Longshot

This is a book by Dick Francis, one of my favorite mystery authors.  I first started reading him because I was a horse-crazy girl, and his stories take place around the British horse racing world, but I continue to read them because he writes dialogue in the coolest way.  Sometimes his characters hardly speak, but they imply a lot with sardonic looks and dry wit.

Anyway, this particular book is about a man who writes books on survival - he calls them "travel guides," but they're to places that bring on the man vs. nature challenge.  He's hired to write a sort of biography on a racehorse trainer and stumbles upon a secret that could get him killed.  He's forced to call upon his survival skills to get through and solve the case, although to a rather surprising end.

Today's topic:  dehydration

The first rule of survival is to get water. According to survivaltopics.com, a person, under ideal conditions, could survive about 10 days without water.  Of course, if you don't have water, you're probably not in ideal conditions.  The average survival time without any water is about five days.  Getting water was paramount in both Hunger Games arenas and harvesting rain enabled Louie and Phil to survive on their raft, even before they figured out how to fish.

My personal dehydration story: On my first camping trip to Glacier National Park, we were hiking up to Granite Park Chalet, advertised as an easy 4 mile hike up the mountain.  It was a spur of the moment kind of thing and we didn't have our water bottles filled.  I figured it was no big deal cuz I had done 8 mile hikes without drinking much of the water we brought.  Plus there was a promise of apple pie once we got up to the chalet.  False advertising!  It was 4 miles from the bottom of the mountain to the top, but the trail was a series of switchbacks, with probably tripled the total walking distance.  I got thirsty about a third of the way up.  I drank the water condensing at the bottom of my plastic bag of carrots.  By the time we made it to the top, I was pretty desperate.  There was lots of whining.  Here's the fun part.  We left our wallets in the car so we couldn't pay for any food or water!  That's when I started crying.  :(  Anyway, a very nice girl filled our water bottles for free and we made it back down, but I was so exhausted from the dehydration, I couldn't even walk a mile the next day before my body made me stop.  It took me about a day and a half to recover.