Gene Hikes the Appalachian Trail

  • Unwanted Pedometer Reviews

    I’ve made a real commitment to walking everywhere I possibly can to improve my endurance. In order to quantify how successful I am being I decided to download a pedometer app to count my steps. I was originally counting them without an app, but I started looking stupid whispering my current number every place I went. Therefore I deigned to test several pedometer apps and post reviews of them here.

    When looking for a pedometer I had a few hard and fast rules in mind for what I had to have:

    1. The pedometer had to be free. I was willing to accept some small, constant ads or infrequent, large ads in exchange for keeping my wallet closed.
    2. It had to work on an Android device. It is possible that the world’s greatest free pedometer app is on the iPhone (it’s not). If so, wouldn’t do me any good because I couldn’t download it.
    3. It had to specifically work on the Android 9.0 version. I know this is not the latest and greatest, but I am not upgrading my phone just for a step counting app. I downloaded a few apps that I couldn’t get to work and I think that compatibility might have been the reason.
    4. It had to work using only my physical activity data. That is the only permission anything was allowed to have. I was not giving my location data to any rando that uploads an app to the Play Store. I know for a fact that some apps I tried would not work correctly because I would not pony up my location and/or biometric data.

    Other than those above, I just wanted an app that could count steps accurately and generally leave me alone 95% of the time unless I wanted to see my daily step number. As I downloaded these apps to test them I immediately noticed one annoyance. All of these apps had names so similar it was nearly impossible to differentiate them. For that reason I will include the name, developer, and Play Store link for each app I discuss so there is minimal confusion.

    Without further ado, here are my thoughts on six different pedometer apps.

    Step Counter – Pedometer
    Leap Fitness Group

    This app requested my age, gender, height, and weight. It had an adjustable step length and the most accurate setting I could get showed 104 steps in the app for every 100 steps I actually took. There were a fair amount of full screen ads, and most of them were the annoying kind of ad like “oh no, you just downloaded a virus” that try to scare you into clicking on it instead of telling you about a product or service that may interest you. There was also a constant small banner ad on the bottom of the screen. It would have cost $11 / year to remove all the ads.

    This app made it easy to set custom daily and weekly goals and it counted calories as well as steps (provided you entered your gender and weight info). It also allowed me to see my daily step total right from the lock screen without having to unlock my phone. One cool feature with this app was that it included a lot of HIIT mini-workouts of 2-5 minutes for when you are in a hurry. For example, there was a 2 minute chest workout you could pull up that cycled through different easy chest exercises like wall pushups that could be done at home or in a hotel or wherever.

    A very solid app that did lots of things I liked. The only real drawback here was the scary ads that were a little too frequent but the bonus mini-workouts were a solid bonus. Four out of five stars.

    Pedometer – Step Counter
    ITO Technologies

    This app requested my age, gender, and weight. It had an adjustable step length and the most accurate setting I could get showed 105 steps in the app for every 100 steps I actually took. The ads were largely TikTok ads that you could skip through after it played for 5-10 seconds. There was no premium or ad-free version that I could see.

    The app let you customize theme and colors in a bajillion ways. I never gave that a second thought because I don’t want that sort of feature. It also counted not just steps but also calories, distance, and time walked. The big negative was the battery draw the app required to work. When you downloaded it there was a warning page about how quickly it drains your battery. And then while I used it I noticed my battery getting sucked dry in real time. It had a sleep mode you could use to minimize that, but then you needed to remember to un-sleep the app every time you went somewhere in order for those steps to get counted.

    While accurate, this app lacked the ability to see your steps directly on the lock screen. That is the second most important feature I found across all the apps. The huge inefficiencies in battery life also made this a less than ideal app. Two out of five stars.

    Pedometer App – Step Counter
    AceTools Team

    This app requested my age, gender, and weight. It had an adjustable step length and the most accurate setting I could get showed 105 steps in the app for every 100 steps I actually took. There were banner ads at the bottom of the screen as well as full screen unskippable ads, and also ads where the X to close it would be purposely hidden to make you unlikely to close the ad without accidentally clicking on it and opening the sponsor’s website. Their Pro plan with no ads cost $30 / year.

    The app counted steps and calories and showed them straight from the lock screen. Which was great because this app took an exceedingly long time to load. Not counting the extra time it took for the ads to get out of the way. It included a sleep logger so you could enter how much sleep you were getting and an AI “Health Pal” that I am not really sure what its actual use was. It absolutely was not able to help me with my property tax questions though.

    Ultimately the long load times and nefarious ads undercut the other quality features of this app. Two and a half out of five stars.

    StepUp Pedometer Step Counter
    StepUp Inc

    This app requested my age, gender, and weight. It had no way to adjust my step length. That was really unfortunate because this counter registered 80 steps for every 100 steps I took. It didn’t matter if I said I was 5′ tall or 7′ tall it never got any more accurate than that. It also had a serious lag on counting steps. Like, I could walk from one end of a block to the other and the number wouldn’t change. Then after I stopped it would slowly count up until it got everything counted.

    The app itself was very minimalist and bare bones, which I liked because there was no fluff and no battery overuse. It also had very minimal ads to the point that I cannot even remember any negatives from that perspective. The one thing this app would not shut up about was wanting me to go online. It constantly asked me to join a chat group and message my friends — about how much fun it is to walk, I guess.

    One cool feature was that it had “bots” that race you throughout the day. For example, if your goal is 6000 steps there is a bot that slowly counts up to 6000 during the day and a leaderboard with you and another lazy bot that goes almost nowhere, and a busy bot that exceeds your daily goals to motivate you.

    I liked the “bots” idea and the minimalist design. However, the most important feature for me is accuracy and counting only 80 steps per 100 I take was a major negative. Three out of five stars.

    Before I continue with more reviews I need to talk about two things that I saw in almost every app I tested which annoyed the shit out of me. One, so many of them counted my weight in tenths of a pound. Why do this? Who accurately keeps track of their weight to the tenth of a pound? This is the same sort of meaningless hyper-accuracy as you see in rainfall totals to the hundredth of an inch.

    Two, nearly every app I downloaded served me ad upon ad for other pedometer apps. Wait, what? Why does one step counter app try to pitch me a different step counter app? Do they think I need to run two pedometer apps simultaneously? Don’t they realize they are supposed to compete for my business? It makes as much sense to me as if I bought a six pack of Pepsi and inside there was a coupon for a free Coke.

    Pedometer King – Step Counter
    Kingbrain

    This app requested my age, gender, and weight. It had no way to adjust my step length. Despite that fact this app was so accurate it counted 99 steps for every 100 steps I took. This was easily the most accurate of all the apps I tried. Weirdly, this was also the only app that counted in discrete intervals of 9 steps. Every other app I used would count individual steps and I could conceivably end on any number on any day. 4512, sure. 5398, absolutely. But this app only counted in increments of 9. If I started walking I had to go 9 steps before it would count all 9 at the same time. While this annoyed the ever living shit out of me at the beginning, I wound up accepting it since the app was so damn accurate.

    This app had a banner ad on the top and video ads for Temu on startup. It had a premium plan that removed the ads for $5.49 / month. There were lots of notifications, if you didn’t turn them off it could get excessive. The app also showed your steps and calories on the lock screen.

    In spite of the weird counting method and overzealous notifications, the fact that it was amazingly accurate and let me see my steps from my lock screen more than made up for it. Four out of five stars.

    StepsApp – Step Counter
    StepsApp

    This app requested my age, gender, height, and weight. It also had minimal ads with a premium option without ads for $19.99 / year. However none of that mattered at all.

    This app had adjustable step length but I was not able to dial it in anywhere close to my walking stride. No matter what height I used, no matter what step length I used, it remained wildly far off from my actual steps. The closest I could get it was 220 steps registered for every 100 steps I took. I wasted an entire afternoon just walking back and forth in my apartment parking lot trying every possible setting to get it sort of close to almost accurate-ish. Never got anywhere close. One out of five stars.

    Those are my reviews of the six different free pedometer apps for Android 9.0 and earlier devices that I happened to try. I valued accuracy and lock screen step visibility more than anything else, then intrusiveness of ads and battery usage. Least important to me were customization of colors and themes and online features or anything that tried to create the feeling of a “team”. If those sorts of things are important to you, you’ll probably rate these apps differently.

    Even though I had two apps both finish with four stars, the one I decided to continue using was Pedometer King because of those most important features. I reserve the right to delete this app if it starts serving too many ads or gets annoying in some other way.

  • High Rollin

    So I’m going to do a change of pace here and post something that has nothing to do with hiking or fitness or anything of the sort. It’s allowed; I can do that. I can talk about anything I want because this is my fucking blog. I can also swear casually.

    This past Saturday I went to my first MLS game, Austin FC versus the Houston Dynamo. I had never been to a game here in Austin despite the team existing since 2021 largely for two reasons. One, I feel like MLS is equivalent to third-tier European football, which is something I have never paid to watch either. Two, I have a long-standing, entirely one-sided feud with Austin FC’s principal owner Anthony Precourt.

    Precourt is the sort of billionaire asshole sports owner (BASO) that did everything he could to ruin the Columbus MLS franchise before finally getting an expansion team in Austin. Precourt also happens to be one of those private equity dudes who seems incapable of earning money except by sucking all of the joy out of all of the small things that little people like me enjoy.

    All of that said, if the Austin MLS team was an MLB or NFL team instead I’d happily support them. The sad truth is that every BASO is a douchebag. It’s just that if you are passionate enough about the team they own you’ll look the other way until they do something so bad even their fellow BASOs cannot justify it. Jerry Richardson was the founding owner of my beloved Carolina Panthers. He was a douchebag, the sort of douchebag who puts a giant statue of himself in front of the team’s stadium. That alone was not a fireable offense as a BASO. What was fireable was being a racist, sexist piece of shit.

    Who am I kidding? That alone is not enough. The problem is that Richardson was so racist and sexist that there had to be an investigation. The results of which were so bad they made him sell the team. That is how you get fired as a BASO. Donald Sterling was a known shit sandwich but didn’t get booted from the NBA until they caught him on tape being a racist cocksucker. As long as it wasn’t on tape there was enough plausible deniability to look the other way. Once everything became public record he became expendable. See also, Daniel Snyder.

    Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs has been a mean-spirited skinflint and outright spiteful to the very fans that feed his bottom line for as long as he has run the team, but he is still a proud BASO. The Bruins are my NHL team of choice because I am a hypocrite and follow Boston despite Jacobs while loathing Austin FC because of Precourt.

    Well anyway this post is not about why every BASO is a fundamentally bad person, it is about my trip to the game. I got a free ticket from a friend who has seats in an unlimited food and drinks section at picturesque Q2 Stadium. He has two season tickets to this area. He had one free ticket because someone else wasn’t able to go. Why? Don’t know, don’t care.

    Now I’ve known this guy since college and I knew he was doing well financially, but I did not know he was doing WELL, if you know what I mean. After graduation he moved to Austin to attend grad school at UT. He was living the life of a poor college student during this time.

    I remember when the Chicago Whie Sox (my team; don’t get me started on Jerry Reinsdorf’s qualifications as a BASO) faced the Houston Astros (his team; he grew up in Houston) in the 2005 World Series we made a friendly wager. I wanted to do $50 but he said that was too rich for him so we did $20 instead. Chicago swept that World Series and I used the $20 to buy a Pale Hose cap with the World Series logo. This was back when $20 could buy a nice fitted baseball cap that now costs about $45 and is sewn together by the lowest bidder that Fanatics can find. I still own that cap even though the bill is literally disintegrating. I swore I’d wear it until we make another World Series and I can replace it. Hopefully Murakami and Montgomery and the boys punch way above their weight soon.

    The point, though, is that he couldn’t put $50 on his favorite team twenty years ago and now he is tossing fistfuls of cash at cushy seats in a swanky stadium. He also lives in a nice house in a gated community in West Austin with an 80″ television. I’m happy for him, and he is now my “rich friend”.

    So we get to the stadium ninety minutes before kickoff because that is when the gates open. Outside they are giving away free cans of Dr Pepper Creamy Coconut, which tastes just like a liquid Mounds bar. First thing we do once we get inside is head for the unlimited food area. I had some street tacos with sumac onions and tahini sauce. Then I got a Karbach Love Street to wash it all down.

    Later on, still before kickoff, I had a smash patty burger with fries, and a serving of pita chips with a whipped feta dip.

    Come kickoff we head down to the seats which are so close to the pitch I am legitimately concerned that I may get hit by an errant free kick. We get to those seats while both two-fisting beers that we sucked down until halftime.

    one fistful of beer

    Second half included more food and beers and a piece of orange olive oil cake. I’d never heard of olive oil cake before that night but I wish I had because it tasted the same way everything else did. Awesomely awesome.

    Oh yeah, and the team actually won 2-0. And they shot like a million fireworks off. And then I went back to my decidedly non-glamorous life where the food and drink is nether “unlimited” nor “delicious” nor even “passably mediocre”. But for one night I got to live like a damn hell ass king thanks to my rich friend. I have not been converted into a fan of Austin FC or Anthony Precourt just yet, but enough more nights like Saturday may change that.

  • Shoal Creek Trail

    I threw on the backpack with 25 pounds in it and went for a round trip on Shoal Creek Trail. Shoal Creek Trail goes from water’s edge of Lady Bird Lake north to 38th Street. It runs roughly parallel to Lamar Blvd and is 3.75 miles each way, so a 7.5 mile round trip. I started from the 38th Street end, which is fairly close to a Spec’s liquor store. That Spec’s used to be a Randalls supermarket. I love HEB as much as any other Texan, but I also love Randalls and since this one and the one near Arboretum closed I can’t get my fix anywhere. Enough whining about retail stores though, let’s start the trail.

    The first sign you’ll encounter at 38th Street

    A short ways in (0.15 miles, give or take) I came upon Seiders Springs. The biggest features of that location are the Seiders Oaks. Below you will see a picture of one of them, just behind a sign reminding people not to have their dogs off leash. You see those signs everywhere on the trail. Or rather, I see them everywhere. Judging by the amount of dogs running around off leash that day I would assume all of these signs are invisible to dog owners.

    To the left of that dog sign is a green obelisk. These things are all over the trail as markers and tell you which way to continue to get to Lady Bird Lake. Except they all say “To Town Lake”. When Longhorn Dam was built on the Colorado River (not that Colorado River) in Austin, the lake it created was called Town Lake. In 2007 it was renamed to be Lady Bird Lake after the former first lady. Most native Austinites over 40 and/or people who moved here in the early 2000s still call it Town Lake and so do these obelisks.

    Back to Seiders Springs. It is named for Edward Seiders (pronounced “Cedars”) who moved to the area along with his friend Gideon White. He lived in the area and was a prominent businessman in the mid-1800s. It also happens to be the site of a particularly gruesome event in 1842. Gideon White was overtaken by Indians and killed on October 25. Later, White’s daughter would marry Edward Seiders.

    Moving south a short distance from there I found a rest area with benches and working water fountains. Can never have enough of either of those.

    At Lamar & 31st Street was the only confusing part of the trail. While most of the trail is its own thing, just before this intersection it merges with the bike lane on Shoal Creek Blvd. The turn at Lamar to go south doesn’t have any signage; you just sort of need to know that is where you go to pick up the trail again.

    South of 31st Street I walked past some really interesting outcroppings of rocks. I am no geologist, so I can’t tell if it is Del Rio Claystone or Buda Limestone or something else. I felt like Indiana Jones while I walked past it, so that’s good for something and I wanted to share it.

    At 29th Street there is some wooden exercise equipment. A set of pull-up bars, a waist high bar, and some benches for sit-ups. I had to bang out a dozen or so pull-ups because I’m so manly. Therefore I can proudly say that everything is nice and sturdy even though it might look old and dangerous.

    The next landmark on the trip southward was Pease Park. It is named so because the land was gifted to the city in 1875 by Elisah Pease, the fifth and thirteenth Governor of Texas. The interesting thing about his time in the Governor’s office is that his interregnum was only from 1857 to 1867. In that time there were seven different Governors. This was during the Civil War, so Texas was going through some shit. And going through Governors like shit through a goose.

    In Pease Park there is a memorial to victims of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) with symbolic red flags that line the trail. Those flags are left by the trail and then moved out to line the Mile of Silence for the Hill Country Ride for AIDS, which happens to be this weekend.

    Anyway, Pease Park is everything you’d expect from a public park. Green, lots of stuff to do. Expansive, clean, working public toilets. And even more exercise equipment, metallic instead of wooden. Play areas for kids and water fountains shooting out of the ground. There is a cottage too and all sorts of stuff. Here is another gallery.

    At this point I was only 1.25 miles from the lake.

    Close enough to get a good shot of the tall buildings downtown.

    Your definition of “good shot” may not be the same as mine.

    The next interesting things were a skate park and a football field at House Park Plaza. I saw a few people hanging out and working on moves at the skate park. However I decided not to capture them in my picture, so now I’m not sure if anyone will believe me.

    House Park is a shared football field that lots of teams in AISD (Austin Independent School District) use. The Austin Sol ultimate frisbee team also play there. I used to be pretty good at ultimate frisbee. By which I mean I could throw a forehand and a backhand and the occasional hammer.

    Also, more tall buildings.

    From there to the water’s edge was a fairly straightforward walk. Because the trail goes right through the center of downtown most of the final mile is just walking alongside buildings. I did pass by a neighborhood garden and a wildflower meadow.

    Right as you reach the end there is the Central Library. The building is still fairly new and shiny. I miss the old library which was about a mile from the edge of the water. I loved it because it was a boxy building that looked the way a library should. This new Central Library is a happening place where people go to vibe and hang out. I prefer a library where you go to check out books and avoid eye contact with one another.

    The central library. This does not spark joy.

    And from there only a few hundred feet to Lady Bird Lake. I don’t know if the person in my picture was able to catch any fish.

    There is a plaque at the end, in case you can’t figure it out from the fact that there is a giant ass lake there.

    The trip back to 38th Street was fairly uneventful. I admit that I was physically and mentally spent, and once I got back home I did nothing but watch baseball in the dark. I do want to call out that there is a sign at 31st Street going north that tells you exactly where to go, so the issue I mentioned earlier is exclusively a southbound problem.

    I also wanted to call out the fact that there are quite a few underpasses along the Shoal Creek Trail. Only one of them actually has lights, and that was the one at West Sixth Street.

    It is pretty easy to find yourself in a bad situation at night in a big city so I would think more underpasses should be lit. It shouldn’t cost that much, right? Unless all the data centers need that power so the AI in my toaster can cook my bagel to the exact right color.

    Here at the end I’m going to include various pictures I took during the trail that show the water level of the creek. I don’t know why, but most people I talk with are obsessed with what the water level of any body of water is at any particular time. If you are one of those people, then this last collage is for you. You’re welcome.

  • Worst Fear: Alpha-gal Syndrome

    The idea of spending five months walking with a heavy pack on, sleeping outside in all types of weather, and foregoing the comforts of home can sound scary. It definitely does scare me on occasion when I think about it. But, like, it scares me in a good way. Like, an I believe this will be challenging but I can handle it, kind of way. There are other things about the trail that scare me in a different way.

    I am a very risk averse person by nature. I’ve never been on a roller coaster, I’ve never scuba dived. I’ve only been outside the continental United States twice (once to Montreal and once to Puerto Rico). The reason I never take risks is because I always play out the absolute worst thing that can possibly happen over and over in my head until I’m convinced it will. Do I want to stand on the edge of this moderately high building? No, because the exact second I decide to stand there I will get hit by a minor vortex that lifts me over the edge and drops me onto a giant pile of broken concrete and rusty safety razors and horse dung. The very fact that nothing like this has ever happened to me just reinforces the idea that my abundance of caution is the reason why.

    I have several very specific fears about things that may happen to me on the Appalachian Trail. They range from the plausible to the irrationally unlikely. But rest assured that wherever on that continuum they lie, I remain equally concerned about them. Perhaps writing them out here in my blog will help to allay my fears. For my first specific fear I have something that is very real and even likely to occur. Fortunately, it is also easily preventable with care and discipline.

    My first fear (that is first chronologically, not first in terms of the amount of heebie-jeebies it gives me) is alpha-gal syndrome. Alpha-gal syndrome is an allergic disease caused by a tick bite. Being bitten causes you to develop an allergic reaction to galactose-α-1,3-galactose (also known as alpha-gal). That carbohydrate is found in the meat of most mammals, which means once you get it you will no longer be able to eat beef, pork, or most other meat. Alpha-gal is not found in humans, so Soylent Green would still be okay to eat. In the worst cases, people with the syndrome are not able to consume dairy like milk or yogurt either.

    The idea of an allergic reaction to alpha-gal is not unknown. What is scary is the idea of becoming allergic to the molecule after you eat it and it circulates in the bloodstream. Alpha-gal is the main reason why pig organs are rejected during transplantation into people. Our antibodies attack the carbohydrate and cause the organs to fail. Fortunately, scientists are engineering xenotransplants which lack that molecule.

    Unfortunately, that does not matter with alpha-gal syndrome. When the tick bites you it can take up to several months to develop the reaction. The exact mechanism is not clear. The same tick could bite two people and one can get the syndrome and the other won’t. Once you have it, a few hours after you eat red meat the allergic reaction begins. No more steak or ice cream or hot dogs, for the rest of your life.

    Which specific ticks can cause this? Way too many. Lone star tick, blacklegged tick, and western blacklegged tick are all known or suspected to cause it. Where is the lone star tick located? Why, the eastern United States of course. Isn’t that where the Appalachian Trail is? No shit. When are they most active? April to September. Well, fuck my life.

    public enemy number one

    As horrific as this is, it can be easily prevented. Permethrin is a miracle compound. Our Army uniforms were impregnated with it and I can proudly say I never got a tick bite despite sleeping on exposed ground many, many times across the southeastern United States. It is also critical to frequently check yourself and each other for ticks when you have a chance. They like to hide in your underarms and between your legs, just like many perverts you encounter.

    There are not many things worse than getting alpha-gal syndrome as far as I’m concerned. As scary as it is, practicing good hygiene and insect prevention is the key to making sure it does not happen to me. There are more than a few other scenarios I will go over in the coming months that are in some ways even more scary than this. I can’t wait to tell you all about them.