Transportational coffee

Soon I should start posting things that make sense but another item of interest happened that I feel like noting.

Transportational coffee is not something that you find/experience at Starbucks or in 99% of all kitchens so this post is something most can just pass up...Sorry about that.



Now onto it:

Today I was planning on pouring into an irregular shaped cup to see what funky things might happen in the interpretative art avenue but as fate would have it the odd cup walls just destroyed anything of visual interest.

Fine by me because I was met with trasportational coffee in the cup. By my senses this is not an everyday occurrence. Mainly because I do not try to find it and allow the intensity of the experience to dictate to me what it wants. Another way to say it is that I am content (at thins point in time) to let the small still voices remain subtle and it takes a "stand up and shout" cup to sway my attention. Again I'll stress at this point in time.

So today it was such a loud roar.

Outdoor cafe' Someplace like Austria or Bavaria...maybe it's even main street USA at Disney World to be honest the overriding factor is outdoors, crisp air, and a very airy atmosphere and as I look deeper I'd bet $1,000 it's Bavaria.

Sitting at a small table with white frame and white chairs...etched glass table top.

Alone but only right now...somebody else has stepped away from the table but should return.

Eating chocolate croissants.

VERY strong register of chocolate croissants.

Most interesting is we are also smoking cigarettes and there is no coffee to be found anywhere on the table. ?? :o

Of course I've never been to Bavaria, don't smoke, and hardly ever eat chocolate croissants but that goes without saying right?

2 pics I like

I have a couple pictures from last week that I enjoyed. This is just a quick post to mention them...no real content or comment.

The first one is something Adam found on a walk a few days ago. He took off down Cherry Creek Trail looking for a lake we heard about without knowing exactly how far away it was. This pic is just a bit down the path but he wound up weaving, turning, trail switching, and stream jumping his way about 5-6 miles from here.. hahaha! He isn't used to that sort of thing but this is a cool pic from along the way.



The other one is from my testing of the Handpresso Wild. It's not art but to me it's artful. Sometihng unintended happened when I selected my hand made cup from Stray Clay and the way this thin espresso got washed out in the milk...I just like the pic for some reason.

Stair training location #2

Now that I'm within 1-3 hours drive of more 14er's than I can probably ever climb considering my advanced age. :o ...

As the move settles in I've got to get ready for next season with some off season training. Stairs were my main tool back in Sugar Land to simulate "going up" and yesterday we had a chance to go to Red Rocks and see what's what.

Lot's of stairs....in elevation... uhmm.... "ouch".

1.5 trips with my .5 jumping bleachers instead of taking the steps (cuz I saw somebody else doing it) was enough for an introductory lesson in cardio above sea level.

Lungs - toast
Head - dizzy
legs - wobbled

Nice intro but I'm not ready for a big bite yet, I see how you could kill yourself or at least wind up in an embarrassing situation of being flat on your back and begging strangers for air if you try to tackle it too soon.

I'm happy to start getting my head on straight and it was a cool visit to Red Rocks... I'll be back. ;)

Espresso overshoot philosophy

It might have been 5 years ago I thought about learning to pour latte art. After about 10 min. I decided latte art sucks and I didn't need to chase it down. :(

Reason being it doesn't come naturally to me at all and I sensed how hard it was going to be.....bottom line is I bailed out on the work required.

6-8 months ago when my buddy Shaun took my 2-3 doubles per day of perfectly poured latte art back up to Canada with him I was forced to face the work ahead. The fact is I had come to understand something about espresso drinks I had previously discounted. The fact is milk texture matters. Art does not change the taste (however proper milk does, and you need proper milk for art)but it does effect overall presentation and care in the cup. Short answer is that when striving towards excellent cups art is inevitable to tackle.

The first couple months were difficult because I had to uncover and then correct mechanical issues. My obsession with re-inventing my machine is a separate issue but it is what it is and I had to change a steam wand, add a pressure gauge, OPV, and address a water debit problem to get me where I am now. Where is that?

About 6 more months away from pouring art. ;-

But that isn't my point today. My point is my new thought about overshooting a target.

My small milk drinks have reached an all time high point. I am drinking the best espresso drinks I've ever made right now. I don't want the hunt for art to get this point lost so I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge it. My coffee is very good right now and I'm really happy with that.

Much of the credit is because of overshoot by looking for art. I am having to pull good shots, texture good milk, and have everything "just so" while shooting for it and that effect is to pull up all the other tangibles by default.

So while I am grumbling about why it's so hard to pour art and working myself up by some close calls the side effect is very good coffee.

Life should be so hard right?

Close calls.... Stay tuned for 2010.

Nitro pour

Dig my nitro pour stout from Dry Dock brewery. ;)

Sweet!

Also my house IPA.



And my sampler fleet...



I think I will wrap up this post with nothing more. ;)

What a difference a day makes.

Well.... who could have know the events of the last weeks would have led to this but the long and short of the new reality is that we live in Denver Colorado now.

I woke up today to see the first real snow I've seen since I was a teenager.

Not only that but there is a 30' Christmas tree outside my bedroom window. :o

The blog will probably move to "all things Colorado" for a while now and there is too much to say as we have only been here 3 days and have not figured out the lay of the land yet...

More to follow soon!

Funny pics

Cleaning stuff out we came across some pics of me as a youngster...

I think the pics will say enough on their own that I don't need to add much.

I might add more because some of them are pretty funny..

3 weeks after the 30 day challenge

I figure an update is in order...

The reason I have not done it sooner is that the post 30 day challenge is uneventful. Still eating paleo about 95% of the time and there is now 5% variance where one meal a couple off the menu items get eaten and then it's right back to the plan.

I guess eating paleo is sort of habitual. :)

I'm in no hurry to add back the things I have cut and the very infrequent "cheats" are more than enough to tide me over. If I have one meal in 20-30 that includes something I've cut. I think that is an acceptable rate of not only how much of the thing I let in but enough that I'm not worried about wanting to eat it either. For instance sugar. When you cut out all sugars for 30 days and you find yourself at a birthday party...you don't' eat any cake. No big deal unless you think of never eating any cake at any party, wedding, holiday or ever. And cake is just a symbol for anything, I just used that one to make the point. If you know you will eat it once every couple weeks or so there is no pressure of "never eating" xyz.

It makes it easy IMO to eat Paleo/primal almost all the time. There is no start/stop to it if you factor in an allowance like that. The Primal Blueprint suggests the 80/20 rule but I can't see being that generous (because I could figure out how to abuse the 20% for sure) but the concept really does make sense to me with a much smaller allowance.

Anyway...that is about it. My weight loss has predictably slowed down but I am unconcerned about it at this point. There is a lot going on in my life right now so even slow and gradual is pretty exciting to me and I feel good about how everything is going. Thanks again to Paul for doing the 30 day before I did and pointing me that way, and to Urban for presenting the challenge in the exact language that resonated with me.

http://www.paulsedillo.com

http://www.urbangetsdiesel.com/2009/07/change-your-life-in-thirty-days.html


So far it's sticking. ;)

Interesting vids

This is a vid series that I find very interesting.

I have watched 5 parts so far and each segment is better than the last. If I didn't have to go to work right now (10 min ago) ;( I'd watch the entire series in one sitting.

I'll watch the rest tonight. This guy goes over a lot of things I already know now, but I still like his presentation style and it's reinforcing info for me.

You can follow the segments in order via the end screen after each 10 min. segment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULWhuO_tJPs

1 month of Paleo

Day 29 of the initial 30 day paleo challenge.

The reason I did this 30 day challenge is summed up here:


"..it will change your life. I cannot possibly put enough emphasis on this simple fact. This. Will. Change. Your. Life. It will change the way you think about food, it will change your tastes, it will change your habits and your cravings. It could, quite possibly, change the emotional relationship you have with food, and with your body. It has the potential to change the way you eat for the rest of your life."
http://www.byersgetsdiesel.com/2009/07/change-your-life-in-thirty-days.html

Two days before I started I figured out a few modifications that would make this trip a better fit for me but "moxyboss" above said "strict by the book paleo for 30 days" and I decided anything less would be selling the challenge short and I would never be able to say for sure what the results wold have been if done by the book. Now that I'm closing it up I am so glad that I played by the rules.

Did it change the way I think about food? Yes...very much.
Did it change my emotional relationship with food?...without a doubt.
Did it change my life forever..... Not sure yet but it's possible.

I learned some things about food I don't think I could have learned any other way than doing this challenge. Not all of them will necessarily be good "paleo" lessons. I won't know until I try to re-introduce things but one of the first things I will be trying to add back in is yogurt. If I discover that I don't have any negative reaction to eating it I will add back yogurt to my diet...it's something I feel would improve my overall eating strategy to include small amounts of yogurt. It may be that paleo people did not eat it but as soon as they figured out how to make it people DID start eating it and I think it's a very beneficial food (as long as you don't have issues with the dairy) and then there are goat milk options as well as coconut milk yogurts. So I intend to expand and improve on my new found base by experimenting with foods from a "clean slate" I could never have had before.

Sugar - My relationship with sugar has changed and we are on the outs. I don't know yet how we can re-negotiate any new terms to coexist or exactly how to proceed from here but the bloom is off the rose on sugar(s) for me now.

Grains - You tricky bastards. I think you might be ok actually and not the demon paleo makes you out to be but the US government and society have convinced us to take you on obsessive quantities. The food pyramid has you at what I now believe is a very unhealthy proportion.
Like sugar we are going to have to find a new relationship and I think for the next few months I will have VERY little room for you. When I started looking at nutritional data for things like oatmeal and bread I realized for the first time how devoid of real "food" some of these things are. They are mainly carb/fiber balls. There is not much nutrition at all in oatmeal.
I'm not going to get into the fiber thing right now but it's a straight up hoax if you ask me. Reading something about food is one thing and eating it for a month is another. I'll give my short un-gross version and say the things you read about people having 5#'s of undigested meat or something like that in their intestines if they don't' eat enough fiber to cleanse it out...I think it's total quackery at this point.
I feel almost certain you could eat nothing but red meat for 2 weeks and you would discover right away there is no problem with it gumming up the works. My month without them tells me grains are not all their cracked up to be. :(

Weight loss- I lost 14#s in the last 29 days and don't have anything to add to it other than next month will be key and I'll have a lot more to say then.

Moving forward - I plan to shift slightly towards Primal over Paleo because I think there are some holes in strict Paleo (for me anyway) that need to be filled. Perhaps "Paleo for athletes" addresses those deficiencies and maybe less active people would do better with strict paleo but I had a few crashes over the month and I think they were related to carb intake/glycogen stores/usage. I don't have any way to prove it but for starters I see myself eating sweet potatoes once a week next month to see what effect it has on my high workload sessions and make adjustments from there.

Overall - a fantastic challenge!

Moxy was correct in almost all of her assertions and possible all of them, I just don't have enough time in yet to say about the long term effects.

I would encourage anybody to try it that could use some help in dealing with food issues. Athletes should read more about that angle on things and read blogs by other paleo athletes but other than that I think it was overall a VERY positive experience and I'm excited to see where the next month brings me as I take some baby step modifications of the paleo plan to seek out what I hope will be the best eating plan I've ever had...more to follow.

3 weeks of Paleo

The third week of Paleo.....uneventful really.

I might have suffered some mental burn out feelings on "meat and vegetables" but it passed and we made some bomb-diggity taco salads last night that set things right.

I've been spending most of my time now looking at another branch of this lifestyle called Primal instead of Paleo. There are some things I don't like about it mainly there is what I consider too large of a liberty given to certain foods and behaviors like the 80/20 rule that gives you leeway for 20% of the time to go astray and eat that cheesecake. I don't argue with the concept but I do the ratios. If you are fit maybe 80/20 will work for you but if you are fat maybe 95/5 would be better or 90/10 if you just fell apart at the idea of avoiding some of those less healthy choices.

I'm pretty much on the 99/1 rule right now and for my initial 30 day challenge my resolve is set and I don't see anything changing that. After the first 30 days I may consider moving towards some of the Primal methods and modifying the areas I think are too generous or I do not agree with such as use of artificial sweeteners. As a kid I used to read that label on the back of the initial sweeteners they came out with saying it caused cancer in rats and I've never wanted to eat any of those substances. I just kicked a nasty sugar habit so I'll be trying to severely limit my sugar intake for the foreseeable future.

Anyhow the resources in the Primal community are far greater than strict paleo as best I can tell. That is a good thing and I've ordered the book Primal Blueprint to get more details.

The over view is here:

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/primal-blueprint-101/

Otherwise 3 weeks into this Paleo experiment and all I can say is it's going very good and I'm pleased with the results and changed in our eating habits and how they seem to be effecting out health.

Good Stuff!

2 weeks of paleo

2 weeks and I have to say I am really settling into the paleo diet.

I'm loosing weight, felling pretty good, starting to feel comfortable with organizing my foods... it's all good right now.

There are a few surprises for me so far and the biggest one might be how much I am loving vegetables. When I was a kid the only vegetable I ever wanted to eat was corn. I didn't know back then that corn isn't a vegetable so strictly speaking I liked zero vegetables. Growing up only made me more empowered to choose not eating vegetables and so mostly, I didn't eat them.

Right now I am LOVING vegetables. I just grilled my first zucchini on the pit and it's damn sure not going to be my last. That sucker was delicious!!!

Another surprise is the effect of getting refined sugars out of my life. I'm becoming aware now that a lot of food cravings from the past were never actually about food...it was about the sugar. I think I was a hard core sugar addict and even eliminating "sweets" from your diet isn't enough. There are plenty of other ways to get sugar via simple carbs and if you need to even more complex carbs.. Cutting out not only sugars but grains is like taking a sledge hammer to the pesky fly that is sugar addiction. It's very destructive to the addiction. As long as you watch the fruit intake you wind up doing a massive re-direct. There is a real "smoothing out" I'm finding by loosing all those sugar sources.

I'm excited to see how things look at the end of this 30 day challenge phase and what transitions will be in store next but unless something happens I'm not sure yet if this isn't the best way of eating I've ever prescribed to.

More in a few days....

One of my last food pics..

This exercise of posting my food pics has been alright but it's pretty played out I think. I got tired of posting eggs really fast and now with the dinners I think the visual is pretty clear...cook different types of meats with different types of vegetables. :)

To be strict Paleo I probably have too much fruit in this meal with the natural applesauce and pineapple but that's just how it worked out. I like applesauce with pork and because I've never cooked acorn squash before I just followed the recipe suggestion that didn't have brown sugar or other non Paleo items in it.

Lately what I've been doing is cruising the produce isle and just grabbing anything I've never cooked before. Bok choy, squashes, fruits, whatever. If I've never had it I'm grabbing it. To my surprise everything has been great. I should have been eating these things a long time ago. :)

There are plenty of more "chef like" paleo recipe websites around but I just wanted to document what I was doing with these more basic meals. I look for things to remain almost the same, ...probably more vegetables soon and if something really interesting comes up I'll post it but there are only so many pictures of meat and vegetables to remain interesting.

Paleo leftovers

Some of the best leftovers I remember having in a long time.

Saute yellow onion it coconut oil
Add some mushrooms
Add some chunked up leftover pork loin....throw lot's of it in there.
Add a rounded tsp of garlic chili sauce.
Add bok choy just long enough to soften a little.
Add an English cucumber just long enough to stir in.



It was good enough that I decided to make a post to look back on later. ;)

Day 6

Been feeling pretty good the last couple days as I settle into the program.

We had a risky situation come up last night..(several risks really) but managed to negotiate a favorable path that brought up the problem of needing to find something to eat FAST and it was getting late.

We wound up at Cafe' Express. It worked out alright by ordering a California turkey burger with a side of fruit and ditching the bun. Funny part was that I got a wheat bun even as I knew I was going to chunk it... I have not ordered a white bread bun in so long where there is an option that I didn't feel right about doing it. :)

Things are really smoothing out on Paleo and I don't have a whole lot to say about it right now other than the fog of days 2-3 has stayed gone and I'm glad for it. I'm feeling better and if that trend continues (or doesn't) I should have more to share next week.

Dinner today is roasted pork loin, natural apple sauce, and mashed cauliflower. I've been wanting to try mashing this stuff for a while but today was the first time we actually tried it. It's really good and everybody liked it.

Another Paleo dinner.

Meatball madness days 4-5

Grass fed beef, lamb, pork, yellow onion, roasted poblano peppers, and you mix it all up with some kale on the side.

It was good!


More running commentary to document my Paleo experiment....


I'm feeling pretty good at the start of day 5 and am interested to see what is going to happen next. I am loosing weight every day but that is to be expected at the start of any big diet shift. They say it's "water weight" but when I did a little looking I started to wonder if calling it water weight makes it sound insignificant. If you are carrying around pounds of excess water that is being retained in your tissue....isn't that a good thing to get rid of? What exactly is the difference in water weight and edema? :o
I don't know but my thought is that I do want to drink lots of good clean water and be fully hydrated to a healthy point but that's it. If I have excess water filling up my tissue like a saturated sponge that I don't need for anything good I prefer to shed that. Anyway, I don't really know what I'm talking about, just thinking out loud and I think I'm happy to loose excess weight from all the sources that it is truly "excess" be it fat or water.


Today I am having a grazing day to start off with. I might change by lunchtime or I might stick with it until dinner but the fact is I am not hungry at all for a full breakfast so I'm going to listen to my body and see what happens. I ate a handful of almonds and am halfway into a Bosc pear right now. That's pretty much all I want right now. It might be the BIG chicken on Wed and the meatballs last night that have me set but I'm just not in the mood for a big protein b-fast right now.

More in a day or 2...

First meal out on Paleo

I wondered what my first meal out paleo style was going to look like...

The waiting is over.



Asparagus, broccoli, and a massive hunk of roasted chicken....a half a freaking chicken. :) You can't tell by looking but it was BIG. I felt a bit nervous after eating it that I'd overdone it and sucked in a zillion calories or something but all in all I think it went according to plan. I half expected to gain 2lb's by the AM but it didn't happen. There might be something to this Paleo thing....

An hour after this came my biggest challenge so far to my Paleo experiment and that was the snack fest known at fight night. A time when normally snacks are eaten and a beer or two go down the hatch. I'm not having any beer currently and 99% of all typical fight snacks are very UN-Paleo. I opted for a big 1-liter bottle of Smart Water and I picked up a jar of macadamia nuts. I also grabbed chips for the boys and guess what? Everybody was going at the macadamias like hungry piranha. :) They got pounded before the chips ever got a chance.

I also took a pic of a Breakfast from a couple days ago but these pics leave me with mixed feelings. I think there is some value to showing how simple the food is and giving a visual but on the other hand a pic of turkey bacon an eggs is super boring. this will probably be my last b-fast pic until I do something interesting.

Nitrate free, hormone free, no antibiotic, etc.. peppered turkey bacon, omega free range eggs, a good clean salsa, cup of black coffee (El Salvador Los Planes) and a pear. Side note: When you cut out all refined sugar and eat otherwise low sugar too it's amazing how the sweetness of fruit jumps out at you. The pears, nectarines, oranges, and things are so juicy, sweet, and fantastic. Good stuff!





My summary so far is that day one was a cakewalk that gave me a false sense of security. Days 2-3 brought me dizziness, headaches, and some mental confusion. I think this was either detox or regulating blood sugar. Either way it was not comfy. Day 4 feels like I might have turned the first corner. No dizziness or anything and I feel better. Another update soon.

Day 1 of suffering Paleo

Day one and it's excruciating!

How will I ever make it.....what was I thinking??

I had no idea it would be this hard to deal with.

When you drop dairy and grains that really is most of the foods after all right? I mean no brown rice WTF? No beans, cheese, whole grain breads, quinoa, pasta, yogurt,...none of the basic building blocks of what meals are made of.

Well, I didn't come this far to quit in one day so I figured I'd make the best of a bad situation. Here is the crap I had to stuff down for breakfast and dinner today. :(


Turkey bacon, eggs, and spinach... I forgot to get the fresh pear in the pic but I had to eat that juicy bastard as well.



Dinner was worse.

I had to choke down some wild caught Alaskan salmon burgers with spicy brown mustard slathered on top, steamed cauliflower and yellow squash drizzled with Si Racha (how terrible) and sliced cucumbers dusted with course ground pepper.



An hour ago I even had to drink a straight espresso shot that was presenting almost all bakers chocolate and tobacco. Can you even imagine?

Well, I made it anyhow and I'll try to use all my willpower to go one more day tomorrow....one step at a time I guess. Wish me luck with the "struggle". ;)

And now Paleo is happening....

I've looked at the Paleo diet for about a year now and while I did think it was interesting it was clearly not something I was in the right time and place to consider adopting it.

In fact in that space I would have told you (correctly I think) that it is a bad approach for somebody with my goals and motivations at that time. I still believe that if somebody is significantly overweight any "diets" are not the best way to go. Learning how to eat clean healthy foods and making the mental shifts necessary to eat healthy and jettison all the terrible garbage from your diet is most important. A diet could bring you great weight loss success but if you did not pick up the tools necessary to be healthy as soon as that diet if over you are hosed....It's a fairly well established cycle and the "yo-yo" is pretty demoralizing as well.

But without contradicting myself I am in a different time and place right now with slightly different goals/motivations and the Paleo approach might be a good vehicle to get where I am going next. Once I am there the re-evaluation process will dictate.

I won't spend much time describing Paleo other than to say google it if you want and it's basically a diet of meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts. It cuts dairy and grains because of factors like inflammation, digestion, and the idea that they were not foods around for us to eat WAY back in the day. Tons of controversy surrounds this diet as does tons of research. TONS of reading for anybody that wants to look under the hood.

Anyway, I'll be posting some food pics from time to time while I am on this leg of my journey and I can tell you that I'm very excited to spend the first 30 days with Paleo and see what my body tells me about it. As Always I'll share the good, bad, and ugly truth so no matter how it goes I will report on it.

Paleo Breakfast

Turkey bacon and eggs scramble with a peach.... how simple is that?





One BIG problem with the Paleo diet for me is the dairy as it relates to coffee. Lack of latte is lame. :( There are even schools of thought that say no coffee at all on Paleo but 1)I don't have any interest in living life without coffee. 2) If somebody seriously tried to stop me I would be like Joe Pesci in the bar scene of Casino.... For me a life worth living includes coffee and it's not negotiable.

Taking away my dairy makes me sad but you can still live... so for me coffee stays on the table no matter what diet plan is involved. ;)

Luckily the Italians figured out sometime around 1900 that a quick coffee made just for me would be a cool thing to invent....so they did and I will find a way to struggle and suffer past my lack of lattes the old fashioned way.

Oh man, how rough does this look?

Crazy injury report

Last week I had a perfect training week for where I wanted to be right now.

It went well and there were no complications...

Today I was sitting on the floor and for no reason I can figure my left ankle started to hurt. I thought it was strange because I wasn't putting any weight on it when it started to hurt. I went to get up and see if I could figure out what happened and it started crunching. It cracked about 8-9 times before it started to fold under and I realized I wasn't going to be able to stand up.

Once I made it back to the ground I felt a lot of anger along with the intense pain.

I was super pissed that I'd just damaged the hell out of my ankle somehow. It was tweaked in a sick way and I felt/heard a lot of stuff get crunched when I tried to put weight on it. My ankle has never made those types of noises before. :( I was also pretty worried because the last time I totally rolled my right ankle was about 12 years ago and it's never been 100% from that day on.

Realizing I was going to have to get up sooner or later I got up using the other leg. I tried to put some weight on the injured side and somehow or another....it was fixed. ?? The pain dropped down about 90%. As I type it's dropped off 95%.

I don't know what happened or why it's almost gone but it has me taking a day off and tomorrow we shall see how things are going.

Super weird.

Bum Rushed with conviction II

So it's happened to me again.

I never wanted to climb a 14er... I resisted knowing/learning enough about it to even think about doing it all the way up until I decided I HAD to do it. Looking back I suppose it's fear that tries to get me to veer away from the challenge I know deep down that I really do want to take.

Probably fear of failure is the biggie...makes me try to talk myself out of the thing before I have a chance to get obsessed with it.

So, on with the deal of the day...

I guess it was a few years ago I read a story about the Bataan Memorial death March. Some lunatics gather up each year and locomote their bodies across 26 miles of disastrous terrain in 50mph sand storm winds, fun elevation gains and such other things to commemorate the actual Bataan death march where a "forcible transfer of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war" took place on a 60 mile death march that lived up to it's name. Thousands died on the march...here is the wiki

So these years ago I read the story about the Bataan Memorial and as I was reading the account the reporter gave of it I thought to myself "this is something I'd never want to do". She told all about the conditions of the course and the heat...everything she listed gave me yet another reason to think she was crazy and why I would not ever do this kind of event.

And then there was a paragraph in her report that gave me pause.

She tells it (I'll explain in my words) that somewhere along the trail she has stopped to deal with a nasty blister problem and somebody asks if she is ok. She says that the blister is killing her, blah, blah, blah, and looks up to realize she is complaining to one of the survivors of the actual death march. Not the march she is in where there are aid stations every few miles and 12 checkpoints where a friendly volunteer will hand you a Gatorade...he was in the march where if you move to slow from dehydration/starvation/injury they just bayoneted you to death. Well I think there was humiliation and tears welling up when she realized the gravity of it all and some handshakes happened and she managed to push past the blister problem...

Three seconds after reading that paragraph and I knew that I was going to do the Bataan Memorial Death March before too long. Last week I booked reservations on a cozy little cabin in Las Cruces 3/19 - 3/21 so I can toe the line for the next Bataan Memorial Death March

I've now officially become obsessed with it.

My 14er summit bid for this year has been put in the hands of chance. Training will pretty much run concurrent so I will be in shape to climb if I get a chance to go to Colorado but getting away from the business is hard. Getting away twice is VERY hard and that is the reason I didn't get to do this march last time. I could not get away so soon after the Colorado trip. I say I couldn't but obviously I could if I "HAD" to (gun to the head and all)so it's always a question of making things happen...but the fact is that it's very hard for me to leave.
I will be ecstatic if I can pull off both. I really want to but if I can't do both my next big event will be the Bataan and then I'll get back on my next 14er. I have summit fever right about now that isn't going to go away until I get at it but this Bataan thing is pulling me with great force. I know that I have to do it now when the survivors are still around because it's just something I feel compelled to do for them. Just to be a number out there on that one day a year is such a small thing compared to what they endured.... I have to do it now.

So there it is. This marks the second time I was smacked upside the head with something I clearly didn't want to do...and then all of sudden I knew I had to do it. I can't wait until that nest thing involves me becoming fabulously wealthy instead of pain/punishment but here we go. All systems are go Bataan.

Anybody wanna meet me out there.....you can ya know? ;)

Major congrats to the champ!

I think most people that read my blog probably read Shaun's and/or know him but I lost my password to Feedburner and I honesty don't know who reads my ramblings... ;)

In case There is somebody that doesn't know it the fault will not be with me, but the one and only Shaun Taylor has recently crushed the world at the Worlds 24 hour bike race. He took first place in his category to secure his place in the history books of other such racers that have (like him) put aside all good sense and common knowledge of what the physical limitations of your body are. :o

Serious congrats to Shaun for being out there on the point because 1) somebody has to do it and 2)the rest of us like it to be somebody really kicking some ass....keep kicking ass my friend.

Now, in his own words.....the champ!

24 Hours of Adrenalin 2009

When does close count?

The saying goes that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades but I'm going to expand that to include latte art.

I have a love/hate relationship with latte art because it refuses to fall in line and show me the shortcut to achieve it. I have not had the easiest time with my attempts at pouring art so this pour was totally unexpected for me when it came out pretty close...it's the skeleton of art anyway and the real stuff is only a few more turns around the bend.

This one was so unexpected that I didn't even check for a cup first and all I could get was this last second, way back in the cupboard, only clean, chipped up mug.

I'm posting it anyway because it's close....the closest I've been so far.

Look, I'm a struggling artist. :)

Today....I can pour this:




Some day.....one of these days....maybe this:

Operation hydration station

Last week my hydration strategy (pictured above) reached it's breaking point in the Summer heat. By the time I was 1/2 way into my route I realized I was going to have to conserve the approx 50 or so oz's that the two bottles hold. By the time I was done I was sucking the residual foam left behind by the electrolyte mix out of the bottles like I was stranded in the Sahara. :(


Enter my new system....ta da!



Not only do I more than double my available oz's I can stash one of the bottles in the pocket of the hyro-pack so I only have to hold one bottle at a time. This is great because on my 9 mile loop my thumbs get tired after a while from holding the bottles around the grips. Being able to switch hands and just hold one bottle should be a welcome relief. But in this heat I would not have been able to do the 9 because the 2 bottles simply isn't enough fluid to make it....no longer a problem.

I'm doing the dry run testing now and this thing is threatening to be super cool. I can load 2 liters in the bladder and stick that in the freezer for an hour or so before heading out. I drop 6-7 ice cubes in the bottles but the liquid is always lukewarm within 20 min. :(

So tomorrow when I get up I'm going to take my new hydration system out for a spin. It's kind of crazy what makes me jazzed these days because carrying water on my back is not something I would have imagined a few years ago would be exciting to me.

Flippin sweet!!

Hitting Alice Cooper in the nuts.

A total ramble fest.

Two things have been on my mind lately.

Hitting Alice Cooper in the nuts and randomly looking at gold medal winner Tera Lipinski's panties in a Target paring lot.

In other words strange things I have done....

The fact that I have done these things (or the doing of them) isn't what's on my mind...what is on my mind is that some stories can never properly be told. First off the more interesting a story is the more unusual it is and the less likely people are to believe it. It's the plague of not being a bullshiter in a world that loves to bullshit. When I tell you I hit Alice Cooper in the nuts it's very literally because I was the cause of him doing that specific flinch that only happens when someone is hit in the package. And by the same line...when I say literally it's because I know the definition of the word and use it the way it was intended....because I am straightforward like that. ;)

Anyhow, I would have figured my eyes were playing tricks on me when we rounded the corner and I saw Tera Lipinski bending over and her skirt hiking ALL the way up AND over her hips to have her pretty much moon the paring lot her full back panties. I could easily have figured it was just somebody that looked like her but not actually her if she had not been standing next to a black corvette with personalized plates Nagano 98. Whatayagonnado?

So it's not my fault that it was Halloween (making the story even less believable) when I threw something "TO" and I'll stress again "TO" Alice, he didn't see it and that is why it accidentally hit him in the nuts. He was not hurt for what it's worth and he was also wearing a cup that provided him the extra protection he didn't even know he would need that evening. I know he was wearing a cup because it was on the outside of his pants...and it was bright orange/red.

No matter...he was pissed! He tried to brain me with the 3/4 length cane he was holding but I was just out of reach. Haha Mr. Cooper. :)

My reason for mentioning these things is that I think I'm going to retire these two stories. Even as I've probably only told the Alice story 6 times and the Tara story twice They really fall under the category of you had to be there plus I don't think anybody believes they happened so why waste the breath? So I think this blog is going to be the retirement home for stories I don't want to tell anymore. A story is like a secret...the mischief is in the telling so this way I can get the story out of my head and into the great information stream. If I ever need it I suppose it should be here but I've go to do some spring cleaning of my noggin. I had a trippy experience last week when I was working out and a flood of convoluted memory information tried to present itself from the old storage file cabinets to the inbox and there was a transfer glitch. :(

I've got an uneasy feeling about what's whirling around in my head trying to get out but I'm sure that Alice Coopers package and Tara Lipinski's panties have nothing whatsoever to do with it...... My brain is probably stalling. In fact I know it's stalling. Makes me nervous that something wicked this way comes.

With any luck it will just pass, fingers crossed.

The netti pot

Damn you somewhat effective piece of addictive witchcraft!!

The back story is that I got a very good yoga DVD and the instructor is very insistent that for his class you only breath through your nose. I didn't realize how bothersome my allergy/sinus problems were until I got upside down and tried to breath exclusively through my nose....I lasted about 5 seconds just like Christoper Hitchens when he had himself water boarded. :o

Because I hate to take medicine and I've known about the netti pot I did a little searching and found that people tout it as a fantastic miracle cure. Tons of stories about people coming off of medications they were taking for years and years...really impressive results. So I picked one up and started testing...

Initially it was frustrating and uncomfortable. Nothing like watching youtube vids of people from 7-70 making something that looks easy - look easy and then almost gagging yourself silly with eyes watering and salty mucus water going down your throat. It was pitiful. Eventually I figured it out but there are still some issues for me.

When I pour into my left nostril the first 3 seconds trigger a distinct sensory memory of drowning. I went under water twice as a kid and would not be typing today had somebody pulled me out both times. I think in that moment when your lungs finally have to breath and you take in water that is a very specific felling and it gets cataloged in your brain. The first 3 seconds of the netti and I tell you...my brain says "you are about to die". Luckily I can reason that out but it happens none the less. And it's embarrassing, cuz again kids form 7-70 are laughing it up.

Anyway the good news is that the netti does clear out the nasal passages and it is having a clearing effect of higher portions of the sinuses and there is all manner of popping in my ears caused by what I think is a venturi effect. So breathing by nose is notably improved.

Bad news: breathing is like drugs that make you feel good. If a little is good more is great! So here I am hitting the netti sometimes a couple few times a day trying to get maximum breathing so I can be superhuman... but no. It clears the lower portion of the sinuses but it's not exactly a miraculous amount and the section under my eyes over to my temples is laughing it's ass off..it is humored that I'd attempt to slay it with mildly salty water.

So it's mixed results. Mixed but I am addicted to this stupid process now even if it is less effective than I wanted, only a partial cure, and every day I have to poke a mental wound and feel a second or two of terror over it. It does help me breath better and it is clearing out portions of my sinus cavity so that it better than nothing.

I'm glad for what it does but I hate this thing. :-

Edit - 2 year olds laugh it's so easy.

1,003 shots of espresso

1,003 shots or espresso or life imitating art….latte art.

A long post….. and possibly a coffee/life connection that non coffee geeks might find wacky but here it is anyway.

As we enjoyed the last 3 shots of espresso at my buddy Shaun's house in Sugar Land, TX last week there was a team of movers packing up his life in the background for his move back to Canada. The snowy, snowy tundra impacted cold...COLD, bitterly cold (landscape dotted with igloos cold) Canada. ;)

As they movers packed we did the math and over the last 2 years we had enjoyed over 1,000 shots in that kitchen (each) and then it was the final 3 before they packed up the espresso machine and taped the lid on the box closing the book on the team Sugar Land espresso experience.

As we talked and the reality came to light that we were drinking our last coffee together the coffee didn’t really matter anymore for 2 reasons:

1) Neither one of us considers coffee something that can be locked down or captured in any one spot. Coffee is always changing from the second you roast it until the second it’s gone minor and major things are happening that are taking it along it’s evolution and the ebb/flow is the journey…taking what it gives and continuing down the path is the only way to truly accept coffee and increase your chances of enjoying it on on higher levels.

2) Over 1,000 cups of coffee you sort of get to know somebody. There are more than a few words spoken and conversations had along that time. I think we spent time talking on average 5 days per week in person and sent harassing texts/emails to each other just about every day. We shared family b-days together, a few BBQ’s, one crazy whirlwind blitzkrieging trip to the windy city for a live UFC event Shaun dragged/forced me to go on. ;)
Some random times at a noodle house or pizza and beers at the brew pub..those types of things. My family watched his family grow as the boys got older, bigger, and more entertaining each day. We became really good friends.

So as the coffee left the room #1 above left me in a fine place even knowing that some days we had truly WORLD class espresso in that kitchen. We had so many outstanding shots that outstanding was just normal. We had some shots that were above outstanding and a few that were what I think of now as shots of a lifetime. They were that good and you would think a coffee fanatic would be upset about that going away but because I am in for the ride and journey of coffee it didn’t bother me much that a new chapter was ahead. What bothered me was that #2 above was undergoing some significant changes…bringing me to my point.

I think now that life might be interesting to look at as coffee… if anybody reads this that is not a coffee person try to hold your eye rolling for 2 seconds and see if it makes sense anyway.

We knew from the day that the Taylor’s got here they would only be in town for a couple years. Why then was it such a bummer to see them go? Immediately the thing that came to mind is how we should have dome more BBQ’s, more get togethers, and made better use of the “friend time” available. Next thoughts were about future events that would not be possible and that part really blows. In life it’s like we want to keep trying to capture things and lock them down but in reality it is like the coffee. Life is consistently changing from the moment we are born. If we could somehow embrace (more fully) the times we have in the moment and as things change we understood (more fully) that change is just change. Something different is next and something different after that and the next really interesting “cup” is around the corner form that. In many ways you can’t get to the next great points if you don’t take the winding path. All you can do if you resist is:

Stay home
Fight change and remain stagnant
Drink Folgers forever
Live life in a fishbowl
Convince yourself that xyz is “the best blend” of coffee
Convince yourself there is a “the best” of anything actually.

If change in coffee is the path to new experiences in the cup life looks a lot like that to me right now…

2 years ago Angie and I were not considering a vacation to Canada and we were unaware of the natural wonders that igloo dotted ice ball held. ;) Now we will plan that trip as our next vacation.

In order to travel to Canada we will need passports….getting passports will make us consider other places we can suddenly travel that we had never considered. There are 10 trips inside the US I wanted to do and if things had not worked out the way they did we would probably have done those trips and not ever considered Canada.

Am I saying Canada “better” than the other trips we might have done? Pay attention to the above… :- Who knows and it isn’t the point.


Good luck the Shaun, Doreen, Evan, and Keegan as you roadtrip across the US back up into the great white north….we need your address when you settle in and we will be up to visit (at a time when the snowdrifts have melted).

The push to Bierstadt

This is the final 3 months (approx) to the lead up training for this years 14er attempt. I considered a lot of things in selecting Bierstadt this time and the most important are:

I am only considering class I or II climbs before I get more experience/training.
I don't want to put myself in a position to make safety decisions at altitude where pride and ego are involved. I'll decide before hitting the trail that a class III route is beyond my capability right now rather than think at 13,700 "If I can just pass this one tough section I might be able to make it". I'm not ready for technical passes yet.

After the shelf road last year :O I wanted a trailhead with 2WD access. Our next vehicle will be a 4WD jeep or Land Cruiser...something like that and tougher access trailheads will be easier to access. I didn't love having to go back on the shelf road after Handies when we could have taken a serious short cut if we only had a proper of road mountain vehicle. 2WD access this time. :(

Angie is going to take a crack at bagging her first 14er peak and Bierstadt offers something that others might not. Not far from the trail head most of the route is visible to you straight to the summit. I think that will be a big psychological advantage to see everything ahead of you have the ability to make constant evaluations/calculations.

Bierstadt is a 7 mile round trip hike (plus some extra if you hike down and back up to gain an additional 200' elevation) and I will be doing that...not sure if Angie will bother or not but I'm doing it to make sure I have the official 3,000 elevation gain. It's probably a minor detail really....but I'm doing it. ;)

Training shifted into (OMG, THERE IS ONLY 12 WEEKS LEFT TO GET READY) mode yesterday and I the focus from here until the trailhead is going to be walking, stair climbing, walking with a pack, stair climbing more, walking some 9mile and 14 mile hikes, more stairs, and more walking with a double weight (50#) pack. I will try to mix in some core and upper body when I can but time is short now and I will be more prepared this time because I know all too well how hard it is to show up under trained.

Bierstadt by all accounts is a little "easier" than Handies and I will be better trained, more prepared, and will execute my climb 10X's smarter than I did to bag Handies so I think it's going to be a fun day on the mountain when we hit it barring the one thing we never get to control the weather. I want to allow a back up day in the itinerary in case the weather is bad so that we have a second shot if needed.

Bierstdat will be my 2nd 14er and turning the corner to the heavy training is bringing the excitement now. In addition to training I've started planning the nutrition, water options, I will be getting a new pair of shoes soon, we will start going over gear and making lists now... It shifts from the future to the now. Big fun!

Big fun!

Drinking Kopi Luwak

Yep....

I'm sitting here drinking the legendary Kopi Luwak as I type.

Most people are probably aware of this bean and think of it in the terms Angie described it... "that poop coffee".

The Civet Cat (a distant relative of the Mongoose) eats ripe coffee cherries and passes the coffee beans undigested. They say undigested anyway but this coffee has a slightly unusual look when green so the process has done something to the beans for sure and I suppose the stomach acids have etched the beans or something but anyway...

The bean roasted up great and there were no bad odors wafting around and if anything the roast was uneventful. Completed roast was slightly mottled but no biggie.

After 50 hours rest my first taste....

Dry aroma: different! Mostly cherry is what I get but it's like cherry pit more than fruit. My descriptors are what they are and often they don't even make sense to me why they come out like they do, I just don't argue as I have learned to trust them so... dry aroma cherry pit.

Wet aroma: interesting....leather rope. Really tasty smelling leather rope for sure and if you are not a coffee person just ignore that and pretend I said very dark chocolate. :)

First bit into cupping spoon: wild!! it has an almost golden look to it. A golden tea sheen of sorts in the spoon...trippy. Slurp.... it's good! Man am I happy that it's good.

First few moments with the cup: A well bodied cup doing everything I would figure from a Sumatra/Indo cup but with an unusual acidity. It's making the roof of my mouth a little tingly. This is a pleasant cup.

Mid cup: Great body, earthy, and that acidity thing is really wild...still tingling. I am trying to give attention to the journey this bean took to get to me. Not just the digestive part but it's just been a really long journey for such a limited supply to get from a coffee cherry that caught the Civet's eye a zillion miles away to my cup in Sugar Land, Texas. Amazing really.

As the cup cools I am coming back to that leather rope vibe and it is starting to dominate along with some decent chocolaty notes and the acidity is either facing or I just can't pick it out anymore from the deep body of this cup.

Final thoughts: I feel lucky to have the opportunity to sample this legendary coffee. It is rare, expensive, often counterfeit, and probably just as often poorly prepared. Watching this bean go from green to my cup I know it was as close to perfect as an be expected. I look forward to trying this bean as espresso, single origin and blended, French Press, AeroPress, Iced, and vac pot to experience it as fully as possible while it is here. I just tasted the last sip of this rare bean and I did note that acidity again but either muted now or I can't grasp it anymore I just can't tell.

And that is all for now.....Kopi Luwak...wow, that was epic man....simply epic!

Ankle crank

I was messing around with some Parkour yesterday and now my ankle hurts. ;(

To be fair to Parkour I was doing some ultra low speed pre-beginner Parkour.

As an aside, I thought people freak out when I do the unthinkable (put my kayak in the water at the parks) but they go into melt down mode when you start jumping up on rocks and maneuvering about park benches, trash bins, and brick decorative steps....they look nervous about it. Hahaha.

Anyway, I did not twist m ankle or have any awareness that there was a problem until 90 min after I was done frightening the neighborhood. I was making a cup of Chai tea and got hit with a pain out of nowhere....an injury pain not a sore pain. DAMN IT!!!

I can't dig on any leg injuries right now and my last shoulder injury lasted about 6 months and my last knee injury keeps me concerned still. I'm not sure it's 100%

I'm still walking on it just fine and only had 10min of limping so I might manage it ok. Guess I'll stick with core/kettle bell today, try to get the kayak on the water tomorrow, and save the stairs and 50# pack for later on in the week if my ankle repairs itself. Parkour, maybe in 4-6 weeks. :) Advil in the am, Fish oil in the afternoon, ZMA at night...see if I can turn it right around.

Injuries Suck

50#'s of love

I've been taking a 30#'ish pack with me on some of my short walks (approx 2 miles).

Today I decided to up the game a little bit and tossed my 50# sand bag into my big trail pack and hit it. It's a big honkin' multi-day pack so I'm sure it looked crazy (as usual for me) in my normal "suburban assault" mode. The uniform around here involves designer work out gear, blackberry, Ipod, and perhaps a little frufi dog or an off road baby stroller to push. Not me....I've got other plans. :)

Anyway, it was hard....hurt my neck holding up the weight after my legs and back just gave up an realized they were going to have to drag me around the lake. My neck was informed it was going to have to do more work than it is used to....neck objected strenuously. laying down on the ground 1 mile away form home didn't feel like an option I was going t take so neck had to get over it.

1/2 way around the lake I realized it was ON....I'm heading off for some unusual territory in the weeks ahead.

I'm trying to remember what weight pack I carried up Handies but it never felt heavy to me. It must have been around 20#'s or so. 20 is easy to carry man, you can't really feel it....I think I'm rambling.

It sure feels good tossing a 50# pack off your back.

On racing a Porsche

The set up

Era: sometime in the 80's.
Time: approx 3am.
Location: Detroit, MI 8 mile and Gratiot heading North.

A Porsche 911 Carrera pulls up beside me an invites a race. I am in a 71 Cutlass, Van Halen blasting from my ridiculously awesome speaker system....mullet just sitting there being a cool 80's mullet destined to be one silly hairstyle any second but in the moment it was cool....uhm, maybe you had to be there. :)

Anyway, the way it works is a car pulls up beside you, guns it a little and inches about 3" ahead of you and waits for your response. If you don't do anything when the light turns green he will peel out. You get to go back to doing nothing after calling him a jackass.

But if you pull up even 0.5" it's on.

I'm making the decision on what to do at the same time I am pulling up 1" ahead of him. I already know I'm beat by the way but it's not that easy. For one thing was that I was sitting in Detroit muscle....in Detroit and as such was obligated to to my best into a loosing proposition, it just had to be done. That and some other things...

Light turns green off we go. Long about 90 MPH I was pretty excited that I was able to hold his rear wheel At about 95 or so I started to catch him and when we got window to window he smiled a BIG smile at me, tipped his head a little and just like that POOF...he hit it and left me standing still like I was in a VW bug the whole time. He was just letting me buy into it a little is all.


Era: the present
Time 11:30 AM
Location in the kitchen of an endurance athlete athlete trainer/coach Shaun Taylor.

We are getting ready to get into the coffee of the day when he slides me a scrambled egg wrapped in a multi-grain tortilla. A few sprinkles of hot sauce and I am digging it because all I've eaten so far was a scoop of Whey protein and 4oz of milk. I have no idea where this is heading....

After 2 nice small milk espressi (is that right)? He goes for Vietnamese iced over some experimental double cream milk and as he slides one across the table to me he guns the engine and pulls the 911 Carrera a few inches ahead of me. "I'm going to work out in a little while you are welcome to come if you want". I have instant recognition but start trying to stall..when are you thinking about going I say and immediately it was pretty sad...I don't have a 71 Cutlass even right now, I am rocking a station wagon of some sort at best in this race....but high end supplements are coming off the shelf and when a dose of JP8 goes down the hatch my fate is sealed... help.

I could tell you the play by play but I won't. I developed a philosophy a while back when I was doing some seriously hard shit that if anybody wanted to see what it was about they would have to pay the price to see it first hand (just like I was doing) and so now this is my deal. Some things you have to do in order to know and everything else is a disservice to the doers of the stuff. The gist of it is we were doing things that required you to balance, stabilize, lift, move, twist, concentrate, and re-balance and stabilize the entire time or else you would fall down and bust your ass in a spectacular fashion.

So I tried to hold his back wheel as best I could but I know it was the Carrera all over again....damn fast cars. ;)

I'm not sure what the point of all this is other than to say that sometimes you have to get in a race even if you know you are outgunned. You have to get up to 95 MPH in Detroit blowing lights like you can't possibly get hit or pulled over in order to see that you won't. Sometimes you have to see the Porsche pull away with ease...you have to see it in real time because just knowing the Carerra is fast is too generic. You have to get in that race and get a taste of how fast it really is so that you can make informed decisions about future races. Maybe you work on your car a little and go driving a few weeks later at 3 AM to see if you can find him, or maybe you don't move next time...what do you do? You just can't know if you never take a race you knew you couldn't win before you ever took it.

20 something years ago I raced a guy in a Carrera that slowed down to let me keep up a little and show me what Detroit looks like at 95 MPH. Last weekend an athlete slowed down to let me play along a little (I like to pretend it was just a smidge) to see what that type of race looks like.

Thanks dudes!

Green

To my surprise my favorite smoothie so far is green.

I never expected this from a kid that only at corn growing up. Not exactly true because we ate plenty of things we had to "clean your plate before you can leave the table" but given my choices corn as about the only vegetable other than fried/mashed/salad-ed potatoes I would eat....oh and cole slaw..I did like that. Also my Austrian Grandmother made something with cucumbers sliced razor thin and soaked in a milky dressing for a long time that I absolutely loved (like all of her food) but nobody saved those recipes. :(

Anyway, green smoothie with a giant ball of raw spinach the size of a volleyball stuffed into the blender, water, blend, add an apple, banana, whey protein, ice, drizzle of agave nectar....it's a million times better than I thought it would/could be.

I realize not that going over different recipe ideas for blender smoothies is a waste of time because the long and short of it is that you can put anything in there. Anything at all you want of fruits, vegetables, additions like protein powder or almond butter..I'm going to try some 100% organic cacao with coconut later on....pumpkin is going into something... The idea is to take healthful foods and cram as many of them in as you can dream up and get a ridiculously nutrient dense meal or two out of it. I've got to do maybe 2 weeks or so of testing but it's downright freakish how much nutrition you can "power load" into your system like this. Peter at GCBC mentioned just using your God given teeth to chew with but I'm sure it would take some serious will power and grit to eat (by chewing) in a day what you can blend.

It's looking like a VERY useful tool to me right now and the spinach alone is unreal. You can consume a huge pile of spinach like this without having to use any salad dressing. You are adding fruits/vegetables and eliminating the less than great condiments that normally go on them at the same time.

It remains to be seen how long my interest in smoothies lasts but I think even if it tapers down to 1-2 per week it's still an awesome tool to have in my kit and I wish I would have done this sooner.

Cool stuff.

Blender Breakfast

I'm not sure why it took me so long to befriend the blender but after a few days of using it I think this thing ROCKS!!

This was my breakfast of 1 banana, handful of mixed berries like straw, blue, and rasp. :) some yogurt, whey protein powder,handful of oats, and about 2oz of milk.

It fits nicely in this glass and makes it very easy to eat this assortment of items.

While the new is on my blender I think I will make a few posts about blender foods as I explore beyond the breakfast smoothie category. I'm wondering about eating an entire day of things from the blender... What makes it interesting is how easy it is to literally "blend in" healthy foods that you otherwise have to find ways to incorporate. Like yellow squash. Last week we steamed up some yellow squash, zucchini and broccoli as a side dish. I like that but other than putting it in Soba noodles we normally don't eat it for finding places to put it. The blender takes care of that issue..Bzzzzzzzzt. :)

I'm going to explore some ideas and hopefully post up some breakfast, lunch , and dinners that I'll make and test out.

As for the above breakfast it was good. The strawberry seeds and oats give it a consistency/body that is pretty thick and fluffy.

I should have been doing this a long time ago!

The life long journey

It's coming to me slowly now exactly what's going on.

In order to gain an extra 100, 200, or however may pounds represents "seriously" overweight a lot of things have to happen. In order to loose all of that excess weight a lot of things have to happen as well and no matter how well prepared I think I am for the next stage(s)of this journey I keep finding out that I'm not ready to simply step up to the next challenge, kick it's ass, and move on to the next thing, simple as that.

It's effing hard! There have been some tough lessons to learn and all I can say right now is that I'm learning them in "real time" and I find that the one thing becoming more clear with everything I'm learning is that this is a life long process. It's going to be a life long process. It's long.....it's going to take a long time as in a really really long time that will encompass the rest of your life....like forever and ever amen type of long.

You can loose 100 pounds in 1-2 years and it counts for shit the next day if you go back to your old habits.

I've made permanent changes in my eating habits to the degree that I do not think it will be possible for me to gain back all the weight I have lost so far but even with that it all depends on me maintaining those changes....those things have to be permanent life long changes or else my old habits will return and in 1-2 years I'll be another 100#'s overweight again like none of this ever happened.

With that being said I'm feeling very aggravated with myself right now that I've allowed a general blase attitude to creep over me the last few months and the result has been a lack of progress towards my total goal of 185#'s. I have not forgotten my goal, I have not gone back to Burger King lunches and Ben &" Jerry's late night snacks but I have not been "ON IT" either. Result ---- Nothing much to be happy about right now other than I can report lifestyle changes are the saving grace of long term weight loss. I can't stress this enough that if I had fallen back to old eating habits over the last few months I would probably be crying right now and in really bad shape instead of just aggravated. In fact I'm super motivated right now just thinking about how unmotivated I've allowed myself to get. If I had fallen back to eating the way I did 2 years ago I'd have been able to pack on an astonishing amount of weight I'm sure and that would have had a MUCH worse mental affect that might have even derailed me altogether.

I'll say it again lifestyle changes are the saving grace of long term weight loss.

This is going to take the rest of your life.

Loosing 2 months to lazy stupidity is disappointing and humiliating but it isn't life threatening. Loosing your resolve because you were surviving on willpower and resorting back to destructive patterns (because you have not eliminated then from your life and replaced them with other options)IS life threatening.

Today I'm simply going to shake myself, make sure I'm awake, refocus on the task at hand, be VERY thankful I started this journey with a solid foundation of permanent changes and not a temporary "diet", and set in intermediary goal of making 205 by 4th of July and making my end goal weight of 185 by Dec 31st of this year.

It will mean that from start to finish it will take me just under 2 years to make my goal.

I'm blowing out any/every other goal on my list and re-focusing completely on the next phase.

205# by 7/4/09
185# by 12/31/09 Final goal weight reached.

Weigh ins will be starting back up soon once I get organized and more updates now that I will have lots of info to update.....


Now I'm off to start figuring out the most bad ass drink I can toast with on New Years when I'm weighing in at 185<. :)

FAST!

13 min. is pretty fast for this race.

I don't like how they start this race at all with the cattle rush but obviously I'm leaving here and going directly to Google search stair races in the US. :)

2,160 and other numbers..

Did you know that there are 2,160 individual steps in climbing 120 flights of stairs at my private gym?

Did you know that it takes 40 min. to climb 120 flights of stairs if you go at a steady and deliberate pace?

Of course not because nobody climbs 2,160 stairs consecutively but that is what I was doing last Sat. It all started innocently enough talking with my pal Shaun....but athlete trainer/types have a way turning things that start off innocently enough into something that is all trainer-ish and athlete-ified. Thanks Pal. ;)

So that is how my routine I had evolved to approx 800 steps that I was going to add about 100 steps to over the course of the next few weeks getting up to about 1,200 as my regular work out turned into in instant challenge to jump from sub 900 to over 2,000 damn near instantly... Like this old football thing right, "get out there and give 110%"

The best part of this exercise had less to do with doing it (the physical) and prepping for it as the plan was to go "as if"...as if it was a 14er to include pre-nutrition, the mental game, etc.. I sort of had no doubt that I was going to be able to do it I just wasn't sure how hard it would be and I wound up going into it with something like a siege mentality. OK, it's only some concrete stairs I know but now I think it's very VERY effective to take a task like this and attack it rather than just doing it. I could have done the exact same workout without the added pieces of the puzzle and it would not have been as effective....at least I would not have gotten as much out of it.

Cool stuff.