I Have Achieved EMPTINESS

Morning weigh-in: 166#, 10% BF

 

Whelp, stayed in last night. I was a bit tired and it was already close to 11:00 when I would've left the house; that's closing time at Which Brew, at least on "school nights." Porters would have been my only choice, and then I remembered that Thursday is "open mic night," which used to be really good but is now something I try to avoid...

 

My friend Larry is sick, so he won't be joining me on the towpath tonight. Since I'd be solo I was thinking of maybe hitting the road instead, but I expect that with the rain and traffic and all, the woods will probably be safer so towpath it shall be.

I Still Dream Of Orgone

Reading: Just finished Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail, and picked up where I left off in A Book of Dreams. That is some quality crazy going on in that situation...

Meanwhile, here is something for you to read: is this guy every woman? Um, hope not, but he, and the peeps he meets, cover almost all the riders I know, and our moods and reasons for riding. There was no biking involved with our scene, but I remember we had a frog pond too as kids, a-and -- well, here and here are two more good stories, let them be a warning to you...

Just finished cleaning the bike, prepping it for tomorrow. Dinner was bean stew, workout was alterna-gym. I'm feeling cooped up; I may run out for a bit down to WB, or more likely Porters to see some faces.

Say Something Once, Why Say It Again?

Morning weigh-in: 166.5#, 10.5% BF

 

Like I said, last night's bean & tomato stew was tasty (which is good because I have a ton of the stuff left over), but I expected it to be a little more forgiving on the weigh-in front. Good yoga class last night, the teacher called it "fairly easy" but my own personal ass was suitably kicked ... she said she'll have a hard class on Saturday -- gulp! Tonight is alterna-gym nite, and I may make some pasta & tuna for dinner.

 

Short & sweet: no dreams, no incidents, vignettes to speak of so I'm outta here.

 

mba rara m'eroto ondyoze ... mbe mu munine m'oruroto ayo u n'omuinyo

Bouncing from room to room reading different books: read in Male Fantasies about someone or other's role suppressing the Herero uprising of 1920 or so, hit the parts in Gravity's Rainbow where the "Enzian the Herero vs. his Russian half-brother Tchitcherine" subplot starts to unfold... go into the kitchen where I'm eating that stew (which was lovely, except that the lentils were a bit al dente), and I read in Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail about a thunderstorm haunted by ghost horses, which made the hair on my neck stand up...

"Horses, horses, horses, horses
Coming in in all directions
White shining silver studs with their nose in flames,
He saw horses, horses, horses, horses,
Horses, horses, horses, horses...
Do you know how to pony?
Like bony maroney,
Do you know how to twist?
Well it goes like this, it goes like this..."

-- Patti Smith, "Land"

Discipline

Morning weigh-in: 166.5#, 9% BF

 

I've been futzing around with the gas mileage on my car: The new car does the MPG calculation in real time based on fuel consumption and speed, and there's an LED that shows your current (instantaneous) as well as average MPG. I've been trying to adjust my driving to keep that gas mileage as high as possible, and I'm finding that I have a lot of bad habits I need to break. It's tough too, retraining yourself and constantly thinking about it, watching that gas meter -- in town it's a losing battle, but I've done pretty well on rural stuff, and have been taking the highway to work lately since that's best of all, even if the interstate is a boring and depressing way to travel.

 

I had to drop off drycleaning last night on the way to the gym, and had to hit a cash machine before that, and I was running late so of course there was an idiot in front of me. Tradesman's van, ladders on top, looked like he was realizing that he might not make it under the low clearance, then decided to go anyway -- this was all while I was driving by the bank, so there was no pressure behind him to make him go forward yet.

 

Well, he overshoots the telling machine, gets out of the van to do his transactions, which take forever, hmmm, looks like he's having a little bit of trouble... He gets back in the van and pulls forward, and the ladders catch on the slightly lower exit clearance. I'm honking away, the ladders are making an infernal racket scraping on the stucco roof and each other, and the guy stops, then pulls forward, hesitates again, and then pulls all the way out, knocking the ladders off the van. Then he parks.

 

I park too (the guy behind me had already backed out and left), and go to the ATM while the van dude starts fooling with his ladders, and I find that the guy actually left his card in the machine. I call over to him and hand him his card while he runs off a string of obscenities -- I notice alcohol on his breath, though he doesn't look drunk or wobbly or anything. I finished my business and got out of there while he was still messing with his broken ladders.

 

Drycleaning, then the gym for the standard workout including legs. Pretty good workout, weights were high but not record-breaking (except quad extension), and I felt strong throughout. Grabbed some Taco Hell for dinner, then went out food shopping, picked up ingredients for that tomato and bean stew.

 

Got home and busted out the crock pot again, as well as the food processor for the first time. (Verdict: it's good, but I can tell that practice makes perfect.) Got everything prepared, cleaned up the kitchen and hit the sack around midnight.

 

I've been dreaming a lot more lately, or at least, remembering them more, mostly disjointed stuff, bits and pieces are all I bring back. Last night I dreamed of cycling though, something I don't remember ever doing before. I was on the road bike, in Southside Bethlehem (only it was a dream-Bethlehem, like the surreal Easton of my dreams), heading sort of west and looking for "Broad Street," which I thought I'd overshot -- I was in a rougher neighborhood, sort of like a cross between Allentown and the Easton's abandoned train station -- but then I found it, and ran into a group of other riders. We were cruising along, fooling around on roads that reminded me of Bike New York, jumping curbs etc... last thing before waking up, I was hanging at the Bethlehem Bike Co-Op, changing a tire.

 

Tonight is yoga, then that stew for dinner.

It Is Not A Tumor!

Morning weigh-in: 166#, 10.5% BF (well, that's a relief, I guess)

 

Yoga last night, with another new (to me) teacher -- I think at this point I've taken classes from all but one of the people who teach regularly at Easton Yoga. All but one of the yoga yoga classes that is; I'm not counting things like belly dancing etc... Good class, once again a very different perspective on familiar things; it's amazing how personal yoga can actually be.

 

After that was good old Which Brew for Mug Club Night. Brian was a no-show: he forgot it was coming up, and was doing his speed skating thing. There was the usual W-Brew crew though, pleasant evening as always, even if I did sneak out a little early.

 

Tonight is the gym. (Meantime, I really have to start finding out how to incorporate more riding without losing the other things I've been doing.)

 

 

The Mystery Explained

Morning weigh-in: 164#, 10.5% BF

 

...One mystery at least: I don't know what's going on with the sudden weight loss (not that I'm complaining or anything), but I can say that my lousy towpath experience the other night was because the towpath is just one long, energy-sucking mud pit right now. Total mush, I was able to see exactly what was going on in the daylight yesterday. Sals was a little better, more like a leafy slime coating on the rocks, kind of slippery but that's about it. I'll probably stay out of the woods until it either dries up or freezes again: it wasn't the most ecologically correct thing to do, and my bike, "rode hard and put away wet," now needs some serious TLC.

 

Kind of nice though, I ran into a bunch of younger dudes riding, then we all ran into Joe C and Doug (who knew the guys I hooked up with) going the other way, then I dropped the youngsters on the hills (heh heh), but decided to take the road back to the Dodson lot, where I met Joe and Doug again, and finagled a ride home from Joe. (Saw others out there, and also got a call from Heath that he was chasing me up the Spanky, but I was already done and at Dodson.) Pretty solid ride actually, and I felt great.

 

Some unusual events on the towpath: the river rescue guys were out, rescue truck, SCUBA gear and boats at the Freemansburg locktender's house. Looks like someone fell in the river but I saw nothing about it in the news yet.

 

Home, cleaned up, laundry, and I had some spare time so I took the "Hot Fudge Sundae" yoga class downtown, purely on impulse. This class is a mix of vinyasas with restorative poses, new stuff to me, and the teacher was new to me too, so it was a very interesting experience; I'm pretty happy I went. I also saw Katie (of "Dan & Katie," don't know their last name but they're friends with Greg & Judy) in class, and heard about their baby's first Christmas.

 

Going home from yoga, there was a guy who ran out of gas near my parked car. I gave him a ride to the nearest gas station, stuck around to give him a ride back even though I originally said I couldn't -- then noticed that he was now begging for the gas money. I told him I wasn't waiting around any more, and took off.

 

Dinner was a ribeye sandwich at Porters (making that weight loss even more mysterious) while the laundry dried. I saw Kelly-Jo and Larry down there for a bit, but they just popped in for a few minutes, grabbed some take-out & left. Tonight is more yoga for me, "active rest"in the beginner's class, followed by Mug Club Night at Which Brew, and then I'll be making another crock pot -- this time it'll be bean and tomato stew  -- for the rest of this week's dinners.

Sunday Rejuvenation?

Morning weigh-in: 167#, 10% BF

Considering that I did nothing yesterday, then rather heroically finished that pot roast, a-and then went out and ate a white pizza, with the requisite beers, at Which Brew -- also Porters to catch KEF, after the band at the WB drove me out by playing Journey covers, but I digress -- those weigh-in numbers are kind of low. Something must have been up, fatigue or whatever. Hopefully the one rest day I got was enough.

I'm about to find out: riding down to Sals via the towpath in a few minutes.