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SpokEasy

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Snakes!

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Snakes! This is a year for snakes, for sure. In the last month or so, I’ve seen three of them while out riding; and that’s more than I ever saw in all the previous years combined! I wasn’t able to identify any of those reptiles; but I suppose they were some kind of water snakes. The first two had patterned skin; and the one I spotted this morning looked all black. I couldn’t positively identify it, because I was moving too fast to get a good look; but it might have been a cottonmouth. I’m glad it was on the opposite side of the path! Most snakes in the USA are non-venomous and harmless to humans; or they are so far. In recent years we hear of pythons in the Everglades; and pythons can grow big enough to be a danger. Early this week there was a report in the news about a cobra on the loose in North Carolina! I hope they catch that cobra; and I hope the Everglades can be cleared of pythons. If I ever have my own place, with a garden in the yard, I won’t mind having a few kingsnakes around. They’ll help keep vermin under control. I won’t, however, go out of my way to find them! That’s enough about those crawling creatures now. I have to make plans for this weekend’s riding! I though of skipping the salvage store tomorrow to go to Whole Foods, because I want some things that the salvage store probably won’t have; but then I remembered that I have Monday off. I can go to the salvage store as usual; and hit Whole Foods on Monday! It looks like I might be OK as far as weather goes; but we’ll see!

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Boucle sans Fin

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Boucle sans fin. I feel like I’m stuck in an endless loop. The weather is part of it. Day after day, the forecast predicts showers and T-storms. The overcast and rain keep us a little cooler; but I’m tired of dirty water getting splashed on my bikes; and on my footwear; and on my panniers. I\’m tired of wondering every evening whether I can ride the next morning; or whether T-storms will force me to abandon my ride plans. At times those daily rides seem like boucle sans fin. I have to admit that it can be quite a grind. Today I actually skipped doing a “real” ride, because I was tired; and my legs felt stiff and sore. I rode to the grocery store, though; and I then I rode to work.  Another boucle sans fin is the endless parade of tropical storms. Around here we can\’t afford to ignore that. The roster of storm names has already reached “E”; and I hope that Elsa doesn’t prove herself a lioness! I wish there were a way to break that endless loop; but I don\’t know how to trigger global cooling! Then there\’s La Grande Boucle. I don\’t follow the race closely, but I enjoy looking at the pics. Among my favorites are pics that show the peloton streaming past fields of sunflowers; and this, after seven years, is still my favorite of all! Photos showing the aftermath of crashes aren\’t my favorites; but I guess they have to show all aspects of Le Tour. It looks like we\’re in for a stormy weekend, and I might have to set up my bike in the trainer. Talk about boucle sans fin — pedaling and pedaling; and going nowhere!

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Advance Planning

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Is advance planning your thing? Get ready for cold weather now, and lay in a supply of Aik Cheong Hot Chocolate mix! This 10-pack will help keep you going through those Winter days; and it\’s great to relax after a long, cold ride with a mug of hot chocolate! Imported from Malaysia. Advance planning is a must when you\’ve got a big cycling event coming up, too. Be sure to leave yourself adequate time to train up; and to figure out what on-bike foods work best for you. Part of this is learning how much eating you can tolerate on the bike. You don\’t want to overeat and give yourself indigestion; but neither do you want to eat too little and bonk!

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UV Sleeves

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These SHINYMOD UV Sleeves help you to keep your arms cool while preventing sunburn; and without messy sunblock. They also help keep you warm in cold weather! SHINYMOD sleeves block over 99% of harmful sun rays. As an added bonus, they help prevent insect bites. Available in packs of one or three pairs. I tried a pair of sun sleeves (although not SHINYMOD UV Sleeves), and unfortunately they\’re now so stretched out that they can\’t stay in place! They definitely do keep my arms cooler on a hot day; and I\’m considering buying some more before the worst of the heat gets here. Yes, those sleeves feel warm when you first put them on for a hot-day ride; but after you get moving it\’s not long before, um, sweat starts to let those sun sleeves cool your arms. You can even splash on a little water to help with the cooling; convection cooling, I think it\’s called. I\’m glad the weekend weather outlook is pretty good. I\’m not exactly looking forward to starting long Sunday rides when it\’s already 80 degrees at 6 am!

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It\’s a Shame

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It\’s a shame that people who live with diabetes face blaming and shaming for their condition. Isn\’t it hard enough to live with diabetes without the \”it\’s all your fault\” attitude from other people? In February of last year, my A1c levels were in the prediabetes range. My sister had already had prediabetes for a year or two; and my paternal grandmother had diabetes later in life. Family predisposition? Diabetes, I hear, is expensive to treat. I already have to spend some $80 per month on prescriptions; and I don\’t want any more! I don\’t want even oral diabetes meds; and even less do I want to become insulin dependent. That was my major motivation for getting to work to improve my diet, and shed some excess pounds. By last Fall, although I had lost weight, my A1c levels hadn\’t budged; and I began to work with a nurse practitioner and a nutritionist, so I could figure out my calorie and carb needs. Bookworm that I am, I got a book about prediabetes as soon as I received the diagnosis; and I also bought a vegetarian cookbook for diabetes. The constant meal planning and calorie/carb counting is tedious, but I don\’t dare stop doing it. It\’s too easy to slide back into old habits if I don\’t stay right on top of it. Naturally there are rough patches, and I had one only last week. For several days I couldn\’t seem to stop munching on \”naughty\” foods! It\’s a shame I\’m not sure why this happens. If I did, maybe I could prevent it; but I guess bad spells are normal. The important thing is to get past them and continue with \”business as usual\”.

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Balmy?

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I hoped for balmy conditions today. It isn\’t cold; but I sure wanted a break from the wind. But did I get it? No; I did not. The wind was up to 15 mph before I got back home; and as usual, it was against me. Speaking of balmy, there\’s an aspect of sun protection that I find only too easy to forget: lip balm. I found mine in Whole Foods, next to the toothpaste; and I keep it in my top-tube pouch. That lip balm tube is so small that I could easily lose it; and I don\’t want to do that. Before I begin a long ride, I apply lip balm; but at my stops I often forget to use it, even as I\’m slathering on the sunblock. I\’m now pushing for 45 miles or so for my Sunday long rides. Getting in 50 miles means either doing some doubling back; or riding past an odiferous petroleum refinery. Today I rode to the outskirts of the refinery; and I saw even from a long way off that they have a large flare going. One Sunday in 2013, I think it was, there was such a huge flare going that there was a big plume of smoke from it! Back to the ride. Twenty-plus miles is a long way to work against a headwind; yet it puts me to shame when silver-haired riders go breezing (no pun intended) past me. Am I still too afraid of going so hard that I burn out miles from home? As long as I have a fuel supply, I should be OK; even if I have to go at a lame snail\’s pace to complete my ride.

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Always Carbs!

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Always carbs! I work to track my day-to-day carb intake; but what about my weekly long ride? Perhaps I can let myself relax a bit about carb count then.  Somewhere I read, \”Taking on 60g of carbohydrate an hour is a good rule of thumb, so check the back of packets to make sure you have enough.\” So, do I get enough? Last Sunday\’s ride \”menu\” consisted of a FitCrunch bar (27 grams of carbs); a Bear Naked® bar (26 grams); one Special K Protein bar (22 grams); 32 ounces of Nuun (4 grams); and one GU (23 grams). That amounts to 102 grams of carbs in all; and it sounds like a whopping amount. My ride, 45.6 miles, took 4:07:14, so I got far less than 60 grams of carbs per hour; but do I really need that much? I wasn\’t racing, after all; and I\’ll always be working now to keep prediabetes at arm\’s length. Ergo it\’s always carbs on my mind! On the other hand, is it possible that I need to eat more during those long rides? Is one-sixth of a FitCrunch every 15 minutes sufficient; or do I need one-quarter of a bar every quarter hour? When I get home after such a ride, I typically don\’t feel very hungry, no matter what I ate during the ride; but about mid-afternoon, my appetite suddenly wakes up. Then I eat rather too much! It might be better to eat more on the bike, if it keeps me from over-eating later in the day. Maybe I need to find some gels that are high in protein; that might help. I checked the nutrition info for several flavors of GU-Gel; and none contain protein. I also look for ride-food bars that have at least 12 grams of protein. Fat vs Carb Another thing I don\’t know is my fat vs carb burn. I do know that, the more intense the effort level, the more the body turns to its glycogen stores. There I go again: always carbs. But do I have to go full tilt all the time to burn off the carbs that I eat during a long ride? I hope not! My body isn\’t sufficiently conditioned to ride at such a high effort level for hours; and, if you\’re concerned about weight control, the big thing is to use up calories. Bicycling sure helps with that! Figuring out on-bike nutrition is an ongoing process. I\’m still experimenting with it; and I wouldn\’t be surprised if veteran pro cyclists are still tweaking the ride-food menus. We need to get enough protein; hydrate properly; and always carbs!

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Lord of the Rings?

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Which is the Lord of the Rings: standard round, or oval? With all due apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien, this product is one to consider for improving your pedal stroke. An oval ring looks weird to me, but it helps you to attain smoother pedaling. It may also help with rear-wheel traction. Look here for some MTB opinions. I also like this tour; and think it\’s especially interesting the way they minimize waste. Available in sizes from 32-36 teeth.

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Can I?

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Can I clear out some of the stash of canned goods that I\’ve amassed? Sure I can; but it might take a while! After work yesterday, I got busy. My stash includes quite a stock of chicken, and I decided to use up some of it. Naturally, I thought of chicken tikka masala. I used two cans of the chicken: a 5-oz one, and a 10-oz one; and I used a can of condensed tomato soup. That got rid of another \”tin\”. I put cauliflower, red onion, and red bell pepper in this dish; and of course that meant that I had to do a lot of time-consuming chopping. It took a good 45 minutes to get the concoction ready for the stove. Now I\’m down three tins, but that hardly makes a — well — dent in my supply. What can I do to use up some more? Of course I don\’t want to use up everything! Hurricane season is upon us, and it\’s important to have at least a few days\’ supply of non-perishable foods on hand. I probably don\’t need to be too worried any more about a COVID-19 shut-down; but you never know. Even leaving hurricanes and the pandemic out of the picture, emergencies happen. The cooking done, I began to think: Can I get out for a ride tomorrow morning? At 6 pm yesterday, the wind was 18 mph; and gusts up to 30 mph. There was still a 70% chance of T-storms, too; and I decided not to try going for an evening ride. The forecast predicted some pretty stiff wind for today as well. Can I ride against that? None too fast, for sure. Wet Ride This morning I rode the hybrid. It was raining; and the hybrid has fenders. I wanted a few things from Whole Foods, too; and using the hybrid meant I could have the trunk. Bringing only the trunk meant, How much can I fit in there? Fortunately I bought only five items. I thought of riding over to the drug store during my lunch break, but about 10 am I heard the wind pick up; and by noon it was up to 25 mph. The wind advisory is still in effect; and now that I\’m off work, I don\’t feel like going anywhere, anyhow. The weekend weather is looking pretty good; and in fact, all of next week looks pretty good. So it\’s salvage store tomorrow; and a long ride Sunday. But can I resist bringing home another big haul of, er, cans?

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The Other Shoe

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I\’m tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop. When the pandemic began we started work-from-home; and I had the feeling that more than remote work might be in store. Layoffs? Might it come to offers of a buyout? It felt like waiting for the other shoe to drop; and I still feel like something is going to happen. Many of us are stuck in this limbo, I think. The weather forecasts this week also make me feel like I\’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Most evenings, the forecast for the next day looked dire: T-storms, strong winds, heavy rain. Such predictions made me anxious about whether I\’d get to ride at all; or whether I might get caught in nasty conditions miles from home if I did ride. In fact, I had to forgo the ride day before yesterday. Heavy rain in addition to darkness is a bit much, even if there\’s no lightning. I felt \”off\” all day from the lack of exercise; and maybe that\’s why I couldn\’t seem to control my appetite! Yesterday morning the weather permitted an outing on the road bike but my legs didn\’t have much \”snap\”; so I took it easy, and made the ride shorter than usual. Then I rode the hybrid to work. Again, I was on edge about the weather because I knew there was a wind advisory. I got lucky with the wind on the way home; and thank goodness it wasn\’t raining. Then I could start fretting over today\’s weather: will I get to ride, or will it be pouring? Again, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. It Dropped And this morning, it did. Long story short, I was very tired and sleepy; and could hardly get myself going. I wanted some things from the supermarket, and decided to go straight there; no laps around the park first. While I was on the way to the store, the wind strengthened; and the sky looked gloomier and gloomier. On the way home, I had to stop and pull on the poncho. The wind, fortunately, was behind me most of the time; but it made the rain seem worse than it was. Raindrops on eyeglasses made it harder to see. Maybe anti-fog spray would help? The poncho kept flaring out to the side, and obscuring my rearview mirror. It was a relief to get back home. Now that the other shoe has dropped, I hope I can get a break from constant worry over the weather.

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