I hit the trails the other day-Literally, I decided as the weather was nice and cool i would walk a 10 mile trail, the trail was very boggy in places, This meant i could see the foot prints of others , The trail is hardly used and i could only see one other set of tracks and his/her dog, What i did see was a large pad mark with claws, Way too big for anything else than a bear, I had seen a large pile of scat a few weeks before and wondered if a bear was in the area or just passing through, Seeing the pad mark put me on my guard and i walked along looking through the trees just incase, By doing this i wasnt taking much notice of my footing and my ankle went over sharply on a rock, I did not take too much notice of it until i was at the 5 mile marker, It was twinging and by 7 miles was getting painful, I decided to cut through the trees and get on the forestry road which is has very steep hills but has no roots or rocks, I only saved half a mile and limped home, I have spent the last few days resting my ankle and it now seems 100%, I have to be careful with my left ankle as it has a pin and screw in it from a motorcycle accident many years ago.
So sitting here i thought about discussing one of the things that most of us take for granted and that's getting cash out of banks, When you are out of the country and use the ATM's you will hit with excessive charges, This was something i looked into before leaving for the Camino De Santiago in Spain, I did not want to walk around with a big pile of cash, I found out that if you open a checking account with Charles Schwab you will get ALL your charges back at the end of the month, When you open the account they will offer an account for shareholders which you do not have to take, The people at Schwab were very easy to deal with and extremely helpful, I have kept the account open and will use it when i travel to Nepal later this year
Dave
