Detox Mansion

Morning weigh-in: 184#, 12% BF
Blood pressures have been good...

Went to the gym last night, good workout but I skipped the run: my ankle looks/feels worst the evening after a run, I still get some swelling so I figure I'm still not ready fro that kind of stress. Dinner was salad (ie a bowl of "spring mix" w/ dressing), plus a bunch of summer-salad stuff (corn salad, stuffed grape leaves etc) that I picked up at the supermarket.

Listening: I heard Warren Zevon's "Detox Mansion" yesterday on the radio. Haven't heard it in years, and didn't even like it back then, but for some reason it really reached me yesterday.

Reading: Citizen Soldiers by Stephen Ambrose. It's a good story and the book is very informative, but the format is starting to wear on me.

Tonight is a road ride, followed by a trip to Which Brew. Tomorrow morning is an offroad group ride at Allamuchy.

Infrastructure attack! Fierce thunderstorm Wednesday night fried my modem, I'll probably get a replacement this weekend.

OMG It's Thursday!

No stats. Overslept, forgot, whatever.

Went to a wake last night in Fogelsville, fellow mountain biker Larry Reimert. Met D&L for dinner afterward; they were at another wake in Easton.

Meanwhile: Floyd Landis has the Yellow Jersey, and Valerie Plame is suing Cheney/libby/Rove.

Wow, Monday Already!

Morning weigh-in: 180#, 12% BF
Morning blood pressure: 120/78

Not much posting here, very busy lately -- also, the weigh-ins were a little discouraging...

So what's up? Well, on the Linux front I've been playing with C, learning how to deal with libraries; my specific goal was to figure out the GNU "readline" library function, which I think I've accomplished. On the family front, I was at a picnic at my parents' house on Saturday, my brothers and their families, plus many family members, like cousins and their kids etc, as well as some old friends from the neighborhood. On the bike, there's been a few rides, including a road ride (15 miles but it killed me), a towpath ride (lotsa damage from the floods, but it was rideable), and a ride yesterday at Sals (with Joe G and a few others, this time starting from that new lot). On the friends front I went with Brian to Mary M's Heritage Day party last night, though Easton canceled the fireworks.

Yogi vs Boo-Boo: One other thing I've been up to is, I decided to take up yoga. I went down to Easton Yoga on Saturday morning, signed up for some classes and took one that day. I was a little worried about my foot, and was ready to skip the beginner class and take "restorative yoga" (for injured/disabled people) later in the week, but I did just fine in the regular class. I figure this'll help with both flexibility and blood pressure, as well as getting my friend Bill ("you gotta take a yoga class!") off my back...

Meantime, I have about 25 photos that are ready to be posted, and I have another 100 still in the camera. I may post the 25 tonight, but I'll also be taking a yoga class (or hitting the gym) and then going to Which Brew for the Mug Club dinner, so we'll see.

Wow, Hump Day Already!

Morning weigh-in: 180#, 11% BF

Let's see, in chronological order...

Friday I did a partial road ride with Doug, but my new tire was defective and we had to abort the ride when I discovered the problem after only about 2-3 miles. It was just as well, since huge rainclouds came out of nowhere, and it poured just after we got back to my place.

After that came a trip to Newark Airport: my brother and his family were visiting from Florida, and my parents needed a second car to help with transportation. Late night, the flight didn't get in until after 11:00 and we got back to my parents' house around 2:00 AM.

Saturday my plan was to ride at Huber/Hartshorne in the early morning, but I didn't get moving until around 10:00 and hit the trails around noon. Got back, visited with bro and his wife & kids, took a nap and hit the road around 4:00 or so. Tired.

Dinner that night was at Porters, with Doug & Lori and Brian.

Sunday was the annual ride/picnic. I did the shorter (40 mile) "girl ride" option, thought there were quite a few guys on this particular ride -- the longer ride looked like it would be a death march, 80-90 miles, lotsa hills, and not everyone wanted to be a part of that torture-fest. I was tired enough after 40; those guys looked like they were destroyed when the finally got to the picnic. Some swimming to cool down, plenty of summer salads, hot dogs and burgers and brews, then fireworks when it got dark enough.

Monday I got up, rode at Sals but I was exhausted, the trails were sketchy from the moisture (slippery rocks & roots everywhere), and I bagged it after only half the ride. Went home, napped & did laundry for the rest of the day. Back to Porters for an evening out while the laundry dried, but it was still an early night.

Yesterday was a sort of reprise of Monday: I rode at Sals with Mary from Genesis (did much better this time), also Kris K who met us in the woods, then went home and napped for a good chunk of the hot part of the day. I threw my sleep cycle out of whack though, was wide awake from midnight to about 2:00 AM, didn't drift off until close to morning...

Just thought I'd get the bare bones down before I forget. Meantime, I put a few more photos on Flickr, shots from another walk along the Lehigh back in May. Slowly digging out from my backlog...

Digital Dump #1

Lots of things to talk about, but first I want to record some blood pressures:

Blood Pressure (Saturday 7/01): 120/78, 60 BPM @ 8:58 AM
Blood Pressure (Monday 7/03): 124/76, 65 BPM @ 7:27 AM
Blood Pressure (Tuesday 7/04): 134/80, 63 BPM @ 7:06 AM

More later...

Road Trip, Cow Eyes

Morning weigh-in: 180#, 10.5% BF
Blood pressure: oops, forgot, will post in an update
UPDATE: 118/76, 63 BPM @ 6:00 AM

Gym yesterday, almost expected it to be closed since it's near the river but they were OK -- and despite the busy-all-day phone and the road block with state troopers on the only road to the place, they had a reasonable crowd. I ran two miles outside in 23:36, then did about 15 minutes easy spin on a stationary bike before lifting. Tonight will be a road ride; hard to believe but it'll be the first time on the road bike this year.

Meantime... The BP medication I'm on (toprol, of I got the spelling correct this time) is a "beta blocker," which apparently means it sort of blocks part of the "fight or flight" response mechanisms. Once I read that, I started thinking "whoa, I do feel more placid lately," and imagine that I can feel it in the set of my face, a feeling I've been calling "cow eyes." I look in the mirror, same old Don. I wonder if the doc has anything to help reduce suggestibility...

Kitchen Disaster, Part Deux

Morning weigh-in: 178.5#, 12.5% BF
Blood Pressure: 115/78, 69 BPM @ 6:04 AM

Decided to get a snack last night, opened the fridge and saw what looked like a stalactite hanging down, passing through al the shelves from top to bottom. What the...??

Well, it was milk. The fridge decided to get really cold again, or maybe the blower was working overtime, but a full half-gallon bottle of milk -- a glass bottle -- had frozen solid. I guess the expanding ice forced liquid milk out the top, where it froze as it dripped down. I broke off all the stalactite pieces, put the milk bottle in the sink to defrost, noticed that the glass was broken, cracked by the expanding ice... Cleaned the fridge, more food thrown out, and in the morning cleaned the sink as well. I guess I lost the deposit on that bottle...

At Home I Feel Like A (Disaster) Tourist

Quick update:
Blood Pressure (Tuesday): 135/81, 41 BPM @ 6:04 AM
Blood Pressure (Wednesday): 127/78, 59 BPM @ 8:57 AM

Traffic was heavy on 22, but the bridge was open, the only slowdown there was from rubbernecking, they weren't even collecting tolls & you could roll right through.

I figured that the towpath was under water tonight, so I blew off a "training ride" and went downtown to look at the Delaware. I ran into my neighbor & riding friend Mike, also saw about half of Easton oogling the flood -- we joked that it would be a good place for a hot-dog cart, and in fact the "sidewalk cafe" restaurants, some of which were actually within 50 yards of being flooded out or cut off, were doing land-office business... Welcome to Easton, the Disaster Tourism Capital of the Lehigh Valley! You feeling lucky?

Nice Day For A Disaster

"The yellow sun is shining in the afternoon..." -- The Raconteurs

Morning weigh-in (Tuesday): 180.5#, 13.5%
Morning weigh-in (Wednesday): 179.5, 10.5%
(I'll post blood pressures in an update, since I can't remember them right now.)

Well, let's see, the sun's finally out but the water is still rising; Delaware will not crest until noon tomorrow, not sure about the Lehigh. Northampton County is under a state of emergency, along with 45 other PA counties. The "free bridge" across the Delaware has been closed since yesterday, and I think it's probably underwater by now; I suspect that the US-22 toll bridge may be closed at some point as well. Lots of small-stream flooding (besides the big rivers waaaay over their banks), roads closed, schools open for refugees as there are now non-mandatory evacuations along the river -- some guys went home early, since their areas (downstream of a dam) had mandatory evacuations and they had to be packed & gone by 8:00 PM.

In other news, I went to the surgeon today, and he basically gave me a clean bill of health: he said that, though there was still a depression, the incision was essentially closed, and I can get the foot wet (ie bathe normally) and resume other normal activities. I wonder if that includes riding down the towpath to look at the flooding and accidentally falling in?

Wrong-Way Redux

So I'm going home tonight, and I just got on US22 from I-78, I'm maybe a half mile down the road when -- HOLY SHIT!! -- a car is coming the wrong way down the highway, in the left lane -- in other words, my lane. Crazy things happening in front of me, cars swerving out of the way and all of a sudden I'm alone in the lane, staring at a pair of oncoming headlights. Lotsa swerving, beeping from the lane next to me, sorry buddy but I'd rather hit you than be in a head-on at highway speed... Luckily, there was a lot of congestion and things were moving relatively slowly, everyone visible to me managed to avoid a collision, though I have no idea what happened behind me. All I saw were those headlights coming at me, but I'd given a friend a ride home -- co-worker, religious guy, I don't normally use today's vocabulary in front of him -- and he said it looked like one very confused old lady at the wheel.

That couldn't have been good for the ol' blood pressure...

(By the way, that's the third time in two weeks that I saw someone driving the wrong way. I live in a neighborhood with a lot of one-way streets; mistakes happen occasionally and it's no big deal but this time was a little more serious.)

Reading: Never Mind the Pollacks, again. And once again, literally laugh-out-loud funny.

Apple vs Apoplexy

Morning weigh-in: 181#, 11.5% BF
Morning blood pressure: 124/86, 63 BPM @ 6:05 AM (ie before meds)

The thing about the apple is that, whenever I do eat one, it satisfies my hunger, but when I'm hungry for a snack, apples are never what I want. This is like riding sometimes: the times when you need a ride the most (for the sake of your sanity) are you are the least motivated to get out there.

Wineberry and Wild Grape

Blood pressure: 124/73 (6/24, 9:05 PM)
Blood pressure: 138/84 (Today 8:32 AM)
Blood pressure: 129/71 (Today 3:38 PM)

Yes, I got a new toy...

Ran Thursday at the gym, 2 miles in 24:43, forgot the HRM so there's no other data. My trainer saw me running, said I ran with a limp and should hold off for a few more days -- I think I agree, the foot's not really ready for those stresses yet, at least not too frequently. After the workout I went out to Which Brew for dinner, sigh.

Friday night I managed to get in a towpath ride after work, also managed to avoid all the raindrops. My ride time was 1:37:25, average heart rate was 156 BPM while max was 176, and I supposedly burned 1910 calories. Went to Which Brew (sigh again), still had beer but dinner was lighter fare.

Saturday I did trail maintenance at Allamuchy, with Bob & Karen, Dr. Jim, Kris W and a few others. Got some work done on one of the newer trails, a bypass for an old, steep (and eroded) road. Saturday night was Which Brew again; I'd sigh again but I'm glad I went: it was a good night, hanging with Stu & Kathy plus some others.

Today I got up to lead a group ride at Sals, only no one showed a the meeting point, and when I got to Sals there was only John E (on foot, with an umbrella) and Kris K who decided not to ride. We talked trails for a while, then Kris left, and I was about to bail as well, when a bunch of younger (twentysomething) dudes came along, down the trail to the lower lot... They didn't really know where the were going, so I rode with them for a bit. Good guys, but not too experienced, they had a bit of trouble on the hills and with the slick, rooty/rocky surface. Fun though, and if they hadn't come along I would have gone home semi-clean... The rest of the day was errands, laundry, and naptime -- I seem to be running a sleep deficit, what with all those late party-nights.

Two conversations: on Thursday I ran into my friend Art at WB. He's a bit on the stocky side, always has been, but apparently he decided to do something about it and was trying a certain diet. He was near the end of the first nine day regimen, which was essentially like a purification: lotsa fruit/veggies & not much else. He said he'd had some trouble cheating -- we were in a bar, after all -- but had positive results so far even so. (He also took up cycling, which I of course consider a good move.) I got a little agitated though, when he started talking about his blood pressure problem, which until that point I hadn't known about. He told me how he monitors it regularly at home with one of those automatic sphygmomanometers. That's the first conversation, which planted a seed... On Saturday at the post-Allamuchy lunch stop, someone grabbed some junk food, someone else said "why not? You ride a lot, you can afford it," and Kris W responded with "yeah, that's how riding masks problems -- until you're 50 and go for a checkup, and they tell you your blood has become #3 crude." On the way home I bought my own sphygmomanometer.

A third conversation: I was shopping in Nature's way today, chatting with my friend Vi who works there, and I was "hungry but not hungry;" she recommended a bunch of good snacks (most of which I shot down because of nuts), then said "why don't you grab one of these apples?" So I did -- that & some hummos & chips, and some dried apricots. Light dinner tonight, mainly that stuff & some leftovers, after a fourth conversation made me decide not to go to dinner at Porters.

Back to the ride: there are all these plants near the roads at Sals, called wineberries, which in a few weeks they will be covered with delicious raspberry-like fruit, but they're not there yet. Instead of the wineberries, I snacked on twigs from the wild grapes which are also everywhere down there. You sometimes see little old ladies collecting these things for salads up on the towpath; the little v-shaped tendrils (or whatever they might be called, the things that grab onto other plants etc to support the vine) are very tender, with a pleasant, astringent "grapey" taste. Now that's healthy eating.

You're Going The Wrong Way!

Morning weigh-in (Wednesday): 179#, 12% BF
Morning weigh-in (Thursday): 181#, 12% BF

Uh oh...

Actually, hit Which Brew for dinner (famished, ate an entire pizza) on Tuesday night (which completely negated the gym workout I did just before that), and last night was burgers & birthday cake at the Chain Gang meeting. Reasons, not excuses, yadda yadda -- oh well, I must get on it.

UPDATE: Tuesday's run stats...
Dist: 2 mi
Time: 23:22
Avg/Max HR: 146/156 BPM
Work: 428 calories

Word Crash

Morning weigh-in: 178.5#, 12% BF

Ran out of things to say...

Worked late yesterday, got home, cereal for dinner, worked on bike between the raindrops, spent a few minutes with the 'puter and it was time for bed. Tonight is another semi-late night, then I'm hitting the gym; tomorrow is the Chain Gang meeting.

Mountain Bike Weekend

Morning weigh-in: 178.5#, 12% BF

Rode yesterday at Jim Thorpe, with John C and Brian. We did a pretty mellow ride on some easy doubletrack (the Broad Mountain Loop), almost exactly two hours riding. The stats: time was 1:59:49.9, average HR was 158 BPM while max was 182, and 2362 total calories were burned. I'll check the distance tonight. This was the traditional date for Mountain Bike weekend; since last year was the 20th and final MBW, and the event has usually had terrible luck with the weather, it was kind of ironic that the weekend was beautiful. Hot though. Today is a rest day.

Shout-out to my dad: Happy Father's day!

UPDATE: The ride was 13 miles long. And in related news... I called Bike King to order a special shock pump so I could make adjustments on my new fork, and was told that I got an adapter for my old pump when I bought the fork -- just look in the box. The fork is now officially mine, because it's been fiddled with.

And Time Is All We've Lost

No morning weigh-in -- it's the weekend!

Got home last night, hit the towpath for a fairly hot lap. Sand Island and back, about 22 miles in 1:45. I've done it faster (a lot faster), but that pace is really not bad. I got to try my new heart rate monitor: once on the towpath I kept my heart rate at about 160-165 BPM, just about what I assumed my anaerobic threshold would be. My average for the whole ride was 159 BPM, and my max was 180 -- all standard stuff, as I remember. The HRM says I burned about 2100 calories, but that seems a little high.

I was going pretty fast on the way out, but on the way back I was fatigued; I had to keep dropping the pace to maintain the heart rate I wanted. As I remember, this is also typical for me.

Got home, washed up and went out to Which Brew. Saw Stu & Kathy, also ran into Heath & Hans and a few of their friends (singer in last night's band is a buddy of theirs). Dinner was a Cuban sandwich, washed down with two Weyerbacher Hefeweizens. A good night, but I was home by 12:30.

Breakfast this morning was at Coffee Works, then I went to the gym.

And I ran: A two mile jog before my workout -- took me 26 minutes, but I did it. Quick stats: 146 average heart rate, 156 maximum, 481 calories burned (again, that seems about double what I'd expect). The workout itself was also good; I'm not far from where I left off and I didn't feel overwhelmed. I'm feeling a lot happier right now than I did, say, a week ago.

Tonight I'll probably be meeting Doug & Lori for some burritos at Tulum, then catching some of that film festival. They went yesterday, saw some animations, but Doug had mixed reviews. Eastern European "art film" cartoons -- who knows what you might see?

Ding, Dong, The PICC Is Gone!

And I got no strings in me! Oh, hi-ho, the dairy-o...

Morning weigh-in (Thursday): 178.5, 12.5%
Morning weigh-in (Friday): 179#, 4% (wha...?)

The Ancef I.V. ended yesterday, but there were some more coordination SNAFU's and the PICC line didn't get pulled until this morning. The visiting nurse made what was hopefully the last visit, did some paperwork, checked my vitals, and then pulled what looked like an extremely long, bloody piece of linguine out of my arm. Slightly weird feeling as it came out, but no pain; it was a pretty smooth simple procedure. I am now pretty much cleared for all activities.

Since the Rifampin also ended yesterday, one other activity I am now cleared for is drinking. Woo Hoo! You'll never guess where I went last night for dinner... actually, Brian called me up and we met down there; turns out it was his birthday so I bought him dinner (turnabout is fair play), and K-Jo gave him a piece of cake with a candle in it, and yes we sang "Happy Birthday."

Gadget Watch: My blood pressure was normal last Tuesday, and I expected that it was because of the dropping stress levels but I'd also had a little of the Topherol (is that the right name?) in me at the time. Today I delayed my dose, and the Topherol-free BP was 137/80. Not bad, but not the greatest -- I still took the pill. As part of my quest for returning health & fitness, I got a new heart rate monitor watch; now I think I'll also get a cheapo blood pressure thingie. Digital self-obsession, you thought the "morning weigh-in" was bad...

I also picked up my bike yesterday, got the new front fork. I'll be trying it out tonight on the towpath, and doing a mellow ride at Jim Thorpe on Sunday. Tomorrow I'm back at the gym as part of my "Selfish Day," and tomorrow night I'll probably check out some of the Film Festival in Bethlehem. Tonight is Which Brew again: my friend Hans is in town, and will probably be there with his brother.

Soylent Green

Morning weigh-in: 179#, 12.5% BF

Quote of the Day: "I have so many things you haven't got."

-- The Raconteurs, "Intimate Secretary"

SNAFU at the doctor yesterday: I was there at the correct time per my appointment, but my appointment was incorrect; the doctor was not in. Apparently, some receptionist working there had made enough of these mistakes that they fired her -- or that's what they told me as they apologized. (We do the same thing here at work: whatever goes wrong, it was the fault of the last guy to leave.) Anyway, my appointment was rescheduled for this morning. I go in, doc likes what he sees but he cleans out the incision and applies some silver nitrate, to cauterize the hole and aid "granulation," which I think means scar formation, wound closure or something like that. He declined to remove the PICC line, but it should come out tomorrow afternoon.

Meanwhile, today's quote: I remember seeing something once about the 50's-era slang term "to signify." The context was someone explaining the term to another guy (I think they were on a bus), using the following example: a guy in jail tells a fellow inmate "I get out in three days;" what he really signified was "ha ha you're still stuck here."

I did the same thing recently with an uninsured friend, talking about my operations and saying my co-pay was around $16 for each (actually it was way more) -- all of a sudden I realized that she could easily take my statement as semi-bragging about the insurance I had that she didn't. Sometimes I worry too much, but I made a point of not mentioning my own situation when talking to that other girl in the quadrant Saturday.

Anyway, dinner last night was spinach & lentil burritos, closer to the book version of "soylent green," but still...

Score One For The Good Guys

Morning weigh-in: 180.5#, 11% BF

Quote of the Day: "In this land, right now, some are insane, and they're in charge."

-- Gang of Four, "To Hell With Poverty"

The visiting nurse came this morning, and took my temperature and blood pressure, things they do sometimes but not every time. My temp was 97.5, and my blood pressure was ... wait for it ... 124/80. No idea if that was because of the topherol I took a few hours earlier, but I haven't had a reading like that in a long time. Maybe I was a little less stressed, because this may be the last nurse visit, and I may get the PICC line out as early as today.

Reading: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. It's sort of like the old saying about Voltaire: the battles he fought (against organized religion) seem quaint to us, mainly because he won those battles so thoroughly. Reading along, I just keep getting the urge to say "well, duh, no kidding;" it's hard to realize the kind of world she lived in, where her assertions were considered crazy rather than truisms. It's a little scary to think that there are currently forces in this country, allied with and used as props by those in power, who are trying to roll back both of those victories.

Last Non-Riding Weekend Update

Morning weigh-in: 181#, 10.5% BF

Lotta things happened this weekend... Well, except Friday night, when I stayed in.

Saturday I got up early, got my oil changed at Revelation Motors -- the mechanics also straightened out my dented car door -- then had breakfast at Coffee Works and did a few errands (Nature's Way, etc). Hit Barnes & Noble, got a book for my Dad's birthday, also got one for myself (Silent Spring) as well as the new Raconteurs CD, and a Gang of Four CD -- I thought it was a sort of "greatest hits" compilation, but was really the band getting back together in 2005 to do what were essentially covers of their early stuff. Some was good, a few were even better than the originals, but most were inferior to the early stuff.

I had no shoes and cursed my luck: I needed to get coffee beans, so I stopped in at the Quadrant and got some lunch while I was there. A woman came in for lunch, a pretty, youngish-thirty-something alterna-girl, probably a local because she chatted with the owner while eating. She was bummed because she's currently unemployed (and uninsured) and had some recent medical problems. I told her about Taylor, who was in a similar big-medical-bill fix, and who was advised by a doctor friend to negotiate the bills down to something he could pay -- basically I gave her that same advice in the form of a story. We got to talking, and it turns out that she'd been in a nasty motorcycle accident when she was 20, and now the plates/pins/rods in her back are interfering with her spine. We commiserated about antibiotics, painkillers, not being able to drink (alcohol, but she can't have coffee either), and when we got around to my PICC line she said "nothing phases me anymore, they keep giving me catheters."

I walked out of there thinking "this foot stuff isn't so bad -- and thank God I have insurance."

Saturday Night was my dad's birthday. Me, parents, my brother Chris, and his wife & son. It was pretty nice, BBQ burgers & steak plus birthday cake; we ate inside because it was kind of chilly out. My nephew went swimming -- water looked freezing -- played with his scooter & showed me some trick moves, but I think he was bored; there was no one his age to hang with.

At Home I Feel Like A Tourist: I stayed overnight at my parents' house, and went home Sunday morning. Hit Cosmic Cup for coffee & a muffin, then went downtown to catch the Blues Festival. It was pretty neat and the day was beautiful, but things were low key (atmosphere was more like "family fun, face painting at Manalapan Day" than anything really bluesey) so I took a walk down by the river and took some photos.

After that I went to Jacobsburg and walked around there for a bit, found a nice clearing and "took some sun" (ie napped) for a while before heading home. The rest of the day/evening was spent playing with the computer.