Training Day

It’s been a cold and wet weekend. Perfect time to condition my body to the cold and rainy nights ahead on the trail. From my research, I’ve gathered that the southern Appalachians receive the second most rainfall of any area in the lower 48 outside of the Pacific Northwest.

My plan was to test my equipment out in the rainy and cold night. I drove to work to tell dad I was going to use the backyard again as my testing ground. He told me that he didn’t buy into the trip. I told him he had spent thousands of dollars on the electronics, so he was invested.

I setup the Lunar Solo tent I purchased at REI, great light-weight that keeps mostly warm and dry. I had the same type of tent back in ’09, but it was worn badly from the heavy use. Setup was easy; my only concern will be keeping my power sources dry out there. I was looking online and found solar panels that you charge during the day. They roll up pretty small. It will only give me 3-4 hours of gameplay each night, but it is a sacrifice I have to make.

I played a solid 3 hours of Call of Duty: Black Ops on the PS3 slim. I love killing Nazi zombies for hours on end. It helps to inspire me in the hard times, especially on nights like this when it is so cold and rainy that I could barely hear the gunshots of my game for the first 30 minutes of play.

Around 3 a.m. I was ready to get some well deserved shut eye. I had been to hell and back today. My eyes were feeling a little strained from the gaming. I climbed into the sleeping bag and tried to sleep. It was cold, so cold my bad wrist was aching. Then I thought to myself, what are you doing Brent? There’s no need to get sick this close to launch date. So I packed up the electronics and took them to the warm, comfy confines of my bedroom.

This was my setup, shown after the weather had cleared up.