If ‘Fit Happens’ shouldn’t the customers be encouraged to walk around to the back of the building? It seems like even more fit would happen.
Fitness.
65 Miles.
I have been determined to get back into a regular cycling routine again this summer. I have slacked off for the last couple of summers, mainly because of work obligations but with some additional contributions of laziness. However, I felt that this was the year that I needed to get back on my bicycle and make some strides in the fitness department doing the one sport that I love the most.
I set some pretty lofty goals for myself this year that I haven’t really discussed all that much. My first goal was to ride a 100 mile route (actually 105 miles) from our lovely little home in the Mohawk Valley to Binghamton. This jaunt would take me from north to south, downward on the map, of course, which in my head means that it’s downhill. Now I don’t really believe that but I like to think that’s the case once in a while.
I can tell you that it is certainly not all downhill.
The 105 mile ride was a lofty goal, and the wet weather we have had this spring didn’t give me many chances to train for this ride, but I figured that I would make a go of it. So with only a few of double digit rides under my belt this season, I set out at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday morning. The goal was Binghamton with an intermediate goal of Sidney (65 miles). I was geared up and ready to go
My plan included tracking my ride using the iMapMyRide app on my iPhone, as I have done earlier this season, because it keeps track of the terrain, my average speed, the actual distance and how many calories I am actually burning during my ride. About two hours into the trek I stopped to take a photo of a road sign that features the new Clearview lettering that’s popping up all over the country (this sign is the first one in this area using it, to the best of my knowledge).
It was then that I realized that while the iMapMyRide app is quite good on the iPhone, it kills the battery dramatically. Taking this photo, 25 miles into the ride, completely killed the battery on my phone, the phone that was fully charged when I left just two hours before.
Sigh.
I turned the phone off so that I would have enough juice in the case of emergency and continued my way down NY Route 8. I said hello to cows, greeted barn cats that stalked me from the ditch (though one was quite friendly and wanted to greet me in a warm, cat-like way) and enjoyed the cloudy but not overly cool weather.
I made a stop in the small village of New Berlin to pick up an extra bottle of Gatorade, as I had gotten through the one I had packed as well as a bunch of the water I had brought along. When I snapped out of my pedals I noticed that my left shoe was loose. I took a look and discovered that I had lost one of the bolts off the clamp and the other two had loosened up. This would explain why my right leg was hurting, it was working hard than my left leg because there was an extra bit of wobble in the left shoe. I tightened up the remaining bolts, rested for a bit and continued on.
Earl and Scott stopped by in the truck shortly afterwards and checked on my progress. This is a tradition with my bike rides. I start out and then Earl leaves three or so hours later, hoping to find me somewhere along the route. He then drives 10 or so miles ahead and we leap frog to the final destination.
All went well with the ride until the stretch between Mount Upton and Sidney. There I ran into some raindrop, which isn’t bad in itself, but that’s when my body started talking to me.
“Daddy”, my body said, “I know you think you’re 25 but you’re 42. 65 miles is very impressive for the first ride of the season and I think we should call it a day when we get to Sidney.”
“But Binghamton awaits!”, was my reply.
“You’ve made really good progress but I really think that we should call it a day so that we can ride again next weekend without having to pass through intensive care on the way.”
The body won. I stopped at Sidney at 65 miles on the nose. It was an excellent ride and I was most pleased with the progress. I plan on doing a 100 mile trek before my birthday in July. I’ll just have to continue to train so that all my parts start working together properly.
My ride was rewarded with a stop at the Neptune Diner in Oneonta and then Earl and Scott drove home while I slept in the back seat.
My body screamed in pain Saturday night but it wasn’t anything that a couple of Advil couldn’t cure. Now I’m ready for the next trek. I’m going to scratch Binghamton off the list and try a different location. Something west to east, perhaps, so that it seems more flat.
Ride.
If you follow my Twitter or Facebook accounts, you may have seen my mention of my bike ride yesterday. I clocked in at just under 25 miles. On a map, it looks something like this:
It was a very good ride. The weather was perfect with it being partly cloudy and at around 65F. I picked a route that I knew would have some hills in it to keep it interesting and to push myself a bit. I am getting more aggressive with my riding this year as I feel a need to find a physical limit and then see if I can move beyond it.
One of the biggest reasons that I enjoy riding so much is because it gives me the opportunity to let my mind wander and to get into my own version of a meditative state. Once I establish my rhythm for the ride (usually 20 or so minutes into a trip), my mind starts to explore and ponder things. I’m still very much aware of everything going on around me; I know there’s cars on the road behind me and I’m conscious of where my bike is at any given moment, but I’m also very conscious of my breathing and I think that’s what gets me into that zen mode that I enjoy when I’m riding.
I have a couple of goals for rides this summer, including a couple of one day trips somewhere. I’d like to do a two day trip, which would involve me hauling my camping gear on the trailer I have for the bike. I tried a two day trip quite a few years ago, but the timing was off and I found myself in a cold rain, freezing in a tent. That trip ended in a phone call to Earl asking him to come pick me up. I wasn’t well prepared for that ride, but I think I could manage it better this time.
I’d also like to ride in Virginia again. I rode with our friend Thom a couple of years ago and it was quite nice. I would certainly enjoy another ride with him.
The weather has not been very cooperative this season. I think if I’m going to continue to want to ride in these parts, I’m going to have to invest in some rain gear.
Conversation.
“You’re doing it again.”
Wait a minute, I knew that voice. It’s been a little while since we had gone riding together on a bicycle and had a nice chat, but here it was the middle of January and I was hearing that voice again.
It was my body talking to my head again. I believe a waitress on the show “Alice” called her inner voice ‘Isabelle’, I don’t have a name for my inner voice. That’s just weird.
“You’re doing it again”, the voice persisted. “It’s the beginning of the year and you’re trying to negate a few extra pounds by being drastic.”
I finally relented and replied. “I’m doing no such thing.”
“Yes, you are. You haven’t used any of the quarters in your desk drawer to buy a diet pop this week and quite frankly I have taken notice. I want a diet pop RIGHT NOW”, the voice demanded.
“Think of the dead birds in Arkansas”, was my only reply.
“What does that have to do anything?”
“Well something made them drop out of the sky, perhaps they had a diet pop or something. That crap is only a molecule or two away from rat poison and quite frankly you’ll be happier when you don’t have that stuff clogging up the insides”. Distraction might work.
“I don’t think the birds in Arkansas drank a can of Diet Rite.”
“Well I’m not going to either.” Sometimes I have to put my foot down.
“How about a Baconator?” The question was simple.
I sighed. “Nope. I have this lovely, homemade turkey wrap and you know you love it.”
“I miss when we used to be able to say ‘I’m lovin’ It'”. He was referring to my McDonalds fascination a while back.
“You didn’t say that when we spent extra time on the toilet”, was my hasty reply.
I started eating the wrap when the voice chimed again. “Hey this is good!”
“See, I told you that you would like it.” You have to show them who’s boss.
“Let’s pretend it’s Friday and get a chocolate chip cookie at Dunkin’ Donuts,” the voice said excitedly.
“If we get a cookie today we won’t get one tomorrow,” I bargained.
“If you get a cookie today I’ll have more energy to finish the report that’s due”, he countered.
“No pop.”
“Agreed, no pop.”
The cookie was delicious and the iced tea is giving me a little boost.
And they say that talking to yourself is crazy.
Chocolate.
It’s just around the corner from a New Year and naturally I have been thinking about resolutions. I’m not really feeling the need to embark on a bunch of resolutions for 2011 (say it with me, “twenty eleven”), but I do have some goals in mind to make the remainder of this life experience a little bit better for me.
Years ago I lost a bunch of weight and honestly I could never really tell you how I did it. I don’t remember what my eating habits were, outside of brief flings with being a vegetarian and paying lots of money to Slim Fast, and while I don’t really feel the need to lose a bunch of weight I do want to eat a little healthier and replace some of the bulk with a touch of muscle. Who doesn’t want to do that, right?
I have been eating protein bars and drinking protein shakes on and off for the past decade or so and can I just say that I am really, really tired of the taste of chocolate. Of course, this didn’t prevent Earl and me have from having a threesome with Godiva the other night but the chocolate Muscle Milk and the chocolate “Whey To Go!” bars and the chocolate “Dine-o-Right!” slabs are an exercise in monotony that can only be compared to folding piles of underwear. I mean, feeding people trying to eat healthy their weight in chocolate is suppose to make this whole dieting thing fun, right? Instead, it teaches us that eating chocolate is healthy and therefore it’s okay to take a walk across the Milky Way if we can’t get to that “Dine-O-Right!” bar.
All of this enhanced chocolate, and by enhanced I am referring to the addition of chlorine molecules so it’ll slide right through your pooper without adding any sort of nutritional value or consequence to your attempts at being svelte, has overloaded my taste buds so much that I am already cringing at thought of an Easter Bunny appearance and it’s not even January yet. Breaking up this monotony with a vanilla flavored bar or, Gods forbid a strawberry concoction that’s designed to make me giddy, is equal to getting dark underwear in that pile of whites that you’re folding.
I have decided to shun the chocolate fake-health bar, pass on the promises of powdered sugary health food and skip the protein with a nougat. I did a little research this morning and found that many of these things are no more than glorified chocolate bars (shocker!) so instead I just spent half of my lunch hour walking through the healthier choices of the local market and picked up some nuts, fruits, vegetables and a suggestion of turkey for when I want to walk on the wild side. Doing a little research and making sensible choices, instead of being force-fed (ha!) promises of sweet nothings and other empty promises has to work out (ha!) better for me in the long run, right?
Now it’s time to hit the bike. Or maybe snowshoe.
Gay.
With the New Year well underway I am proud to say that I have been working out again on a more regular basis and I’m starting to feel the results of my hard work. I don’t know if you can see any changes yet but I certainly feel better and that’s what’s most important to me.
The increase in gym time has created a little bit of a dilemna. Being a kid at heart, I was watching episodes of “Josie and the Pussycats” on my iPhone while doing cardio. I love the show and it’s probably one of my favorite cartoons of all time. Unfortunately, not that many episodes were made and I have a hard time with “Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space” so I found myself without any episodes to watch. I decided to go campy and last night I started watching the first season of “Alice”. Tonight I watched the second episode of season one, “Alice Gets A Pass”.
I don’t remember this episode from when I was a kid.
In this episode, Alice starts to date an old college friend of Mel’s. Said friend is a pro-football player turned actor. He’s good looking in a mid 1970s way (the episode originally aired 9/29/1976) and I remember the actor from being a thug on that Wonder Woman episode with the mean flute player played by Martin Mull. He also played a football player on “I Dream of Jeannie” towards the very end of the series.
Anyways, Alice goes out with this guy a couple of times and tries really hard in a tame-1976 way to get him to get more romantic with her when he tells her something she didn’t expect: he’s gay. Her first reaction is “Are you sure you’re not just jolly?” He assures her that he’s not and that he’s really gay and he’s happy that they can be friends. The big dilemma of the episode is that Alice had asked him to take Tommy on a fishing trip and now she’s not sure if she should let Tommy go with the gay guy. Again, you can tell that it’s from the mid 1970s with some of the gay jokes and the whole “will he be inappropriate with Tommy” thing that is briefly touched upon but on the whole I think the episode was sort of groundbreaking for it’s day. I have always thought that Linda Lavin was cool with the whole gay thing, being that she got her start and continued to be in theatre and all, so in a way I’m not surprised that the subject was explored on the series but I have to admit that I was surprised that it was explored in the *second* episode of the entire show (and the first episode for Philip McKeon to play Tommy).
All in all I found the episode to make my cardio workout fly right by. Naturally the ending credits theme song is a good way to finish up, especially when you sing along with the “fa fa fa fa fa” so all in all I’m happy that I jumped onto Alice to be my next short-cardio workout series1.
It’s a shame that only season one is on iTunes. And believe it or not, whilst Linda Lavin sang nearly 10 versions of the theme song over the years, there is a specific version from the second season that I like best. I’m trying to find it but I haven’t been successfully lately. It’s buried on YouTube somewhere.
1 For longer cardio workouts, I prefer “Xena: Warrior Princess”, in case you’re wondering.
Motivation.
Earl, Jamie and I took the long way home from Natick, Mass. today. I did what is known as “shunpiking”. I avoided all toll roads at all costs. Fortunately, this makes for a beautiful drive through the Berkshires and along the less-traveled roads of Upstate New York.
If you have an extra hour to spare, I highly recommend taking Route 2 west from Boston all the way into New York State. It’s pretty much a freeway or expressway 1/2 way across Massachusetts but it’s not as boring as the Mass. Pike and you pass through some lovely old industrial villages. West of Greenfield Route 2 is two-lane all the way to Troy, N.Y. as it winds and climbs it’s way through the Berkshires. Just east of North Adams, Mass. is the relatively famous hairpin turn. Off the end of the curve is a family restaurant. Earl and I have eaten there before. The food is good.
Once you make your way through North Adams and Williamstown, Mass., Route 2 crosses into New York State and makes it way down from the Berkshires into Troy. It ends shortly afterwards at Interstate 87.
After a bit more shopping at the surprisingly uncrowded Crossgates Mall, we continued our trek home by avoiding toll roads. The route of choice was one of the longest highways in the United States: US Route 20.
“Route 20” as it’s known upstate, has a decidedly “Route 66” feel to it in that you can tell it used to be a really important road as it crossed Upstate New York with the diners, nostalgic looking motels and villages with grandly built houses flanking the road. Like many of the state routes in New York, it has wide shoulders and a decidedly “open” feel to it as it makes it way over rolling hills and through some valleys between Albany and our point of departure, Bridgewater.
I have said for many years that I want to accomplish a “grand bike ride” before I’m unable to. I have had dreams of riding across The Empire State on a week long bike ride. I have toyed with riding the southern part by following former NY Route 17, but I think I’m going to pay homage to my Central New York roots instead of ride US Route 20 from the Pennsylvania Line to the Massachusetts Line some time during 2010. The ride today motivated me.
It’s always odd that I find the inspiration and desire to ride my bicycle around the first snowfall. Nevertheless, I’m recording this idea of riding Route 20 here in the blog so the motivation continues and I can mark it off my list of to-do items next summer.
Energy.
Will autumn beginning to make an appearance in our area you’d think that my energy would be ramping back a bit, but I’m finding just the opposite to be true. With the cooler breezes and the very beginnings of the rustling of the leaves I’m finding myself wanting to be outdoors more doing things. Last night I jumped on the bike for a 15 mile ride after work. I pushed myself pretty hard on the ride, only stopping once to catch my breath. The ride was pleasant, I even did most of it on the road as opposed to riding the trails.
Last night I decided to run some errands around 8:30 p.m., heading to the mall to pick up some stuff at GNC and just driving around a little bit with the windows and sunroof open. It was a great way to cool off after my ride.
This morning I set my alarm 30 minutes earlier so I could workout with the Wii Fit again. It’s been a while since I used it; we bought a couple of new Wii accessories so Earl and Jamie have been playing quite a bit at night and I thought I should jump in on the fun as well. So instead of lying in bed with my eyes shut until the last possible moment this morning I was up and working out. I feel really good.
It’s funny that I’m feeling this now instead of in May or June but I don’t care, I’m not going to a couch potato this fall or winter.
Sober.
I was never much of a drinker for the first 35 or so years of my life. I wasn’t chomping at the bit to turn 21 so that I could legally drink and when I finally reached that age I celebrated with a diet coke at DiRocco’s in Tyngsboro, Mass. as my friends toasted their beers and mixed drinks around me.
Once in a while I’d pop open a beer or have a mixed drink when DJing, but usually I opted for straight cranberry juice or diet pop with no ice. I started enjoying beer more toward the end of my days in radio and have kept up the practice since then. I have never been drunk to the point that I passed out or puked; I usually get really chatty, really silly, really dizzy and then fall asleep, hopefully in that order. Occasionally I’d drive home while buzzing which is a very, very stupid thing to do. I have sat through more than one meal where I recall nothing aside from what Earl told me, an order of ribs at Zebb’s (in which I apparently loudly exclaimed “I hate ribs” and proceeded to fall asleep in the coleslaw) or a full dinner for breakfast at Denny’s (because I absolutely had to have pancakes so I ordered fried chicken). I find this embarrassing.
I know a man that is 50 years old and has never been drunk in his life. I don’t believe that he has ever had a drink before. I know another that is a few years older than me that has never drank at all. I know a 19 year old that has sworn to never drink for his entire life. I admire them. On the flip side, I know a few too many who drink without reason; there’s no party, no one around, they just drink. Perhaps they drown their sorrows.
If I ever had a sorrow it seemed to get worse when I drank.
If I ever had a happy moment, it didn’t really get that much happier when I drank. In fact, it’d usually turn a little weird and then fade away with the drink I had in celebration.
So today I pledge to never drink alcohol again. This is not an easy thing as I enjoy the taste of beer, but there’s enough non-alcoholic varieties out there to keep things interesting in a pinch.
I don’t expect anyone to follow my lead. I judge no one, I think no less of those that enjoy a beer or a cosmo or a Long Island iced tea, quite frankly it’s none of my business. I expect no change from others, I am selfish in this endeavour and doing it only for me. I have made great strides in the health department as of late, this is my next jump over a hurdle.
It’s time to clean the mind as well and experience everything the Universe gives me in full technicolor without messing with the horizontal or vertical hold.
Bye-bye, Bud.
