Happy New Year! After staying up to be awake at midnight last night (as well as play some boardgames) I got a really late start this morning, I was out the door for my walk about an hour or hour and a half later than usual. I also wanted to take an extra long walk today, to start off the new year with a big stepcount for the day. There's also a new round of the #AutomaticWin step challenge starting today. I don't know if I have a shot at this, last time I was hovering around 10th place on the leaderboard for most of it then got knocked off at the end, but I figured I should at least set myself up for success if I do want to be competitive. So I went to Maurie Jacobs park, which is how I usually begin my walk, and then started taking the path south from there. It was a foggy, frosty morning, so things had a bit of a spooky, serene feeling while the sun was still coming up.
The Owen Rose Garden, which is where I usually turn back when I'm taking my regular route, looked pretty stark with all the roses cut back for the winter and frost on everything.
Instead of turning back I kept going down the path, past Skinner Butte Park and all the way down across another bike bridge back over the river to Alton Baker Park. I was playing Pokemon Go the whole time, so I took a loop around the Eugene Solar System and the other pokestops in that area.
As I was heading back toward the bridge to the path home I noticed some geese in one of the water areas that I thought were unusual. They seemed to have big knobs on their foreheads, I'm not sure I've ever seen geese like this before, or at least not up close enough to notice the distinctive detail. Some googling suggests that they might have been Chinese or African Geese.
I also took a quick stroll through the section of the park that's a twisty path with informational signs about Americans who have won the Nobel Peace Prize.
In Pokemon Go, one of the research quests I got from a pokestop in that area required evolving a pokemon to complete. I've wanted to evolve my perfect-IV Electabuzz for a while, and getting that quest prompted me to decide that this would be a good day to do it. After the evolution I also unlocked a second charge move for it, and used a Fast TM to get it its electric-type fast move, and powered it up to the max level it can be and still qualify for the 2500 CP league in PvP. I don't know if it's necessarily worth the investment of startdust, especially since I only occasionally PvP battle with my brother and niece, but I felt like splurging a bit.
From there I started heading home, fully aware that I still had a long way to walk and it was already pretty late in the morning for me. Usually I get home from my walk by 8:30 or 9:00 am and post my Actifit post and announce my #AutomaticWin for the day (usually I don't bother tracking my activities for the rest of the day since my morning walks have more than enough to be a nice accomplishment), but due to my late start and the extra long walk I was still out walking when 10am started to roll around. I was approaching the underpass for the Owosso Bike Bridge at the time so I took a photo to go along with my stepcount screenshot to qualify for the #AutomaticWin.
And then I headed home. I also took the slightly longer and more scenic route from the end of the path back to the house. Normally I post as soon as I finish my walk. Today I tried delaying the post to rack up a few extra steps from around-the-house type stuff, but I'm finding the distraction of keeping my phone with me and knowing I have to post later too be too much of a mental distraction, so I think I'm going to have to stick to my habit of posting right after my morning walk on future days.
