Rite in the Rain

 Recently I purchased a "Rite in the Rain" outdoor journal.  Keeping a journal on trips is the best way to track what you did and when you did it.  The easiest way to start a journal is to write what you eat and where you ate it.  When you go back and review your meals it jogs your memory of the things you did those days.  I usually keep an extremely random journal in my shirt pocket, one of those 3" by 5" small ones.  I have extremely short term memory so my journal is filled with lists and things to remember.

 My friend Paul keeps a journal on him when we are camping and he documents everything from peoples names, email addresses, and takes notes for future use.  I have been very jealous on his maticulous note taking and his ability to pull his journal out and recap a conversation in the middle of the woods.  The last journal I had suffored a terrible tragedy when it was washed and all that was left is the metal ring. 

 While I was at REI picking up some running gels (also good glucose substitutes) recently, the next isle had these "Rite in the Rain journals and with the upcoming Score-O campout coming I made an impulse buy and picked one up.  I did use a 20% off coupon so in the picture where you see a price tag of 6.00 dollars, it actually came out to 4.80 dollars and I had a 10 dollar gift card.

 Score-O starts off when they give all competitors the exact same map 30 minutes before the event starts.  This short amount of time is where winners and losers are made.  You have to plan your route and with a team it is hard at times with one map to know the distance between points and also the compass bearings.  So I used my handy dandy journal to write our course, a note, compass bearing, and distance.  As I was writing the course on my journal I was thinking how hard it was to get my pen to write on the paper.  After some days later I realized that it was not the paper but the pen I was using had issues.

 For the price I would say that "Rite in the Rain" is a little on the high side to use everyday.  I would keep this product as my outdoor journal and keep another journal for everyday.  The diabetes side of me loves this product because I want to get my AIC's under that famed 7.0 and I think a journal would help with that.  Writing down my numbers, food intake, and what I am doing will keep me aware constantly of how I am doing and give me the ability to document a base line of activity and diabetes.  The next part would be to create some sort of spreadsheet and track my journals together or something.

The blurry part in the picture above is where I kept my sweaty thumb while I was navigating through the wild cactus plants.  Overall the "Rite in the Rain" notepad was great but I would like to get it at a lower price.  I give it 4 syringes out of 5 syringes on my patented diabetes camping scale.