[pct-l] Water Consumption - desert

[Diane Soini of Santa Barbara Hikes]

I'll try.

When you are sleeping, you are unconscious and oblivious.

When you wake up in the middle of the night with a full bladder, you  
realize it is cold. Now your brain is whirling its gears trying to  
figure out how to ignore this urgent situation, and we all know that  
the brain is the most energy-intensive of our organs. So you realize  
that you're not warm inside your bag anymore, you are cold. Your  
brain continues ruminating over how cold it is and how much you dread  
getting up to go pee. So you try to go back to sleep. But you can't  
because now you are uncomfortable and conscious and fighting with  
yourself.

So, after trying and failing to quiet your brain enough to warm up  
enough to go back to sleep, you relent and get up to go pee. Don't  
matter much if you have to go outside to pee or not. It takes effort  
and gets you out of your cocoon of warm feathers and it's something  
you really don't want to do.

Now that your bladder is empty, you get back into your cocoon and  
there is no nagging urge to spin the wheels of your energy-hungry  
brain. You warm up, fall back asleep and into oblivion once again.
On Apr 4, 2011, at 10:00 AM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:

>
> Good evening, Tortoise,
>
> I've heard that story several times over the years, and I don't  
> believe it.
> No-one yet has given me a sound, technical reason why such would be  
> the
> case.  Anyone care to try?
>
> Steel-Eye
>
> Hiking the Pct since before it was the PCT ? 1965
>
> http://www.trailjournals.com/steel-eye
>
> http://www.trailjournals.com/SteelEye09
>
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 8:38 PM, Tortoise <Tortoise73 at charter.net>  
> wrote:
>
>> this sounds like an old hiker's tale. Our urine is inside our  
>> lower abdomen
>> which is already warm and surrounding the urine, both are at body
>> temperature. Does anyone have a reliable source for the below?
>>
>> Tortoise