gwheatley's blog

You may have noticed a couple weeks ago I posted that I was switching from my Windows based Laptop to a Macbook.  The switch did not last long but it was due more to my unfamiliarity with the Mac Hardware than it was the platform itself.  I used the Macbook for several days before I encountered a hardware problem.  The problem turned out to be a bad stick of RAM.  That can happen to any system but I wasn't really thrilled with the way the Mac indicated that it had a problem.  It just sat there and beeped at me and would not start instead of giving me some kind of helpful error message.  I ended up sending the Macbook back to Apple but I have been regretting that move since then because I really did like OSX better than Windows.  I may end up getting a newer Macbook in the near future if I can sell my Laptop first.  I found the Mac to be a pretty easy platform to get used to and OSX handled multi-tasking much better than I have ever experienced with Windows.

Well work was pretty busy this week so I did not get any walking in during the week other than Tuesday.  I was out of town for a wedding in Upper MI this weekend but managed to get about 5.5 miles in Saturday morning before getting ready.  The weather was a little cooler than Milwaukee has been lately but not that bad of a walk.  Will be trying to get back to a regular scheduled again next week.

Well my new Keens came this week and I was very anxious to give them a try.  I got a short walk on Thursday and they felt good but needed to test them more.  This morning I set our early to beat the forecast bad weather and test the shoes.  I ended up doing 10.1 Miles and my feet still felt pretty good at the end of the walk.  I had originally set out to do about 7 miles but since the rain was holding off I decided to push it and try for a little more.  The last 3 miles ended up being a little soggy since there was a light drizzle for that time.  Still I felt good at the end of the walk and am glad I pushed it.  I won't be able to get any long walks in next week since I am on call and I will be out of town for a wedding the week after so I wanted to get at least one 10 mile walk in early this year.  I hope to do 15 miles one of the days during the Memorial Day weekend.

This weekend here in the Milwaukee area we had another fatal car crash caused by a drunk driver.  A 38 year old woman who was 7 months pregnant and her 10 year old daughter were killed in the crash.  The person that hit them had recently lost his license to drive after being convicted of drunk driving for the 3rd time. Unfortunately this is not the first time we have heard about someone who should not be on the road hurting someone else.  It is time that the courts wake up and treat drunk driving like the serious offsense it is.  Too often they treat it like some kind of disease that the person has to get treatment for and there are no really serious penalties.  If this person would have been locked up like they should have been then these lives would not have been lost.  Drunk driving is a real problem and we have to start treating it as such.  If someone is convicted of drunk driving they should be going to jail and not just getting a slap on the wrist like taking their license away.  We know they are going to drive anyway and will probably drink anyway too.

My original plan for today was to make this my first ten mile walk of the season.  I wanted to push it a little after getting rained out on Thursday.  Plans did not quite work out the way I wanted.  When I got up early this morning to walk it was about 38 degrees with a 20-30 mile an hour wind so I went back to sleep.  By this afternoon the temperature had climbed into the 50's but the wind was still pretty strong so I just went for a shorter 5.8 mile walk.  At least I got out today.  I had to get that in since it looks like tomorrow may be a wash with a forecast for cooler with a chance of rain and snow showers tomorrow.  Maybe I can get another short walk in between the rain.  Next Saturday is supposed to be close to 60 so that might be a good time for a 10 mile walk.