When you’ve been hiking as long as I have, you know instinctively that equipment failure is a guarantee. Since the early days of my hiking career, I have kept a vigilant log of my successes based on the readings of my trusty pedometer. Yesterday, after a catastrophic mid-afternoon pedometer failure, I lost all of the data for the day’s progress.

Not one to meet failure with anything other than rose-colored hunger, I turned to the numbers, to attempt to estimate my day’s journey.  As my daily distance increases between 50-100% each day, I’m inclined to pencil in a 23 mile slam dunk against the undefended basket of Life.

Further, I see no reason to doubt the sustainability of these numbers, which is encouraging. One year from now, I’ll be easily covering up to 876,000 miles per day. This is the same kind of math which the Fed generously and routinely produces for the public, which is all the foundation my optimism needs.

So, bravo fair pedometer. Your failure will be my sweet, sweet success. All the better if I’m not laden with the weight of empirical data. Monday could show some big, big numbers.