Out of power

It appears that I might have been a little too zealous yesterday; walking a fast 5+ miles. My body has responded and this morning I can feel all five miles in the painful and creaky joints of my legs and feet. The cure? More mileage. But at a slower pace.

When I go out walking this morning, I need to bring along my tape recorder. I had it with me yesterday but the batteries had died and so I was speechless for the entire time; depending upon my brain power to remember critical times and distances, plus the occasional thought or revelation.

‘Necessity, being the mother of invention’, I began to think about some way to replace the need for batteries. Being a geek, I already knew about solar panels on t-shirts and hats, but Bidwell Park is all about shade and shadows. There are few places in the park that receive enough sunshine to power my tape recorder reliably. But… what about a device embedded in the heels of my shoes that would transform the impact of walking into electrical energy? A couple of thin power cords would lead to a converter/charger in a waist pack. The power cords would be secured with Velcro around my calves, to keep the cords from tripping me up. I like it! And, once again, I only want 10% of the profits for thinking of it.

One of the subjects that I was thinking of during the walk was race walking; naturally. And I thought that if I looked on YouTube I could find videos of race walkers. Sure enough, I did… lots of them! And so I gathered up two links and placed them on my Short Laps blog. I was having a hard time viewing them as the satellite connection was behaving badly, so I’m not sure how good they are.