Travel Bug

Since I've been back in the United States, I haven't had much going on. I haven't written a whole lot lately because of that. I've been working mostly, with only a few outings. I definitely haven't traveled much. Hopefully in a year or two I will be able to afford to travel some. But lately I have been able to do some geocaching and I recently bought several travel bugs.

For those who are reading my blog for the first time, let me explain briefly what geocaching is. In short, it is like a modern day treasure hunt. The first step is to get a GPS and then go online to the geocaching website to get coordinates for one of the millions or billions of caches out there. Plug the coordinates in and find the prize. Sometimes it is a box or container that has small items for trade; other times it is just a tiny container with a piece of paper to write your username on. Within this game there are special pieces that are trackable, the two most popular are "geocoins" and "travel bugs." My personal favorite is the travel bug. It is a tag that a player attaches to an item and it travels from cache to cache. That is logged along with the find on the geocaching website.

I dropped off one of the travel bugs of mine this past Saturday when I went to Pinnacle Mountain to meet up with a friend I hadn't seen in about 12-13 years. That travel bug, "Who's your llama," has a mission to raise awareness of world hunger and poverty and ways that individuals can help. I look forward to hearing stories and seeing photos of where it goes. But it also gave me the idea for a new blog, or at least something I can do and blog more here.

I am thinking about getting some kind of item that isn't as small as the other two I have out there. This one will be a stuffed animal of some kind or at least something large enough to easily take a picture with. It will be similar to an assignment I had when I was in elementary or middle school. In that assignment we had to take the stuffed animal for a week and write journals about what we did during that week with it and show pictures. With the travel bug, users will be asked to share a small piece of their story on the geocaching website and be able to submit longer narratives and photos for possible inclusion in the blog. Even if I am not traveling, I can still read about it and maybe share that here.

Goals

Some days of the diet are better than others. Yesterday I went over my recommended calorie intake, but today I was actually under my limit and walked for an hour and 15 minutes. After watching my calories so closely today and then putting in that time for exercise, it got me to thinking about Paul.

Paul often used sports analogies when he wrote. One verse I remember in that regard is about running a race, keeping your eyes on the finish and not being disqualified. Today as I walked, I kept pushing myself to go further and to keep up a steady pace. I would set goals and when I reached those goals I would set another one ahead of me. All of those small goals still had the ultimate goal of making it all the way to the highway before turning around. And after I got there I made goals to keep my pace up and average at least 4 miles per hour overall; I also wanted to see how far I could get before my mom picked me up in the car on her way back from town. I ended up making it all the way back home, a little over 4.5 miles and hour and fifteen minutes later.

Then, since I was still below my calorie limit for the day and had exercised, I allowed myself to have some of my favorite type of ice cream. It wasn't very good. After all that hard work, my favorite kind of ice cream didn't matter much. I knew that I couldn't have much of it and just knowing that I think made it not nearly as enjoyable.

So back to the bible. A spiritual diet is probably a good idea too. Pursuing the relationship with God, through Christ -- reading my bible, praying, spending time in fellowship with other believers -- while avoiding the things that aren't good for me, that is. Sometimes things aren't inherently bad in moderation but there is a point we have to stop. Similar to not eating too much and exercising. So in addition to my health diet, I want to go on a spiritual one. Two diets at once. It will be well worth it.

And here are my goals to look forward to:

1) I will physically look better.
2) If our bodies are the temple for the Holy Spirit, I need to take better care of it.
3) If I start now, maybe the doctor won't make me go on a strict diet
4) I want to do a lot of outdoor adventures that I physically can't do right now. I want to get in shape and build endurance.