Late Bloom – Page 15 – Late Bloom Hiker

It’s been years. Years of dreaming. Watching others get out there. Seen the movies, YouTube videos, read the books: The Camino de Santiago, Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail. John Muir Trail, California Coastal Trail, Minnesota Superior Trail…the list is endless.

So as the years tick by, I wonder if it will ever happen for me.

The itch must have started when I met a man from France, who intended (and succeeded in the year 2000) to make a 2000 mile Camino starting at Santiago de Compostela Catholic Church in Lake Forest CA, and ended at Santiago De Compostela in Spain. There was no such thing as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram. I met him through our church’s website. Email communication was it. He generously wrote emails and sent them to all the people he met while on the journey.

The whole thing fascinated me. Walking…hundreds if not thousands of miles. I thought, maybe to celebrate my 50th birthday, that would be a monumental goal. A way to mark that milestone. An adventure of a lifetime. Then life happened.

Well life does just keep happening and my 60th has come and gone. Still not even a weekend backpack trip. Don’t get me wrong. Over 25 years, we tent camped, graduated to a 1979 pop up camper, then a 30’ 10 year old Winnebago, followed by a 30’ Cougar fifth wheel trailer pulled by an awesome Chevy diesel pickup. Those were some incredible family trips and adventures. From CA deserts with the kids and their dirt bikes, local mountains, boon-docking in city back streets, National parks, county parks, BLM land, San Francisco, San Diego, Oregon, to Washington State and back. But the kids grew up and were no longer interested in trips with mom & dad.

In all those years, no one was interested in overnight back-packing. But the itch for me, never went away.

So the RV trips diminished as we found the fifth wheel trailer to be just too much to handle. Aging knees, old injuries and the comforts of home more appealing than wrestling that massive hitch, loading all the food, clothes and general maintenance needed for such a large vehicle. So we sold it.

Now a sixty-something grandma, the itch is still alive and well.

Twist lock trekking poles can be repaired especially if they are good quality to begin with. I’ve had my Leki Makalu’s for over 10 years. They are the twist lock type and they began collapsing, not holding the lock. No bueno while slogging up rocky terrain.

Getting a new pair seemed my only option. But I started looking around Amazon, and found replacement parts and found YouTube videos that showed how to either adjust existing locks or replace with new. Only two sizes were available on Amazon so I ordered both. But neither one was the right size.

So my only option is to do the adjustment. Here’s how:

Pull the sections apart to reveal the expander. Turn the expander either way to move the red slider up or down to make the adjustment. You are trying to make the expander bigger, but not so big you can’t get it back into the pole. It takes a couple tries
to get it right. Once I get them to a point where they will hold the correct length, tighten them and leave them long! I found that if I collapsed them down, I had to readjust the expander again, in order to get them back to hiking length. So now I just leave them long.

Author: Late Bloom

The Itch

Trekking Pole Repair