Pushing one's self (within reason)

So I feel like patting myself on the back because, last night, I bit the bullet and looked in depth at the reviewers' comments for my manuscript and figured I would try to start revising the paper. Now, I have to say that when it comes to this research stuff, the biggest road-block is actually getting up the motivation to just sit down and look at the stuff-- that is what I tend to procrastinate on the most. It has been 2 months since the last submission and life was quite blissful with the stuff out of my hands; it is frustrating because it takes me a bit of time to "regroup" and refamiliarize myself with the material each subsequent time, especially as it gets farther and farther out from the actual data collection (my research block was in April-June of '06!).

But really, in my head, I always make it out to be worse than it actually is. I got home last night around 9 p.m., after a lecture on "Hiking Half-Dome" (see below) at REI that I went to with Kate and Amy, and made myself do this! I had this Thursday morning off, since the Dr. I work with in Breast Health went to a conference, and could have very well procrastinated until this morning, but I didn't!

Most of the comments were actually quite easy to deal with (those of Reviewer #1, that is). They asked me a few statistical questions, which I had to e-mail Rachel, my friendly statistician friend back at Mayo, to fully clarify. There were a couple of comments that I kind of disagreed with, but am thinking I will probably have to change the text just to pacify the reviewers and to have the best chance to get this published (now THAT will be the most blissful time of all... to have this in a journal and to not be able to or have to edit it!!!). I was a bit offended by the second reviewer's comments, which were mostly along the lines of, "You performed much post-hoc analyses, which need to be presented with better care, as they are underpowered and misleading." Ouch-- how's that for constructive criticism? :)

I think I technically have till October to get the next submission in, which seems like ample time, but I will be waiting to hear from Rachel, Robin, and then be swamped with Labor and Delivery next month, so I'm sure it will come quicker than I want it to. Well, enough of that boring nonsense and onto Yosemite stuff:

The day before last, I had called Erin to see if we were still on for hitting Yosemite this weekend, and during the day yesterday, I got this e-mail from her including the following text: "As for Sat, are you ready for a 17 mile hike with ropes at the top too?!? If not, get ready! We have big plans for the day." Yikes. Now, I'm in fairly good shape. But hiking 17 miles cold like that?! And with Erin (as well as TJ, Brian, Mike), who would undoubtedly want to race to the top?! I know very few people who are more competitive than she is (Hans might be one of them :))

Kate had already asked me if I wanted to join her at REI Wednesday night for a lecture on hiking Half-Dome from this guy, Rick Deutsch, who has written the only book on hiking it and who has done it 20 times! Not being very familiar with Yosemite, after reading Erin's e-mail, I didn't yet know that she was referring to Half-Dome, but, before I went to this lecture, I clarified with her that that indeed was the "tentative plan." Let's just say that the plan has since changed.

Rick, who was a very entertaining speaker, gave a lot of information on the hike. Some of the scary highlights:

• Josiah Whitney, in the 1800s, was quoted as saying, "Ain't no one gonna climb that rock!" (it is total granite).
• It is a 16-17 mile, 10-12 hour (roundtrip) hike. Rick leaves at 5:30 a.m. from Curry Village, to make it to the point where you have to get onto the "cables" for the summit before 11 a.m., after which it is nearly impossible due to the crowds.
• About 800 people hike this per weekend day.
• It is 8847 feet to the summit with a 4737 ft. vertical rise.
• There are several stretches of 700 vertical step climbs
• The cables cover a 900-ft. stretch on the hypotenuse of a 45 degree incline (400 vertical feet). The posts that the cables are attached to (which they remove between Oct-May) actually come out of the rock if you pull on them.
• "If you can't walk and chew gum at the same time," he said, "you should spit out the gum before climbing this." Uh oh. I think it is a bad hike for klutzy people-- he told us about people going over the waterfalls to their deaths and stuff, as recently as one month ago; you can read an article HERE.
• Lightning strikes sometimes. Not a good idea to be near the cables when that happens.
• There is no potable water after a certain point, so you either have to bring your own purifier, not drink much water, or risk getting Giardia from drinking from the streams.

But, besides the scariness, it seems like an unbelievable hike. Here is a pretty pic I found online:
And from his website, http://www.hikehalfdome.com/ (he even has a blog! :)) and which he showed us last night, is a picture of "the visor". This looks incredibly scary. Can you see those people??!

Also from his blog is a pic of the cable ascent

The views, over the San Joaquin Valley and the Sierra Nevadas, are supposed to be spectacular. There are beautiful waterfalls along the way (Vernal Falls and Nevada Falls) which shouldn't be too dried out yet. People actually rock-climb the vertical rock face, which I would love to see (not do). I really want to hike this some day.

Just maybe not this weekend. I think there is a ton of other hiking in the park-- El Capitan, Yosemite Falls, etc., that we could maybe do this time. Then we could go back when we were more serious and could start earlier in the day to make it manageable (at this point, we plan on meeting early Saturday morning at a town on both of our ways and then driving in together).
I can't wait to go, though!!!!