw only the fields before I started, but paying close attention unveiled so much.鈥�

Of course I love to travel, and some of my favorite places in the world are special because the first time I visited, a friend who lived there showed me around. And tour guides are great, but nothing beats someone who is enthusiastic about where they live, because they鈥檝e paid attention to it and don鈥檛 mind sharing it with someone else. Now if you鈥檒l excuse me, I have to do some research on this streetcar we used to have here in the early 1900s, so I can tell visiting friends about it for the next decade.

If you鈥檇 like to read Local (which has been longlisted for the Wainwright Prize!), here鈥檚 where you can find it:

听听听

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It was a couple years ago, probably eightish miles up the Stuart Peak trail near my home in Missoula, Montana, when I first started thinking about it. A small tree had fallen perpendicular across the trail, no more than four inches in diameter. I had to slow my already-not-that-fast uphill trot to almost a complete stop to step over the tree.

I thought for a half-second, like I always do, that my day would be a tiny bit more pleasant if that tree had not fallen there鈥攐r if someone had removed it before I started my trail run that day.

But I carried on, to the top of the peak, stepping over a couple other pieces of deadfall, a minor nuisance on the way up the trail, but a brief low hurdle on my way back down.

I remembered some mountain bikers I鈥檇 run into on this same trail a while back, in the early season. They鈥檇 carried a chainsaw to cut the trees that had fallen over the winter, but of course they stopped at the wilderness boundary, where bicycles weren鈥檛 permitted (let alone chainsaws).

I finished my run, and repeated it several times, always encountering some deadfall. Same with some of the other trails around Missoula鈥攅very year brings a few more trees down.

Every time I stepped over one, I made a mental note:

And then I鈥檇 go home and never do it. Once or twice I googled electric chainsaws, but never clicked 鈥渂uy.鈥�

A ripped through our town in late July with winds in excess of 100 mph, and I spent two consecutive days cutting fallen branches, and hauling 15 pickup loads to the city brush pile (it鈥檚 a small pickup).

The first day, when everyone鈥檚 power was out, I had the longest conversation I鈥檇 ever had with my neighbor Nathan, standing on the sidewalk in front of his house. I mentioned how I wished I had actually bought a chainsaw instead of just thinking about it, because I鈥檇 have it for this, but I鈥檇 also be able to cut deadfall on trails.

“What you need,” Nathan said authoritatively, “is a Silky Katanaboy folding saw. They鈥檙e amazing. My buddy talked me into getting one and I love it.”

I googled the Silky Katanaboy. It was $245, and huge. Ideal Version of Me could wait some more, I guess.

Then my friend Kevin and I did an adventurous run/hike up Pyramid Buttes this September, and there was so much goddamn deadfall. I cursed myself, but, shrug, what are you gonna do, cut through 30 trees in the middle of your 17-mile day?

A couple weeks later, on the way up Sky Pilot, same thing. Lots of gymnastics to get up and around all the deadfall. If I were a pompous asshole, I would have huffed and said, 鈥渟omebody should do something about this!鈥� But come on, I have some idea of how the world works, and you don鈥檛 just call the Forest Service and report a downed tree on a lesser-used trail, like you鈥檙e calling down to the front desk to request more towels.

I googled the Silky Katanaboy again. It was too big (20 inches long, 2 pounds), and too expensive. If I bought it, I鈥檇 have to mentally record where the downed trees were, then go back, hike in with an actual backpack, and cut the trees. How about something smaller?

The Silky Gomboy Curve 240. $65. Folds down to 9.5 inches. I measured my running vest. A 9.5-inch saw would just fit. Sure, it鈥檚 bulky and heavy compared to, you know, not carrying a fucking saw when you go running, but I鈥檓 already carrying bear spray in there, and I鈥檓 also a 45-year-old middle-of-the-pack dadthlete who loves to eat baked goods. Other people aren鈥檛 exactly taking a microscope to my Strava times, but they might appreciate a tree not blocking the trail.

I looked online for reviews, finally finding , by Casey, a mountain biker from Montana. The review was good, but what really sold me was when he said this:

鈥淲ith work and kids and stuff, I don’t get to go to a lot of trail work days, so this is one of the ways I try to give back and do my part because I use these trails a lot, so I gotta support them somehow.鈥�

All told, he said, getting off his bike, pulling out the saw, cutting the tree, and moving it off the trail took 10 or 15 minutes.

I bought that saw, the Silky Gomboy Curve 240.

It fits in my running vest. I cut a piece of deadfall off a trail this week. It鈥檚 not much, but it鈥檚 something.

The post The Ultimate, Compact Tool for Clearing Deadfall on Your Local Trails appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

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I think of my old car sometimes when I drive by the Walmart Supercenter. The parking lot there was essentially the launch point of my first real long-distance road trip as an adult, spanning ten days and eight states in the late spring of 2004. We drove my 1996 Pontiac Grand Am GT, a car that my friend Nick announced had taught him that he would “never buy a two-door car.”

I didn鈥檛 keep a journal of the trip, but I believe Nick said that while standing in the Watchman Campground in Zion National Park, on maybe our eighth day of wrangling gear in and out of the car’s back seats. We couldn鈥檛 use the trunk because it was full of everything I could justify bringing from my grad school apartment in Missoula, Montana, to our terminus in Scottsdale, Arizona, where I was moving in with my then-girlfriend. We tried to keep what we needed in the backseat, and of course to access anything in the backseat, you had to fold the front seat down, lean in, and bend around the corner.

I believe this type of two-door design was, and maybe still is, referred to as a 鈥渃oupe,鈥� a word that is almost never paired with the word 鈥渁dventure,鈥� which is what we were trying to use the Grand Am for, and certainly not the word 鈥渄irtbag,鈥� which is the type of adventure we were trying to have.

We left Missoula about 10 days before Memorial Day. Nick bussed in via a Greyhound from somewhere in Iowa, an 18-hour ride he鈥檇 probably never do again.听 So a car, any car, a space he鈥檇 only have to share with one person, probably felt like an improvement.

I had gotten the car through my college roommate Chris, whose brother, Andy, had bought it at an auction, repaired the one thing that was wrong with it (someone had tried to steal the passenger-side airbag), and then sold it to me. There were a few reasons why it was not the ideal road trip car, some of which were my fault.

I had packed the trunk almost full by the time Nick added his stuff, and then attached a trunk-mount Yakima bike rack to haul an old Schwinn mountain bike all the way to Arizona, so if either of us wanted anything in the trunk, we had to remove the bike, pull off the bike rack, and then open the trunk. The bike and the rack, of course, fell off the back of the car multiple times on bumpy mountain roads, first on our way up and down to the Mt. Pilchuk trailhead outside of Seattle. The summit was in a cloud when we arrived at the end of our short, steep hike.

People sleep in all kinds of adventure vehicles鈥攐ld vans, new Sprinter vans, RVs, trucks with toppers, trucks with campers, station wagons, even in sedans in which the back seats fold down. The Grand Am鈥檚 seats did not fold down. And we couldn鈥檛 recline the front seats very far on account of all our stuff in the backseat. Still, we slept in the car twice, because we were young and durable, and had no other options, once next to the ocean somewhere near Aberdeen, Washington, and once near Barstow, California, where we鈥檇 driven after hiking up Half Dome and being unable to find a campsite anywhere near the park.

We camped almost all the other nights, except for a couple nights we spent on friends鈥� floors in Seattle and Bend. The trunk light somehow melted a hole in Nick鈥檚 Therm-a-Rest on the second-to-last day of the trip, so he slept rather uncomfortably on our last night in Mexican Hat, Utah. We鈥檇 walked into the ranger station at Natural Bridges National Monument late that afternoon and asked about campsites, and in an I-swear-this-actually-happened exchange that I鈥檝e written about elsewhere鈥攊t鈥檚 so dumb it sounds like I made it up鈥攖he ranger said, 鈥淵ou guys don鈥檛 want to camp here. You鈥檒l be done with this park in an hour. Tell you what: Are you intense?鈥�

I looked at Nick, kind of shrugged, and nodded. We were young, fairly fit, and maybe looked pretty intense, I guess. The ranger went on to tell us to head south to Valley of the Gods, the entirety of which was BLM land, and we could just pull off the road and camp anywhere we found a spot. We thanked him for the advice and left, and I was unlocking the car door in the parking lot by the time I realized what he鈥檇 actually said. Over the roof of the car, I said to Nick,

鈥淥h, he meant 鈥榠n tents,鈥� like are we camping in tents or do we have an RV.鈥�

鈥淵eah,鈥� Nick said, not understanding my confusion.

The low clearance of the Grand Am meant we didn鈥檛 get too far into Valley of the Gods before we chickened out and drove back to the paved highway, and spent the night in a paid campground behind a lodge in Mexican Hat. It was not that intense. The next day we drove through Monument Valley, checked out the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, and gave the car a well-earned rest in a visitor parking spot at my girlfriend鈥檚 apartment complex in Scottsdale, after the biggest adventure it would ever go on.

To be fair, I had not bought the car under any pretense of it being a 鈥渞oad trip vehicle鈥� or 鈥渁dventure vehicle.鈥� I bought it because it was a pretty good deal, from a trusted friend, and I was not very picky about cars. And I didn鈥檛 treat it that well鈥擨 bought it in 1999, if memory serves, and I have been sober since March 2002, but the period of time between was a bit rough on the car. The inoperable driver鈥檚-side window was my fault (rolling it down when it was iced over), as was whatever went wrong with the front right wheel (hit a curb at high velocity). The windshield had been shattered once (a friend tried to jump over the car as we were leaving a party; I eventually got it repaired), and the trunk-mount CD player had been smashed by a full beer keg that rolled into it (on the drive back to our party).

Still, it was what I had, and entering the job market in 2004 with a graduate degree in journalism, I wasn鈥檛 exactly ready for a down payment on a new BMW. Or any car, really. I worked for a year in the Phoenix area, and then moved to Denver, where the Grand Am was even less useful, because, you know, snow.

Luckily, Nick, who lived in Denver, had bought a 2004 Toyota Tacoma, and was willing to drive to Summit County ski resorts in the winter and mountain trailheads all summer. One winter day, though, I drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park to snowshoe, and met a guy my age who also happened to be from the Midwest. We chatted all the way back to the parking lot, and when I stopped behind the Grand Am, he asked, 鈥淚s this your car?鈥�

I said, 鈥淵eah. It鈥檚 kind of a Midwest car.鈥�

He said, 鈥淚t鈥檚 kind of a meth car.鈥�

I wasn鈥檛 about to defend the Grand Am鈥檚 honor. I mean, its overall aesthetic didn鈥檛 exactly scream 鈥淣OT a meth car,鈥� but it also had never really let me down, at least not in a big way. And although we never drove my car to a trailhead if there was any sort of questionable dirt road involved, I thought of the day the previous summer that we had taken Nick鈥檚 Tacoma to climb Grays and Torreys peaks. The road to the trailhead was rough with bumps, holes, and big exposed rocks, and I was glad Nick had volunteered to drive his truck.

But then, about a half-mile from the trailhead, the Jeep in front of us slowed, and in front of the Jeep was someone in a Honda Civic negotiating a very tricky-for-a-sedan spot in the road, backing up, re-orienting, pulling forward, backing up again, and then sending it, with nary a scrape. The Civic made it to the trailhead just fine. I lived in Colorado off and on for 15 years, and I learned that whenever you think that a Forest Service road is impassable by anyone without high clearance and 4-wheel-drive, you鈥檒l always see that someone made it up to the parking area in a goddamn Honda Civic.

The Grand Am survived our 10-day, eight-state road trip, and saw its share of national parks and quite a few Forest Service roads, but it was never my first choice if anyone else was willing to drive their vehicle for a day of hiking or skiing. One night in February 2006, I was cruising up Josephine Street in Denver with my then-girlfriend, and a guy floored it from a stop sign on 5th Avenue, not seeing us until his car bulldozed into the front passenger side of the Grand Am at full speed. We rammed into a light pole on the street corner, hard enough to bend it, but not hard enough to knock it over. Just after we came to a stop, I looked over to my girlfriend and asked, 鈥淎re you OK?鈥� She answered yes, she thought she was OK. A few seconds later, I quietly but excitedly said, 鈥淚 think the car鈥檚 totaled.鈥� The car鈥檚 destruction, of course, being the only way I would be able to replace it, with my $25,000/year salary at the newspaper. As soon as the insurance money came, I found an all-wheel-drive 1996 Subaru Impreza Outback on Craigslist. I figured it could take me anywhere I wanted to go, and it did.

The Grand Am was a bad fit for the lifestyle I wanted at the time鈥擨 was chomping at the bit to see the world, and the world I wanted to see didn鈥檛 have smooth roads leading to it. It was a piece of gear that didn鈥檛 work that well. But when I was first starting out, none of the stuff I had was very good鈥攃otton pants, clunky hiking boots, bargain backpacks that didn鈥檛 fit, a heavy sleeping bag, the cheapest climbing shoes I could find, thrift-store snowboard pants.

Would some better gear have been nice? Sure. But I鈥檓 glad I didn鈥檛 let it keep me from getting out there.

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My new book, Ultra-Something, explores humans鈥� weird proclivity for endurance, and how we express it鈥攊ncluding, but not limited to distance running, factory work, benign masochism, improv comedy, and rooting for football teams that will never win a championship. I ran thousands of miles and explored dozens of rabbit holes of research, athletics, and storytelling, then built it into a narrative, with more than 90 illustrations I drew. The final product is a 285-page book and it鈥檚 out now.听 (Buy it at Bookshop , or at Amazon in paperback , and on Kindle .)

Here鈥檚 the book trailer:

The below is excerpted from the book’s prologue.

At the finish line of the 2015 Western States Endurance Run, arguably the most famous and most prestigious American ultramarathon, the crowd suddenly became energized. A runner was coming, entering the Placer High School track, where the 100-mile race ends after winding up and over California鈥檚 Sierra Nevada mountains from Olympic Valley Ski Resort.

Spectators cheered, clapped, and frantically rang cowbells, as the runner, Gunhild Swanson, rounded the track. A group of runners who had joined her peeled off at the start of the straightaway, clearing the way for her finish. The sides of the track were lined with people anxiously yelling 鈥淐ome on, come on!鈥� and other words of encouragement which sounded more like worried hope. More spectators ran across the infield, and a few paralleled her on the other side of the barrier fence set up on the track. Dozens of cameras and phones recorded her as she chugged toward the white finish arch, her strides shortened by 99-plus miles of mountain running and hiking over the previous day and a half. As she crossed the timing mat at the finish, the crowd erupted, hundreds of arms popping up into the air in a coordinated burst of emotion. Three feet past the finish line, the runner bent at the waist, hands on her knees, exhausted but grateful to be finished. Online videos of this minute of running would be watched hundreds of thousands of times.

Gunhild Swanson had finished dead last, 254th out of 254 runners. When she crossed the finish line on the track, the clock above her head read:

She had beaten the final 30-hour cutoff time by six seconds.

When that year鈥檚 winners, Rob Krar and Magdalena Boulet, crossed the same finish line hours earlier, in 14:48:59 and 19:05:21, respectively, the scene was almost serene in comparison: some applause, some cheering, but with the overall energy and volume turned down.

The climax of Sylvester Stallone鈥檚 1976 movie Rocky, when boxer Rocky Balboa finally squares off with the defending champion, Apollo Creed, only lasts about nine minutes, but might be the most famous boxing match in film history.

Apollo, who had been scheduled to defend his title against a boxer who was injured, needs to find a new opponent, and decides to put on a show: As the original fight was scheduled to take place during America鈥檚 bicentennial year in 1976 in Philadelphia, Apollo says he鈥檒l fight an up-and-coming boxer. Rocky Balboa, a Philly club fighter with more heart than skill, is chosen.

When the fight begins, everyone, including Rocky and Apollo, is surprised that Rocky actually lasts more than a few rounds, even landing some good punches, and as the fight drags on, ends up making it longer in the ring than any other boxer has against Apollo.

After Apollo knocks Rocky down during the 14th round and he battles to pull himself back up, the camera cuts to two people who we believe have much better judgment as far as Rocky鈥檚 well-being: First, the trainer, Mick, who growls from just outside the ropes to Rocky, 鈥淒own. Stay down.鈥� Then, Rocky鈥檚 girlfriend Adrian, who has just entered the arena to see Rocky at his worst, writhing in pain on the canvas. She looks away.

Rocky staggers in his corner like a drunken man trying to get back up on a barstool. Apollo stands in his corner with both arms raised.

Rocky gets up at the count of nine. Apollo drops his arms and his jaw in disbelief. Just before the bell, Rocky lands a shot to Apollo鈥檚 ribs.

When both fighters are in their corners, Apollo鈥檚 trainer says to him, 鈥淵ou鈥檙e bleeding inside, Champ. I鈥檓 gonna stop the fight.鈥�

Apollo replies, 鈥淵ou ain鈥檛 stopping nothing, man.鈥�

Rocky鈥檚 team cuts the swollen skin around his eye so he can see again, and Rocky stands up, saying to Mick, 鈥淵ou stop this fight, I鈥檒l kill you.鈥�

The two haggard fighters trade punches throughout the 15th and final round, mumbling promises to each other that there will be no re-match, and the bell rings, both men barely upright, but having survived. A bloodied Rocky calls out for Adrian, who finds her way to the ring, where she and Rocky profess their love for each other.

In the 1979 book, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, Syd Field laid out what would come to be known as 鈥淔ield鈥檚 Paradigm,鈥� or the Three-Act Structure. Every screenplay, or actually, the story that forms a screenplay, Field argued, has three acts: set-up, confrontation, and resolution. The three-act structure is often drawn as a diagram, in various levels of complexity. A simple version might look like this:

Rocky went on to be a surprise box office success, and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning three, including Best Picture. The film spawned eight sequels over the next four and a half decades.

One scene in the original film, in which Rocky goes on a training run and ends by sprinting up the steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, became famous, inspiring tourists to run up the stairs, and prompting tributes and parodies of the scene in other films and TV shows. The 72 steps themselves became known colloquially as the 鈥淩ocky Steps,鈥� and before the premiere of Rocky III, Stallone commissioned an eight-and-a-half-foot statue of Rocky to be built and placed at the top of the steps. Philadelphia City Commerce Director Dick Doran welcomed the statue and said Stallone had done more for Philadelphia鈥檚 image 鈥渢han anyone since Ben Franklin.鈥�

Rocky Balboa did not win the fight in Rocky. As the closing theme music builds, the ring announcer calls the fight 鈥渢he greatest exhibition of guts and stamina in the history of the ring,鈥� and then announces the split decision in favor of Apollo Creed.

The plot of Rocky, as well as the plots of all eight sequels, per the three-act structure, might look like this:

At almost any marathon race in the United States, there is a solid chance you will hear, played on a sound system near the starting line, or on a spectator鈥檚 stereo along the race route, one of two songs, if not both: The song 鈥淕onna Fly Now,鈥� also known as 鈥淭heme from Rocky鈥� (a version of which appears in the first five Rocky movies), and the Survivor song 鈥淓ye of the Tiger,鈥� commissioned by Sylvester Stallone for Rocky III.

Every year around the world, about 1.1 million people run a marathon, an organized race that鈥檚 26.2 miles, or 42.195 kilometers. The story of why we do this dates back to 490 BC: During the first Persian invasion of Greece, a heavily outmanned Athenian army defeated the Persian forces in battle near the town of Marathon, Greece. A herald named Pheidippides was chosen to deliver the news of the victory to Athens. He ran the entire distance of 26.2 miles/42.195 kilometers, addressed the magistrates in session saying something like, 鈥淛oy to you, we鈥檝e won!鈥� and then died on the spot.

The Greeks also created the tradition of the Olympic Games, held every four years, or each Olympiad, from 776 BC to 393 AD. The ancient Olympic Games never had a marathon race鈥攖he 鈥渓ong-distance race,鈥� or dolichos, introduced in the 15th Olympiad, was somewhere between four and nine kilometers (approximately 2.5 to 5.5 miles). The last recorded ancient Olympic Games were held in 393 A.D., after which they took a 1500-year hiatus.

When the Olympic Games were revived in 1896 in Athens, the first marathon race was held, celebrating Pheidippides鈥檚 legendary (and fatal) run from Marathon to Athens. A few months later, the Knickerbocker Athletic Club organized a marathon race from Stamford, Connecticut to The Bronx, and in March 1897, the Boston Athletic Association held the first-ever Boston Marathon. From there, the marathon race spread all over the world.

If you signed up to participate in a running race, such as a marathon or a 10K, your personal journey could also be seen as three acts:

No one, from the fast runners hoping to win the race to the people just hoping to finish, has any idea how their race is going to go. As the race day draws near, tension builds, whether you feel it or not, and the only thing that releases all that tension is the actual running of the race. When it鈥檚 over, whether you鈥檙e happy with the result or not, it鈥檚 over.

The first time Ray Yoder ate at a Cracker Barrel, he wasn鈥檛 that impressed. He was in Nashville in 1978, helping to set up an RV show at the Opryland Resort and Convention Center, and there was a Cracker Barrel nearby. So he ate there, and it didn鈥檛 exactly blow his mind. But he had a job delivering RVs across the country from a manufacturer in his hometown of Goshen, Indiana, and he spent a lot of time on the road. So he found himself in a lot of places with Cracker Barrel restaurants. He kept eating at Cracker Barrels, and they started to grow on him.

He was almost always on the road by himself while his wife, Wilma, was at home raising their four children. When all the kids had finished school and moved out of their house, Wilma started to join Ray on the road. Around 1993, they realized they had eaten at lots of Cracker Barrel restaurants, and decided to try visiting all of them.

By August of 2017, the Yoders had both turned 81, and had visited almost all of the 600-plus Cracker Barrel restaurants in the United States, Ray mostly eating blueberry pancakes if it was breakfast time, meatloaf if he was there for lunch or dinner, and pot roast if it was Sunday. Cracker Barrel caught wind of Ray and Wilma鈥檚 quest and flew them out to Portland to visit the newly-opened restaurant in Tualatin, Oregon, Number 645. A line of applauding Cracker Barrel employees greeted them at the door, with a bouquet of sunflowers and roses for Wilma, and custom aprons for both of them.

Their journey had taken them to 44 states, and Ray estimated they had driven more than 5 million miles. 鈥淲ell, everybody does something, usually anyway,鈥� Ray said. 鈥淪o we thought we would do this and it would be fun.鈥�

At the 2017 Run Rabbit Run starting line at the base of Colorado鈥檚 Steamboat Ski Resort, 314 runners stood in the corral, every one of them hoping to finish the 102.5-mile race. Only about 58 percent of them would actually make it to the finish line.

The Run Rabbit Run is not typically mentioned as one of the hardest ultramarathon races in the United States, and 2017 wasn鈥檛 an abnormally hot or difficult year. Generally, about one-third of people who start the race each year don鈥檛 finish for one reason or another: injury, gastrointestinal distress, dehydration, exhaustion.

No one standing in that starting corral believed it was impossible for a human being to travel 102.5 miles of mountainous terrain in 36 hours. Everyone was aware that it was something humans did. They had heard of these types of races before, maybe knew someone who had completed one, or maybe they鈥檇 even run this one in a previous year and had fun doing it. They believed they could be one of the people who earned a Run Rabbit Run 100 finisher belt buckle, and that鈥檚 why they were standing just inside the red start/finish arch, pacing, chatting with other runners, shaking out their nervous legs.

I was there too, standing in the corral, anxious and jittery, with a race number pinned to my running shorts, as the morning sun started to warm the high-altitude air. Like everyone else, I knew that people, arguably 鈥渘ormal鈥� people who had day jobs and families and credit card bills, were perfectly capable of running a 100-mile mountain ultramarathon in 36 hours. It was something that had been done plenty of times before by human beings just like me.

Well, maybe not like me. I wasn鈥檛 sure if I鈥檇 be just like them, a finisher. And I鈥檇 been unsure for eight months, since I鈥檇 paid my entry fee.

I was still unsure when the gun went off and the crowd of runners started shuffling forward through the starting arch. I started jogging with them, and no one tried to stop me, so I just kept going.

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In 2020, Kevin Kelly wrote a post on his website titled 鈥�68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice,鈥� which he鈥檇 put together for his 68th birthday. I read through it, found myself nodding along with his Tweet-length recommendations, loved it, and shared it in . This one was the second bullet on his list: 鈥淏eing enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.鈥�

The post was shared widely, first by people who were fans of Kevin Kelly, and I imagine later by people who hadn鈥檛 heard of him before but found the list to be insightful. I knew Kevin Kelly as the founding executive editor of WIRED, and the guy who came up with the back in 2008, and an avid backpacker and traveler. (TLDR; lots of people think he鈥檚 a pretty wise person.)

In a scenario that every online writer dreams of, a publisher decided the 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice would make a good book, so Kevin Kelly removed them from his website, added 150 more bits of advice, and in May 2023, the book was published.

My friend Mario mailed me a copy of the book back in April, and of course I blazed through it in a couple hours. But in reading it, I started thinking that many of the bits of advice are applicable to adventure, whether it鈥檚 a big-A, expedition to some faraway mountain range 国产吃瓜黑料, or a little-a, let鈥檚 bike or hike to a new place this weekend adventure. So I started flagging them with Post-It notes, in order to compile a list. Here are 25 of them, with a few of my illustrations.

Tend to the small things. More people are defeated by blisters than by mountains.

Taking a break is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength.

A vacation + a disaster = an adventure.

Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will.

If a goal does not have a schedule, it is a dream.

A major part of travel is to leave stuff behind. The more you leave behind the further you will advance.

Experiences are fun, and having influence is rewarding, but only mattering makes us happy. Do stuff that matters.

The greatest teacher is called 鈥渄oing.鈥�

Your enjoyment of travel is inversely proportional to the size of your luggage. This is 100 percent true of backpacking. It is liberating to realize how little you really need.

Always read the plaque next to the monument.

Ask anyone you admire: Their lucky breaks happened on a detour from their main goal. So embrace detours. Life is not a straight line for anyone.

Looking ahead, focus on direction rather than destination. Maintain the right direction and you鈥檒l arrive at where you want to go.

In preparing for a long hike, old shoes of any type are superior to brand-new shoes of any type. Don鈥檛 use a long hike to break in shoes.

For every good thing you love, ask yourself what your proper dose is.

Purchase the most recent tourist guidebook to your hometown or region. You鈥檒l learn a lot by playing the tourist once a year.

Should you explore or optimize? For example, do you optimize what you know will sell or explore something new? Do you order a restaurant dish you are sure is great (optimize) or do you try something new? Do you keep dating new folks (explore) or try to commit to someone you met?

The ideal balance for exploring new things vs. optimizing those already found is 鈪�. Spend 鈪� of your time on exploring and 鈪� on optimizing and deepening. As you mature it is harder to devote time to exploring because it seems unproductive, but aim for 鈪�.

Hikers鈥� rule: Don鈥檛 step on what you can step over; don鈥檛 step over what you can walk around.

To have a great trip, head toward an interest rather than a place. Travel to passions rather than destinations.

Your flaws and your strengths are two poles of the same traits. For instance, there is only a tiny difference between stubbornness and perseverance or between courage and foolishness. The sole difference is in the goal. It鈥檚 stupid stubbornness and reckless foolishness if the goal does not matter, and relentless perseverance and courage if it does. To earn dignity with your flaws, own up to them, and make sure you push on things that matter.

The big dirty secret is that everyone, especially the famous, are just making it up as they go along.

The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished.

You choose to be lucky by believing that any setbacks are just temporary.

Measure your wealth not by the things you can buy but by the things no money can buy.

If you are stuck in life, travel to a place you have never heard of.

When making plans, you must allow yourself to get lost in order to find the thing you didn鈥檛 know you were looking for.

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I finally went to the doctor last week. It was day 22 of having symptoms of something, a cough, probably a sinus infection, maybe walking pneumonia, something stubborn that just refused to go away despite all my attempts to just ignore it and keep going.

I have very few memories of my parents staying home from work because they were sick. Recovering from a couple surgeries, yes, maybe the occasional cold that was a real knockout, but rarely. I remember in 1997 when Michael Jordan battled the flu (or food poisoning, depending who you ask) to score 38 points against the Utah Jazz in Game 5 of the NBA Finals, and I was probably less impressed than I should have been, since, really, it was just a guy going to work when he was sick.

After several decades and one global pandemic, I of course know that it鈥檚 not appropriate to try to 鈥減ower through鈥� when you鈥檙e sick, since it makes illnesses last longer, makes you miserable at work, and helps viruses spread. But it鈥檚 . Plus, I rationalize working while I鈥檓 sick because I don鈥檛 even have to go anywhere鈥擨 can work on my laptop on the couch!

In my regular healthy life, I never sit on the couch unless I鈥檓 trying to get our toddler to read a book with me, or the occasional night once a week or so when Hilary and I watch one episode of a show. She鈥檇 usually rather write, or read, or garden, and I always have a 10-foot-long to-do-list:

That鈥檚 how you get shit done, I tell myself. I am not a LinkedInfluencer telling you how to optimize your life down to the minute鈥擨 just prefer doing things to relaxing. Relaxing, being, as far as I understand it, not doing things (?).

I also have an overdeveloped sector of my brain, which, on a cranial CT scan, would look like this:

I鈥檝e had illnesses like this before: In 2010, while bicycling across the United States, I battled a cold/flu/something for 11 days, taking DayQuil during the day and NyQuil at night, while pedaling about 60 miles every day. In 2016, I caught a cold during a book tour and made it last six weeks, turning it into a sinus infection by the end. In 2018, I managed to get sick the day before a Run The Alps group trip from Chamonix to Zermatt over eight days and spent the first half of the trip recovering.

So many things I like to do鈥攔unning mountain ultramarathons, climbing mountains, long hikes and bike rides鈥攔equire learning how to push through pain, fatigue, and common sense. So I鈥檓 pretty used to the line of thinking that discomfort is actually just a side effect of meaningful experiences. Except when it鈥檚 not.

After coughing for three weeks straight, through two negative Covid tests, two doctor鈥檚 appointments, another negative Covid test and negative flu test, and one chest X-ray, I finally resigned myself to: resting.

To actually rest, I have to force myself to watch movies. Committing to a movie puts me in a flow state, in which I cannot check email, read the news, look at social media, or any of the other things that might give me anxiety.

Movies, nowadays, includes YouTube, and it wasn鈥檛 long into my convalescence until the algorithm fed me a Beau Miles video titled during which Beau coughs his way through an entire year of nonstop doing stuff/making videos/trail running, with not one but two (!) pneumonia diagnoses.

In the first year of sending our little guy to group childcare, I鈥檝e had something like seven or eight colds, two bouts of norovirus (or something similar), and one round of hand, foot, and mouth disease. Throughout that year, I said to my friend Mike (also dad to a toddler) that 鈥渇eeling 80 percent is the new 100 percent,鈥� which was me trying to be optimistic.

So in Beau鈥檚 鈥淚鈥檓 Sick鈥� video, when he said, 鈥淭he thing is, I was like 70 percent鈥攁nd 70 percent is OK in my book,鈥� I of course saw myself.

Also: 鈥淚鈥檓 not the kind of bloke that likes baths. I think baths take way too long.鈥�

Also see: Person who just keeps going, coughing through everything, refusing to stop because 鈥�

鈥�

鈥�

鈥�

Why is it, exactly, that we think we have to keep forging ahead?

I don鈥檛 know about everyone else, but it looks like this for me:

Americans (myself included) . And many of us will take a vacation, but suck at actually being present on said vacation, checking email, maybe taking a work meeting or two while we鈥檙e gone, you know, somehow keeping a running mental tally of the number of unread messages in our inbox(es) and arriving at the end of our vacation having not really ever disconnected at all.

I noticed this thing a few years ago when leaving on a trip where I would have zero service for several days: I got ahead of everything as much as I could, frantically finishing up work throughout the final days before I left, answering every unread message so I鈥檇 have Inbox 0. Even on the drive to the trailhead where my phone would finally be useless, I refreshed a few times, just to make sure I鈥檇 covered everything. Finally, my cell phone bars disappeared completely, and I shut off my phone, with no choice but to be present, to take a break.

After the trip, I avoided turning my phone back on for hours, the pre-trip urgency and anxiety having evaporated somewhere out there. When I finally did turn on my phone, I scrolled through the six days of email I鈥檇 missed, scanned the text messages that had come in while I was offline, and to my great relief and mild dismay, everyone had gotten along just fine without my input.

Which is exactly what happened when I got sick, and finally, begrudgingly submitted to the idea of actually resting: The world, quite shockingly, survived without me for a few days.

Now, if I can just remember that for next time.

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