Tuesday Trippin’ August 29

Today’s Ride

I was riding just after sunrise and expected I might get some good fresh material for the remake of our campaign video. I made an attempt at mounting the gimbal for an old cell phone. My phone is too wide to fit in the holder with its case and I just can’t risk a newish glass sided phone on a bike ride without a case. If I did, that would for sure be the day I crash. I’m that economics based late adopter who hangs on to tech as long as it still works.

I had some technical difficulties and just rode. I would have worried more with getting proficient for when Russ isn’t with me if this were the project equipment, but it’s just the equipment we were willing to buy to make a campaign video. It’s not practical to do the project with a gimbal that can’t be dropped or get wet.

I was right about the opportunity though. I scared an barred owl off its perch on a bridge and saw a dozen other things that would have been useful clips for one thing or another. A stag ran beside me for a moment. I heard his hooves pound first, then saw the tan color and thought of a cougar or dog that might be about to intercept me. I saw the antlers just he turned abruptly to make sure he didn’t. If it had actually been a predator, I’d have never heard him coming.

I stopped and caught about half of the deer crossing the path in one spot with a still in the photo below.

Weather

There was a yellow dot in my notifications. It had been so long since I had seen it that it took me a minute to realize it was the sunshine symbol from my weather app. And, it was fleeting, half a day was all it lasted. I keep planning to wash my bike, and then riding on wet trails again. Still, the weather is warm enough that wet is fine.

School is back in session and the seasonal change is very apparent. In truth, the length of day never changes by more than 2 or 3 minutes per day here, but those minutes are a bigger piece of the time before and after work or school when people feel them add up the most, and we’re in that sweet spot where the temperatures are inviting, but the days are shorter and there is less time to enjoy the weather. It’s so easy to lament the end of summer.

Roller Coaster

It’s been a roller coaster lately. Last week I was car dancing. It was the first time I remember catching myself doing that since those trips out to open trails early in the pandemic. Those drives were long, but very comfortable. The rural setting was like my childhood in South Alabama (except that the area where I grew up was much poorer). When I made those trips alone on pandemic empty country roads I’d blast my tunes, that made it feel somewhat like my teen aged years in the backwoods.

The road we took out there is being widened and I can feel all the land use converting from cattle and corn to Mc Mansions, so it was always a bittersweet drive. I remember writing about breaking out in tears over hearing “Big Old Jet Air Liner” one one of those solo drives.

I broke out in tears at the trail solo today. It’s been a long time coming and I wasn’t even sure that I could cry. Having a flat was the 5th trigger but not the cause. Once the faucets turned on I had a jumble of emotions all at once. I was embarrassed to think someone might see me crying in public, it good to realize my dry eye was under control enough to actually produce the tears, and then there was the act of crying itself, needing the release of emotion. Oh, and I had to get off the phone to do my blubbering in the first place.

Give me another couple of years and I’ll probably fit an ugly cry in somewhere. It may not take that long if I’m in a private place and I can cry in empathy rather than for anything that’s going on in my own life. I did that with The Color Purple in the late 80s. I hadn’t cried in several years when I rented the tape, and I think I literally did go through an entire box of tissues before it was over. That’s when I realized how much I needed the release and stopped trying not to cry if I needed to.

Health

My blood pressure and heart rate have dropped down to where they were 15 and 40 years ago. Those markers recently started to creep up into areas where a doctor wants to do something about them, and now they are down near the opposite limit where medical articles say “We don’t usually worry about low blood pressure unless in goes much below…”

I had hibiscus tea in my collection, and knowing that it can make blood pressure drop, I gave it away. I don’t actually want a drop in blood pressure right now. In fact, I reviewed all my herbal teas and supplements. News reports of a death that may or may not have been due to use of white mulberry probably helped motivate me to make sure I’m not unintentionally self medicating badly.

I also wondered if I was having those hot flashes that I never got back when everyone else did. Turns out the air conditioner was broken instead. I don’t know how long it would have taken me to look at the thermostat if someone else hadn’t.

Diet

I’ve broken through the half way to goal point, barely. The weight loss is still slowed a bit, but that’s because I haven’t recorded anything to keep up with it since my MacBookPro died. I could get things into a spreadsheet on the loaner, but there’s a lot going on and I’ve been satisfied with the slow around my halfway point for a bit.

It’s time to change that though. I want to be at my target weight and consolidating my miles to fewer days and longer rides before we submit the campaign video in November. The daily exercise has been good in a lot of ways, but time traveling to a trail has been tedious and expensive and the extra time plus being tired has kept me from getting other things done. I’m still leaving the door open to loose a bit more weight than the original target, but in November I want endurance rather than weight loss to be the priority and refocusing on the weight loss now will make me healthier and better suited to make that push.

That’s it for this week. See you on the trails and have a glorious day!