Eric Tapley

I’ve just returned home from a long evening walk. Here on the East Coast of the United States, at this time in September, that means it’s dark. And, given that I walked through a park and the woods, it was eerily quiet.

Life isn’t usually quiet or dark - especially quiet. There’s traffic, TV, the phone, customers, co-workers, meetings, babies, etc., all making noise (be it foreground or background). My walk was different, it was quiet. I could hear wind in the trees. I could hear acorns falling through leaves to the ground. I could hear fish jumping in a nearby pond.

I freaked out. I’m sure the darkness had something to do with it.

The world around us isn’t quiet or dark, especially in cities and populated areas. It’s almost as if the entire history of the human race has been moving away from quiet and dark and towards loud and lighted.

If you get a chance you should try quiet and dark. I think it has potential and is vastly underrated, if unusual and uncomfortable.

I’ve posted a photo gallery from Melissa and Nick’s wedding on August 10th. Lots of great shots. We had a wonderful time, and, as you’ll see, baby Sam did, too.

If you like, leave a comment here. Let me know which photos you like and what you would use as captions.

Enter the Wedding Photo Gallery

Back at the end of July I posted about using a pedometer to track my walking each day. I’ve been doing this since April 10th with the goal of walking at least 10,000 steps per day (about 4.6 miles for me). I had trouble with the first pedometer I purchased, so at the end of July I replaced it with the very slick-looking Sportline Walking Advantage 345.

I had terrible luck with this pedometer. I love the clamshell design but the unit was terribly unreliable. The hinge mechanism broke three times, about once a week, from normal use. I was especially careful of the clip after the first hinge broke, but the plastic mechanism kept twisting and breaking apart, no matter what I did. This final time the hinge hadn’t broken (yet) but the buttons stopped working properly so I couldn’t switch between modes, reset my steps from the previous day or change settings.

Tonight I replaced the pedometer at our local Dick’s Sporting Goods store for the fourth - and final - time. Instead of model 345 I talked the store staff into upgrading my exchange to the Sportline Walking Advantage 360. (It helped that they didn’t have any of the 345s in stock and I wasn’t going to settle for a downgrade, especially after having so much trouble.)

So far I really like this new model. The 360 has some features not on the 340/345, such as:

1. A user-replaceable battery.
2. Seven-day memory to track activity over time.
3. A walk/run mode to operate in different conditions.
4. Separate settings for stride if you’re walking vs. running.
5. The time of day (either 24-hour or 12-hour time).
6. A stronger clip.

Ultimately I just want this to work, and I hope that the stronger clip does the trick.

So, new pedometer, same goals. I hope to have better luck with this one!

On a related note, I’ve been thinking about the Nike+iPod kit and a new pair of shoes. I used to be a runner in high school and college (before I developed Colitis) and I’m really interested in getting back to it. Using the Nike+iPod system to keep track of running seems like a lot of fun and a great way to take advantage of all those tracks I have in iTunes. Cabel Sasser’s post on the subject is a great read on how this tech might make runners out of geeks all over the place.

Product details: Sportline Walking Advantage Model 360: Fitness Pro Pedometer

I’m back from a long vacation - ok, long for me. It was only for one week, but I haven’t been away for that long since Kate and I went on our honeymoon in 2001. I know, that’s five years, and I was well overdue for some time off.

I didn’t check email or browse the web while I was gone. I didn’t even try to find anyplace with a ‘net connection to do so. When my cell phone rang I let it go to voice mail and only checked if the number was one I recognized as important. That’s when I had the cell on - about half of the time it was off.

We returned home today and I feel fantastic.

There’s an important connection here, and it’s a lesson I’m working hard to learn. Vacation is a great thing.

Most of the time our actions move us forward forward by inches, if that. Each week is an incremental advance over the previous week, and that’s good, because it’s steady progress that grows most individuals and organizations. But there are diminishing returns when you push beyond a certain point, and I had gone too long without recharging my batteries. I was getting over my rash a little bit, day by day, but it was slow progress. I was getting work done at the office, but only by putting in longer and longer hours to get the same number of tasks complete (or to complete *just one more task*).

This vacation was eye-opening for me. It was a game changer. I didn’t move forward by inches but by yards, both in terms of health and attitude. I feel so much better now: I’m more relaxed, more focused, more energetic, and best of all my rash is gone.

It’s not often we have a chance to move forward by leaps instead of lurches.

We all need to take more vacations.