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Shortcut?

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Don\’t look for a shortcut. How often do we hear, \”There are no shortcuts\”? Last night I tried taking a shortcut when I decided to chop some cabbage for this evening\’s supper. It\’s a nuisance to have to cut vegetables when I\’ve just gotten home from work; and I wanted to have that cabbage chopped and ready for sautéing. And what happened? I managed to give myself a nasty cut in the thumb! I had to suspend operations while I went and put double bandaids over the laceration; and then I had to get the blood spots out of my blouse. It was one of my newer ones; and wouldn\’t you know, it\’s white. Then it was back to kitchen work; and I think we all know how awkward it is to do anything with one thumb bandaged up! On top of that, the bandaids quickly became soaked through; and that meant changing them. Bandaid adhesive nowadays is pretty strong; and getting the bandaids off meant pulling the cut open again! Before I got in the shower last night, I went after another kind of shortcut: I gave my hair a short cut. Whenever I start playing barber, I wish I had a three-way mirror. I can\’t see what I\’m doing in the back; and often my back hair on one side comes out shorter than on the other side. This morning, that cut still bled when I took the bandaids off. I decided I\’d better head for an urgent care clinic; it looked like I needed skin glue at least; or maybe even stitches. And stitches it was! It won\’t be easy keeping that area clean and dry; and I hadn\’t realized how much stress that little spot on my thumb gets. The shortcut isn\’t always so short!

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Easter Already!

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It\’s Easter already! How time flies. This morning I went for a long ride. My average speed was the same as last Sunday\’s; but I rode much farther — 31.3 miles instead of a mere 13.5 miles. The weather is nice today; and I wish it would stay that way. Unfortunately, April showers are likely to set in by mid-week. I was delighted to see some bluebirds in flight. I never saw any around here before last April. Maybe I was just never in the right place at the right time. I hear that bluebirds are rather shy; and maybe they stay away from the bike path. Today I tried some new on-bike foods: a Met-Rx bar; and a Quest White Chocolate Raspberry bar. I found them in the grab-bag bins at the salvage store yesterday; and they seem to work quite well. Back home, I had my usual recovery drink; then indulged in a Diet Coke and a piece of my chocolate un-rabbit. \”Chocolate un-rabbit\” requires a bit of explanation. It goes back to when I was fifteen. We kids, of course, were long past the Easter Bunny stage; but we still put out our Easter baskets. That year, our mother included large chocolate bars in our baskets. Since those bars weren\’t shaped like bunnies, she said they were chocolate un-rabbits! This year I\’m skipping jelly beans; and in fact most Easter candy. I must always be mindful of that A1c level! If it weren\’t for A1c concerns, I\’d be eating candy like crazy today! I probably wouldn\’t be saying, Easter already. I\’d be saying, Easter at last! Speaking of all that candy, here\’s another one from my mother. She used to say that, when she was a girl, Easter Monday was called \”castor oil Monday\”!

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Pre Easter

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Today is pre Easter! As usual for a Saturday, I headed for the salvage store. I decided to shop there rather than at Whole Foods so I could get in some mileage for the current Love to Ride challenge; and if I wanted Easter goodies, I hit the jackpot! I went straight to the grab-bag bins, and made up a large bag. This \”Easter basket\” ended up holding six Met-Rx bars; seven Quest bars; a bar called Detour; and more! This big take is a good reason for me to hit that store early, before those grab-bag bins get too picked over! Today, to my surprise, I found natural peanut butter. It\’s crunchy style, and I really prefer the smooth kind; but that\’s because it\’s hard to spread crunchy-style peanut butter as thinly as I like. But lately I usually eat \”PB\” with a banana or some other fruit before a morning ride; and spreading it isn\’t an issue. I\’ve been going through peanut butter rather quickly, so I decided it was worth buying two jars of it. They still had chocolate-hazelnut spread @ 99¢ per 13 oz jar. I got two jars to put away; I\’m sure the stuff will keep. I found tuna and brown rice… Sorry; I guess I get wearisome with my long-winded enumerations of what I find at the salvage store, be it pre Easter or another day. But I was glad I took the trailer along, because I had a big load! On the way home, I had to resort to my granny gear here and there. The wind really wasn\’t bad, but I was hauling a lot behind me. Back Home Once back home, I taste-tested one of the Met-Rx bars; then got busy cooking. Today I made another variation on Hoppin\’ John (appropriate for Easter weekend, isn\’t it?), this time using anasazi beans. It looks like the weather will be good for a long ride tomorrow; and part of my ride food will be the rest of that Met-Rx bar. Meanwhile, I have to pack away that \”Amblin\’ Anasazi\” in the freezer; wash dishes; go get a few things from the drug store; and get the laundry done. Pre Easter is turning out to be a busy day!

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Shady Dealings?

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Shady Dealings? ?️ Shady dealings are something most people want to avoid. On a bright, sunny day, however, shady dealings are just what we need to protect our eyes. These Photochromatic Sunglasses change tint automatically, depending on the intensity of the sunlight. That’s great on those days when light conditions are constantly changing! No need to drag along several different sets of lenses; so you can save space. These glasses also protect your eyes from wind; dust; insects; and so on. My own sunglasses have prescription lenses. I noticed that, when I turned my head from side to side to check for traffic, my eyes seemed to have trouble adjusting their focus; and I thought that I needed “script” sunglasses. Thus I don’t think I’ll be trying these soon. But if you don’t need prescription lenses, Photochromatic Sunglasses sound like a good choice. Don’t forget that your skin needs protection as well as your eyes. Take along some lip balm and sunblock, too!

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Dishes!

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Always dishes! I hardly get one pile of them washed, when another pile appears. Sometimes, after a meal, there really aren’t enough dishes to make washing them worthwhile. Then, after the next meal, there are so many that the dish drainer can hardly hold them all! If I didn\’t go for early-morning rides, I could take care of dishwashing right after breakfast. But I\’m not going to give up my exercise for a perfectly clean kitchen! Ergo there isn\’t time to wash dishes before I leave for work; so they have to wait until I’m home in the evening. Most days I carry lunches to work; and that means plastic food boxes and plastic bags (for carrot sticks, apple wedges, etc.) to be washed. Yes, you read that right – I wash and re-use plastic bags. Sometimes I’ll have five or six of them! And then there’s whatever plate or bowl I used for supper; plus, in many cases, a cooking pot. It would be nice, I think, to have a bicycle-powered dish washer. After all, it’s possible to hook up a bicycle to small appliances such as blenders; or even large ones such as washing machines. Wouldn’t it be fun to get in a little extra pedaling and take care of an irksome chore at the same time? I used to have a book that explained how to do such hook-ups; but I finally had to give it away. My kitchen is too cramped for any such set-up. But just think — if you can set up a bicycle-powered blender, you might burn off the calories in your smoothie before you even drink it! Alas, afterwards there\’s still the problem of cleaning the blender. Dishes, as usual.

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No Foolin\’

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No foolin\’ here, even though it\’s April 1. Overnight it got a good bit cooler. At 5 am, it was 58 degrees; and it was barely warmer than that by late morning. The wind was 14 mph when I was getting ready to ride; not as bad as I thought it might be. I had envisioned a terrific struggle against a powerful headwind! I decided to ride in the park, and then head for the supermarket. Unfortunately I got out the door later than I should have. Somehow that\’s only too common when I want to go grocery shopping before clocking in for a day of working from home! There was time for only one lap around the park — not a great start to the April Love to Ride Challenge. Then I headed for the store. The load I brought home turned out to be pretty big, and both my panniers were quite heavy. While I was in the store, the wind got stronger. As I was loading the panniers onto the bicycle, a strong gust almost blew the bike over! Those bags sure can act like sails. After I was back home, I noticed that the wind seemed to be getting stronger; and I was glad I wasn\’t out in it. Late this afternoon we were still seeing gusts as strong as 30 mph. Shall I head over to Whole Foods tomorrow morning for tofu? It will mean a much shorter bicycle ride; but I can\’t count on finding tofu at the salvage store. It would be nice if that store has more of those Lindt 90% cacao chocolate bars. After a year or more of much less sugar than usual, they\’re surprisingly sweet — no foolin\’!

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Sat Fat

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Sat fat?! What won\’t I come up with next? Sat-fat (as I prefer to spell it; but my blog-writing program doesn\’t like hyphenated titles) is my abbreviation for saturated fat; and sat fat, we now know, is a bigger culprit in high cholesterol counts than dietary cholesterol per se. Sat fat comes largely (entirely?) from foods of animal origin; and if you happen to be vegan it should be simple to avoid it. I\’m not vegan myself; and though I\’ve been interested in a meatless diet for decades, it\’s hard to eat a diet based on plants (whole grains, legumes, veggies); get enough calories; and keep from overshooting my carb count. As a result, I now eat more chicken and tuna. The nutritionist says I need to watch saturated fat and trans fat more than cholesterol. The former should make up less than 7% of my daily calorie intake; and trans fats should be avoided as much as possible. So I still have the leeway to enjoy a few ounces of cheese a week; and avoiding processed foods (e.g. snack cakes) ought to make sidestepping trans fat quite easy. But how much fat do I burn off through my cycling? I enjoy browsing through The Feed Zone Cookbook, and I think it would be fun to try more of the recipes. Unfortunately they tend to be high in fat. These dishes are designed with the pro peloton in mind, though; and I guess those folks burn off all that fat during training and racing. As a recreational cyclist, I wouldn\’t. Talking about saturated fat makes me think of videos such as this one. That poor young man has far worse dietary problems than I do. Come to think of it, I don\’t think I\’ve had pizza in at least a year! That Lion As March draws to a close, things look pretty stormy. That lion might be getting ready to pounce. When I went out on the road bike this morning, there were patches of heavy fog. I\’m glad I had planned to ride easy. Poor visibility and hard efforts don\’t mix well. It got warm today; up to 80 degrees. As the day went on, the sky got cloudier and cloudier. The sun dodged in and out; but it was still shining when I left work at 4:30 pm. I decided to give in to my hankering after Chinese food. I\’m calling it Easter dinner! Unfortunately it means a hefty dose of sat fat. You know how it goes when bad weather is about to set in: even though the sun was out, there were ominous-looking clouds in parts of the sky; and then it began to sprinkle. I stopped and pulled on the poncho; then hurried on. As I got closer to the strip mall where the Chinese restaurant is located, the sky in the Northwest looked uglier and uglier. I placed my order at the Chinese restaurant; then went to the drug store (almost next door) for a soda. Then I picked up my dinner, and went home. On the way, some pretty strong wind gusts came up; and I\’m glad they were behind me! And oh, did I get lucky. It didn\’t rain on me. About ten minutes after I got in, I heard a brief drizzle; but I suppose the worst is yet to come. The wind will probably start to kick up any time now. That lion is making itself felt!

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Lion!

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March is poised to go out like a lion; and not like the one in The Wizard of Oz. Right now the wind is blowing at 17 mph, with gusts up to 23 mph. The temperature is an unseasonable 80 degrees. Tomorrow evening and into Thursday, we\’ll be under wind advisory; and tomorrow night the temperature is expected to fall to the mid-40s. It\’s absolutely crazy! That wind made riding home from work, well, hard work at least half the way. I had a stiff headwind; but once I was on the bike path, I got a great tailwind. But tomorrow maybe I\’ll walk to work. First, because of the wind; and second, because the chances of rain are quite high. Merely thinking about it makes me want to stay at home! I hope the wind isn\’t strong tomorrow morning. My ride plan is to take it easy. Today I put in some force efforts, and my legs are rather tired. I need to let myself recover before I try to go hard again; but it\’s not easy to do a recovery ride when the wind is strong. It makes bike handling harder, for one thing. Then there\’s Thursday. I want to make a trip to the supermarket; but wind gusts could be as high as 30 mph! Riding with loaded panniers won\’t make it any easier to deal with that. I\’ll just have to hope for the best. Things will calm down after Thursday; and it looks like Sunday will be good for a nice, long ride. If I watch carefully, maybe I\’ll see the Easter Bunny! Peter Cottontail will have to watch his back; there are coyotes out there! I saw one this morning; and I hope I never see a lion.

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Sightings

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Sightings need not rely on binoculars. I can make plenty of them without field glasses. I love full-moon sightings. Yesterday\’s, the Paschal moon, was rather poor. It was overcast, and as a result the moon looked hazy. In fact, I guess I was lucky to see it at all! I rode early, at 5:30 am; and kept it short. The forecast said that T-storms were possible from mid-morning onwards; and I didn\’t want to get caught out in bad weather when I was miles from home. I didn\’t know just how cloudy it was until I was nearly back home, and it was growing light. The river is rising quite rapidly; and yesterday I got my first gator-eye sighting of the year. No doubt I\’ll see more and more of them as the weather gets warmer. As long as those gators stay in the water, I\’m OK with them. The weather was one argument for riding early and short; and another was making a trek to the drug store to get toilet paper. I saw the news article about the container ship that ran aground in the Suez Canal, and they say it\’s blocking the entire waterway. The title of the article mentioned that this blockage was likely to cause shortages of many things, including that notorious bathroom tissue. I was close to having to break into my emergency reserve, so I wanted to replenish my supply in any case. I got lucky: there wasn\’t a whole lot of it on the shelves, but I found what I needed. It\’s déjà vu: remember the run on toilet paper when the pandemic first broke out? The weather got much cooler overnight; and it was mostly cloudy early today. Not much good for moon sightings!

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Tipping the Scales

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Tipping the Scales ⚖️ Tipping the scales isn’t high on many people’s enjoyment list; and since the pandemic began, it’s probably fallen by at least a few places. It seems that weight gain during the last year has been common. Many people haven’t been able to get out to exercise as much; and that means fewer calories burned. That right there can contribute to unwanted pounds. People have been under stress; and that can lead to stress-eating. And don’t they say that stress increases ghrelin? Incidentally, the word “ghrelin” amuses me: it reminds me of “gremlin“. Just as gremlins sabotaged airplanes, ghrelin can sabotage your diet! The results, of course, are not amusing; and I don’t mean to make fun of that. I’m among the lucky ones who have been able to keep up my cycling through all of this. Over the last thirteen months, I’ve lost weight: I’m tipping the scales at about 26 pounds less, which is a significant amount for me. A big motivator was blood work results in February of last year. It showed prediabetes; and I did not, and do not, want to develop full-blown Type II. Riding a bicycle can help with both stress reduction and weight loss; and keeping it up helps to maintain your weight, once you’ve reached your target. My goals now are to keep up the calorie- and carb-watching; and to keep my weight where it is. I don’t need to lose any more; but even less do I want to gain those pounds back! Even if the weigh-in isn’t always fun, it helps keep a body on track; and if my weight creeps up a pound or two, I’ll know right away. Then I can double down on the diet! This blog/page may contain affiliate links. “We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.” ABOUT ME I began this website primarily as a way to present the story of how I accomplished a century ride on an adult tricycle. Other riders of adult trikes might want to know whether it’s possible. It sure is; and I hope I can provide a bit of inspiration.   Along the way, I got into blogging; presenting my kitchen experiments; and even setting up a store. You can visit my Facebook page here; or check into my Twitter (aka X) page, Cyclo_Pathy. I live in New Orleans; and  retired in January 2023. More time for cycling! Website designed by Cecile Levert © This website is the property of its author. DISCLAIMER I am not a cycling coach; nor a health professional. This site is based on my own experiences, opinions, etc. If you need help, please consult the appropriate professional. FRESH FROM MY JOURNAL ✍? Facebook Twitter Youtube Almost! October 20, 2024 What Happens? October 19, 2024 Persistence October 18, 2024 Wind Relief October 17, 2024 Load More TRANSLATOR

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