Two impressions of this evening’s final route & food planning session before we’ll try to catch some sleep tonight.

9 more hours and we’ll be on the road….

9 years ago, when I bought my first outdoor boots in New York the world was rather simple. I could chose from a couple of different models and that’s it. When planning for the Singapore Transect I realized that my beloved Timberlands are way to heavy for the planned trip.
So what to buy?
Although I don’t have exact numbers I would guess that there are a few hundred different models of hiking & treking boots on the market, which doesn’t make it exactly easy to find what you are looking for. So stick to what you know, I told myself, and went to the Columbia webpage, hoping to minimize the confusion. Well, not really as only for men’s footwear I found more than 140 different products. Thanks to a reasonable navigation which allows you to focus your search, I was left with ‘only’ 50+ shoes & boots to choose from (some having nice names like ‘Pima’, ‘Myrada’ or ‘Diamond Peak’). What in the end cought my attention was the ‘Trail Meister III’ (Meister = German for Master) which Columbia describes as “a (…) new, mid version, multi-functional trail shoe that offers the weekend warrior plenty of versatility.”

Weekend warrior???

No comment!

Whatsoever, I finally made my way to the Columbia store at Vivo City to give the ‘Trail Meister III’ a try and there’s nothing else to say except that, so far, I am very pleased with what I bought. But the real test will start tomorrow. So better watch out for the upcoming (footwear) report!

“Today was another marathon. We can’t seem to get more than about five kilometers [3.1 miles] per day. We walked over ten hours today and made barely six kliks [3.7 miles] on the map. It’s the hills. They kill us.

MJ Fay, Report 73: October 31, 2000″

In 1999, the conservationist J. Michael Fay started his 3200 kilometer hike (which would take him 15 months) across the Congo River basin in Africa. Aim of this MegaTransect (also called the CongoTrek) was to survey the land and wildlife which might become threatened due to human activities or, in the case of flora and fauna, even extinct. This transect (= path along which one records and counts occurrences of the phenomenon of study) is certainly not only unique in its intensity (for details such as maps and dispatches go to National Geographic) but also matches endeavors endured by the great naturalist Alexander von Humboldt during the early 19th century.

Remembering the inspiring reports on Fay’s MegaTransect while hiking about 20 km through Singapore’s Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and McRitchie Reservoir on January 01 this year we discussed how (i.e where and when) “our” first transect could look like. Well, we had to be reasonable considering our limited time resources and family obligations.

‘So, why not walk through Singapore – from East to West?’
Must have been done, you guess?

Maybe (especially in the pre-computer era). Still there are no clear indications on the web, so the idea of ‘our’ 1st Singapore Transect was born. The aim is to record (literally) as much as possible of Singapore’s diverse culture and nature within the 1 ½ day trek.

Some of which you will certainly read on this blog.

Image taken from: National Geographic

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