Ice Fence at Sunset
An additional benefit of living back in town was being able to shop a little more readily. Living on the river meant planning ones shopping while in town -- unless you really like to spend an extra hour on a round trip to the store.
At this stage in my hike planning, I was just beginning to figure out what I would expect to eat, how to prep and cook it, and how to stretch my dollars. I had sat down at the Mac with excel and figured out a spreadsheet for calories, guessing that I'd burn about 3500 calories a day. That was based on how much I was eating at the time while trying to run an average of 8 miles/day, bike and work two jobs. I took that value and jacked it up. For a biochemist, I now admit it was a horrible initial guestimate. In the coming month, I'd keep ratcheting it up eventually to the wildly outlandish idea of 5000 cal/day.
Evenings I wasn't working at Macados, I started rebagging dried rice and beans. I also borrowed a roomie's dehydrator and took over a corner of our kitchen to dry a variety of fruit and vegetables: apples, pears, banana, peas, corn, lima. All of this was purchased at a local bulk food shop in a strip mall. The ice storms gave me incentive to hunker down and get a little more serious about my planning.