Having received my Start Walking pedometer, my first day on program was marked by staying home sick with a cold. But it got better over the course of the day, enough that I danced for over an hour. Unfortunately, the pedometer is next to useless. Read more at Terveys.
Or it’s becoming one.
Now, I considered (as I did last Saturday) posting this in my health blog Terveys instead of this one, but I decided that, hey, this isn’t just a separate topic now: this is something that I’m integrating into my life. Not only that, but consider that my stated purpose for this blog — besides the sometimes trivial record of the workaday details of my life — is to write here about what puts the cool breeze in me. Doing what I’m doing is certainly doing that.
So back to the point: this is the second Saturday in a row I’ve taken my bike to go downtown for writing at Side Street Espresso, my favorite writing venue. Today I even managed to get all the way up the bike trail curve around the hill next to L Street without having to dismount & walk it. Huff & puff, but hey, gets my metabolism going, & I know I’ll get stronger with time.
And maybe with properly inflated tires, too. I was gonna pump some air before I left home, but the bike pump had magically dissappeared. So I called up the boy, who had spent the night at a friend’s house, & asked him about it. Yep. He’s got it in his backpack. Just in case he ran over some glass on the bike trail. I forgot to tell him what Rozz pointed out after I concluded the conversation with him: a lot of good the bike pumps gonna do him if glass rips a big hole in his bicycle tire.
But never mind. My tires are a little low, but I made it. Got some productive work done, & when Side Street closed at 3:00, I headed down to the Coastal Trail.
It was warmer today than last week, though quite a bit windy. There was an Alaska Railroad passenger train sitting down at the depot when I got down to the start of the trail, & after a couple of minutes pedaling I could hear it come up behind me, so I hopped of my bike to get some piks. Got quite a number of pics, in fact, because for the inscrutable reasons that only railroad employees know, the train later backed up past me again, kids waving at me as it passed. Presumably it went back all the way to the depot.
Then a little later, while I was sitting down just offtrail for a little picnic lunch, it came by again. And then it backed up again. Maybe it came by again later, too, but by then I’d finished my lunch & hopped back on my bike to continue my ride. Was this just some little Saturday “see what it’s like to ride the train” quickie for the tourists? Tourists, in early May, before the trees have even popped with buds? (These people in the picture to the right weren’t tourists, just other Coastal Trail fans passing by.)
Did I mention the wind? When I was eating lunch, it blew a sandwich bag away once, & the lid to my container away later on. I managed to retrieve both items before they blew off onto the mud flats, & got everything weighed down better so it wouldn’t happen again. That’s my picnic spot in the photo to the right, where the little white items that look like trash, but are really my food containers, are sitting.
A little cold on my hands as I went down the trail — or up, there are a couple of slight hills that raised my metabolism again huff puff huff puff.
Last week there was still a lot of ice on Westchester Lagoon, though it had melted away from shore; this week it was all gone. The trees are gonna pop any moment.
After I got home & wiped the sweat off my beaded brow, Rozz & I headed down to the local Lutheran church where one of her Tai Ch’i students was demonstrating the 20-movement form she’d been learning in the church’s first annual talent show. It was a lot of fun! From the little boy who sang a song to the pastor who regaled us with lumberjack tales told in Robert Service-esque poems, it was a real taste of the kinds of face-to-face communities that can still form even in this mass media age. Call it the positive side of Christianity. I was actually sad that we had to leave after intermission, because we had to get our Natural Pantry shopping in before they closed at 8:00.
From there, we went to our best friend Chris’ house so that he could try out on us the really cool game that he & his girlfriend in Utah have been inventing. I’d tell you more about it, but I’m sworn to secrecy. Suffice it to say, spending time with Chris & Rozz playing that game was a great cap-off to a great day.
Even if my cold that started up yesterday was growing steadily worse.
My morning routine has changed a lot since end of December, when I exchanged my long-lived bad exercise & dietary habits for a healthier way. Today’s morning routine is described at Terveys.
It’s been some time now since I’ve integrated the dietary changes in my life enough that I don’t really have to think one helluva lot about how to put a meal together, or even a full day’s meals, or what to buy when we go to the grocery store. Exercise, too, is fairly well integrated, though there’s been a little adjustment since adding in biking to work sometimes.
Here’s how the morning routine looked today:
Got up at 5.00 AM. This is a couple of hours earlier than was my habit in the old days (pre-December), which didn’t leave me enough time for breakfast or making lunch. If I’m driving the car (usually only one or two days a week), I can sleep in until 6:00. But for a bus or bike day, as today, it’s up at 5:00.
First thing is always a few minutes sitting on the can with a book. Then: prepare lunches. If I’ve managed to prepared my meals ahead of time, all I have to do is to grab stuff out of the fridge & stuff them in whichever bag is appropriate for the day — a small red daypack if I’m driving or taking the bus, my black bicycle saddlebags when I’m biking, as today. But today I had to make meals: for second breakfast & first lunch a salad with kale, onion, pickles, nuts & seeds, & tuna; an orange as the carb for first lunch; & the second half of my morning oatmeal (not yet cooked) for the carb to go with second breakfast. Second lunch is a can of kippers with a couple of Wasa multigrain crackers, a couple of small carrots, a celery stalk, & a couple of radishes.
I’ve now taken to doing set-up for my (first) breakfast at the same time. My usual breakfast includes oatmeal porridge with a little bit of fruit — frozen blueberries, raspberries, or strawberries put on the bottom of the boil so they thaw when the hot oatmeal is dumped on them — along with a tablespoon or so of butter, with cinnamon & walnuts on top. With that, two eggs scrambled with onions & mushrooms. But right now it’s only setup: I don’t cook until after morning exercise.
This takes maybe 30-40 minutes to do all this, including packing second breakfast & the two lunch meals. Then I drink a glass of water & grab my iPod & dance for half an hour.
This morning’s playlist:
“Mountains o’ Things” by Tracy Chapman (4:39)
“Mrs. Robinson” by Simon & Garfunkel (3:52)
“My Island Home” by Christine Anu (3:50)
“Mzeo B” by Download (4:31)
“Nahkarouska” by Värttinä (3:08)
“Neighborhood Girls” by Suzanne Vega (3:21)
“Neitonen” by Värttinä (2:55)
For a total time dancing of 26:27 (minutes: seconds). The songs are in alphabetical order simply because alphabetizing all my iPod’s danceable songs into one long playlist was the easiest way to do a playlist that still has variety. Some of the songs might seem a little unusual — who dances to Simon & Garfunkel? — but they’re Mel-tested for danceability, & yep, I broke a sweat.
After dancing: shower & dress.
Then back to the kitchen to finish preparing breakfast: cook the oatmeal, scramble the eggs. I usually make enough eggs for Rozz too. Used to make oatmeal for her too, but she wasn’t eating it sometimes, so I either make half as much, or I take the second half of the oatmeal as the carb portion for one of my at-work meals, which is what I did today.
Then I finally get to eat, & I also take a couple of fish oil capsules & a good probiotic vitamin/mineral supplement.
I’ve tried eating before dancing, but that doesn’t work well, as my tummy’s too full. Full tummy doesn’t seem to mess with biking or walking to the bus stop, though.
Then back to give Rozz a goodbye kiss (she usually sleeps later than I do), & put on my coat & hat or, as today, bicycle helmet, & out the door.
It rather amazes me how much I do in the morning now than I used to.
Another day riding to work on the bike. Read all about it at Terveys.
Actually, it’s bike day #5, if you include last Saturday when I rode it downtown for my writing day, & then along the Coastal Trail to Westchester Lagoon & back home again. But this count is of days biking to/from work.
Today I took to the Chester Creek bike trail instead of to the streets, thanks to the meltwater overflow along the trail having gone away. (I noticed this on my way home Tuesday.) Thus, I didn’t have to worry about ice on the trail even in the morning, except for the small remnant in the culvert/tunnel under the Seward Highway, which is maybe a foot wide & easy to go over. It was a lot more pleasant ride in terms of road noise: I could hear traffic as a hum in the background, but mostly I could hear birdsong in the woods along the trail, robins mostly I think. But several times I heard my very favorite bird call, that of the ruby-crowned kinglet, which always sounds like a version of a trumpet call for a cavalry charge to me. Though with a much different tonality & volume, of course.
Pleasant in terms of road noise, I say; but not pleasant in terms of the work it put my legs to. As I get more in shape, I’m sure it will improve, but meanwhile it was a lot of hard work. The trail is fairly flat, but it does have a very slight rise to it most of the way eastward — hardly as steep as the climb up C Street from the Chester Creek valley, but enough to exert an extra resistance to the legs. Then, when I turned off the trail to go up Maplewood for the street portion of the trip, there is a hill, steep as C Street though thankfully much shorter. However, I messed up when I shifted gears & the chain came off. So with no momentum, I walked up that hill, & of course restored my chain to rights.
I was damn tired by the time I got to work. And sweaty. But stubbornly still took the stairs up the two floors to my office. Now, at lunchtime, my legs still feel tired. But at least the sweat has dried.
Well, yeehaw, this is good news.
Companies agree to ban on sale of fizzy drinks in schools
By Lauren Foster in New York Financial Times
Updated: 3:43 p.m. ET May 4, 2006The world’s three largest soft drink companies on Wednesday agreed to ban most soda sales in US public schools and distribute only lower-calorie and nutritious beverages in an effort to tackle soaring rates of childhood obesity.
Nearly 35m students will be affected by the new guidelines, established by the American Heart Association and former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation, and agreed to by Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Cadbury Schweppes.
The move comes a month after Republicans and Democrats joined forces to propose the first bipartisan bill aimed at purging vending machines in US schools of fatty snacks and fizzy drinks.
That last is a reference to a bill called the Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act, one of whose cosponsors is one of my senators, Lisa Murkowski. Someone I usually don’t like all that much, but for that bill I even wrote her a thank you letter. I even got a standard form letter back from her office about it. It was just a form letter, but at least it wasn’t full of bullshit as the previous one I’d gotten from her, about the Iraq war.
Anyway, good for Bill Clinton. Not quite good for the soft drink companies — they shouldn’t be manufacturing that nasty piss to begin with. I thought this was a weird comment:
Dawn Hudson, president and chief executive of Pepsi-Cola North America, said there were “no short-cuts to solving the obesity problem” and the company was “delighted” its products “are part of the equation”.
Right.
As a born & bred Montanan with German ancestry on my paternal grandmother’s side, I embrace these heroes of sedition.
Especially since all it was really was free speech.
Mont. Governor Pardons 78 in Sedition Case
May 4, 4:49 AM (ET)By MATT GOURAS
HELENA, Mont. (AP) – For casually saying that American troops were “getting a good licking” in France during World War I, a blacksmith named August Lambrecht was imprisoned for seven months in 1919.
After being released, he and his wife fled Montana for fear of being imprisoned again. He died in Portland, Ore., in 1957 – unable to outrun his conviction for sedition.
It was a black mark his family felt was grossly unfair.
“This is America,” said his great-grandson, David Gabriel. “Having freedom of speech and saying what is on your mind doesn’t make you a criminal and it shouldn’t.”
Gabriel joined about 40 family members at a ceremony Wednesday where the governor signed pardons for nearly 80 people convicted of sedition amid the war’s anti-German hysteria.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer said the state was “about 80 years too late” in pardoning the mostly working-class people of German descent who were convicted of breaking what was then one of the harshest sedition laws in the nation.
“This should have been done a long time ago,” said Schweitzer, the son of German immigrants. They were the first posthumous pardons in Montana history.
The list of those pardoned included farmers, butchers, carpenters and cooks. One man was charged merely for calling the conflict a “rich man’s war” and mocking food regulations during a time of rationing….
Sounds a little too close for comfort, when you think of what some of the virulent Bush supporters would like to do with critics of either Bush or his unneccessary & immoral war.
Good job to the Montana Sedition Project for their work restoring the honor, if belatedly, of these common people.
My job & our health insurer have started up a Start Walking program to run through September 30, to encourage employees to walk or do other exercise to increase their physical fitness. I’ve decided to sign up for it. Read more about it at Terveys.
I am really tired today. Not sleepy, but physically tired, like the battery’s run down. I felt a bit like this last night after the bike ride home from work, too. Was I working myself harder than before, biking, or am I coming down with something?
It’s not for lack of food, or the right kinds of food. Been eating pretty much the same: made a stir fry last night, & leftovers for second breakfast & first lunch today. I just know it was a wise move to take the bus this morning instead of pushing myself on the bike a second day in a row. It was harder work than usual just to make that 15 minute walk to the nearest bus stop for the #3 bus in Spenard, particularly that climb up the hill on Arctic to Fireweed. Harder work to take the stairs up the two floors to my office, too.
