A Pain In the Back

Online video. Thank goodness we’ve got so much of it to watch. Videos are everywhere today. So much so that in many cases site publishers are pushing video over regular text pages. For consumers, this makes it more difficult to get information; I mean good information, quickly. Most videos are really not worth the wait. For example, the network news and TV sites are slow to load. They require users to suffer through boring pre-roll commercials, which are usually not produced to be pre-roll at all. Many are just cut downs of :30 TV spots which in many cases fail to deliver the goods. And if you pursue more than one video on a site’s page, you are very likely to see the same pre-roll ad. Oh boy! And the videos themselves are just underwhelming. Boring or uninspiring content isn’t any better in a video than in text. It’s worse because you had to wait for it. The copywriters who develop clever headlines describing the videos are continually over-promising. When given the choice, I’d much rather consume content in text format than through a video clip pulled from broadcast. For others like me, the use of online video is really becoming more like the use of regular television. When I want to sit back and be entertained, I embrace online video on sites like YouTube. When I’m leading forward looking for information, I skip videos entirely. What used to differentiate the television experience (entertainment) from the online experience (information) years ago is now segmenting online behavior in similar ways. We’re being trained to avoid online video because it just ain’t that good.

In March of 2008 my son and I spent a week trekking through Zion National Park. The weather was perfect for hiking. While we didn’t get into any intense free climbing or backcountry sojurns, we did hike Angel’s Landing and Observation Point. The latter of which is an eight mile hike taking about 5 hours.

The view from observation point, looking up canyon

At a park like Zion you expect to see lots of hikers, which we did. But what was amazing was the size of the packs most of the day hikers were carrying. Sure, some of them might have been carrying large parks to train for more extensive trips, but for the most part, people were carrying a lot of stuff for what appeared to be no good reason.

When we got up to Observation Point, we sat with several groups of hikers who had these large packs. It became apparent that they brought a lot of food snacks with them to munch at the summit before the long climb down. Lots of snacks with nothing of substantial value in them; potato chips, apples, water, etc.

We brought a half loaf of Waugoshance Delight and two bottles of water. That was it. If you want to travel light, but also make sure you have enough food to fuel your trip, try Waugoshance Delight Energy Bread.

In March of 2008, the snow there was more than we had expected, which made the hiking very difficult. The hoodoos are really something to see, but the other parts of the canyon are unremarkable.

We did have some Waugoshance Energy Bread with us on this hike. One of the great uses of this bread; to help re-energize during a hike.

Taking a view of the Hoo Doos