Paul Butzi |||

Things I’m busy with now (1/28/2024)

What I’m doing right now

I’m editing this page. (It’s a joke. If you don’t think it’s funny, that’s ok, my kids told me there are two kinds of jokes: the funny kind, and the kind I make.)

What I’m doing this month

I hit my goal of 200 miles at Across the Years and had a wonderful time, and now I’m looking at the coming year and trying to lay out some ultrarunning adventure plans.

Not much trail work got done in the past few months, with the result that things are in sort of a mess and so eventually I’m going to be working to get all that straightened out.

I’m working on getting my book about the things I’ve learned from my adventures in ultrarunning up on this website. I’ve got a lot of thoughts that came up as I was running Across the Years so I probably need to write some new material to cover those lessons.

Amateur Radio

The big upswing in activity has been my participating in Parks on the Air. I’ve activated one park, made hundreds of contacts as a hunter, and I’d love to get out and activate more parks. The big question is when I’ll find time and good weather to get out there.

One nice side effect of my POTA efforts has been a renewed focus on CW. I’ve been hunting activations using CW with some success, and my skills have been improving constantly as a result. I’m still studying CW, with a goal of doing POTA park activations using CW and a QRP radio.

Ultrarunning

Despite my struggles training before Across the Years my wife and I had a wonderful time running the six day event - Paula finished with 317 miles, second place female and 8th overall, a much better finish than I eked out.

So far this year I’m focusing on setting Hamster Endurance as my A race.

I’m writing a book (working title Lessons from Ultrarunning”) about what I’ve learned in the process of going from lying in bed with a broken leg to the finish line of a 100 mile ultramarathon. If nothing else, this is improving my writing.

Life in the forest

I’ve acquired a Logosol F2+ chainsaw mill, and so my focus right now is on getting up to speed with milling lumber, and then using the lumber generated to build several simple outbuildings, including a carport to shelter the Polaris Ranger and several woodsheds.

Work on boardwalks and new trail building continues as time permits.