Ruth is 92 years old. Her husband and two of her sons are dead. She lives in a cottage her family built in the 1930s -- if not earlier -- on the shore of Lake Wentworth. She stacks her own firewood and shovels her own roof. All the way through her 70s, if you saw her from behind, walking down the sidewalk in her tennis dress, you'd take a minute to admire the view.
Great laugh seeing young strangers in town speed up a bit to pass her and see her face. She does not pretend to be young, beyond an excusable use of hair coloring. Wrinkles to the contrary, she has somehow managed to make that work.
At 92 she shows the miles now. She's fought off Lyme disease, cancer, and been treated for rabies after an animal bite. I joke that other people say, "oh no, I got an illness!" Illness says, "Oh no! I got Ruth!"
She's not one of those annoying sunshine-pumpers who are just so dang positive about everything that you need a nice salty shot of tequila after being around them. She just doesn't want to quit. She gets out and about. And, until some more medical challenges got in the way, she rode her bike nearly every day.
When she tried to resume riding, she discovered she could no longer lift her leg high enough to get over the dropped bar of her 1995 Univega step-through hybrid. She had had her bike rack modified several times as she had more and more difficulty lifting the bike onto it to drive to safe venues for an older rider, but now she couldn't get on the bike, even though she could still get the bike on the car.
She started getting depressed. She grumbled about her physical infirmities. We were used to hearing about her various mishaps, but now she talked of little else.
We hunted around for quite a while to find a new, deep step-through model that weighed no more than her old bike. Then we did, so she was ready to go again.
But she wasn't. The position on casual bikes these days is way more upright than on her old bike. We had to figure out one problem after another. Each time we though we had it nailed, she came back again looking sad.
With every setback she seemed more discouraged. She talked about how old she is and how many friends she's outlived and all the things that are wrong with her, not in a raspy, carping way, but in a weary litany of hopelessness.
We changed the stem to get the bars lower and closer to her. We cut the
seat post so she could get the seat lower until she got used to things.
Then the seat itself had such a wide and sudden flare that it shoved her
forward of the pedals. I switched her old seat over to the new bike. And we had to modify her car rack some more to fit the new frame.
I forget the last rabbit I pulled out of the hat, but she came back from that test ride with a tentative smile. Twice more she went out to test further adjustments, each time returning with a bigger smile and more of the old Ruthie vigor.
The bicycle is a machine for rejuvenation. The change in her as she realized she could ride again was astonishing, even as it confirmed my belief. Old Bill, cancer stricken and knowing he was dying, had said, "whatever else happens that day, you get on the machine." No one knows how long Ruth will last. All we know is that the time has been made brighter by getting back on her bike.
Showing posts with label fitness and attitude adjustment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fitness and attitude adjustment. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Springing into more winter
Woke up to a dazzling January morning today. A roaring wind raked the treetops beneath an ice blue sky. The temperature was about 10 degrees F.
It's barely cracked 20 now.
With good cover on the trails and daylight opportunities to use them, I've been charging out on the skating skis to take advantage of fast, granular snow. Cross -country skiing is one-stop shopping for a full body workout. I'm a big fan of convenience. And it's one of the few compensations for my bad life choices. Hopefully, regular exercise will help me take care of myself in my impoverished old age and leave me with enough energy to crawl off into the wilderness when the time comes.
Humans are the only life form that "retires."
Today felt good. I do want to get back to bike commuting, but as long as conditions favor skiing and seriously crimp my commuting route I'll just keep flailing on the trails. When I get on the bike my triceps are going to feel like a couple of country hams. It's pretty funny.
I just can't see wasting conditions like this on indoor training equipment or a winter-adapted bike.
The first day of spring is always a joke around here. The forecast for Friday does show us warming up to 33, but then we drop into the twenties again. Winter ends when it feels like it. In a week or two, heroic outdoor rides will look more tempting.
It's barely cracked 20 now.
With good cover on the trails and daylight opportunities to use them, I've been charging out on the skating skis to take advantage of fast, granular snow. Cross -country skiing is one-stop shopping for a full body workout. I'm a big fan of convenience. And it's one of the few compensations for my bad life choices. Hopefully, regular exercise will help me take care of myself in my impoverished old age and leave me with enough energy to crawl off into the wilderness when the time comes.
Humans are the only life form that "retires."
Today felt good. I do want to get back to bike commuting, but as long as conditions favor skiing and seriously crimp my commuting route I'll just keep flailing on the trails. When I get on the bike my triceps are going to feel like a couple of country hams. It's pretty funny.
I just can't see wasting conditions like this on indoor training equipment or a winter-adapted bike.
The first day of spring is always a joke around here. The forecast for Friday does show us warming up to 33, but then we drop into the twenties again. Winter ends when it feels like it. In a week or two, heroic outdoor rides will look more tempting.
Friday, January 16, 2015
Exercise is a drug
This is not news to a lot of you: exercise acts like an antidepressant and stress reliever. Those of us who have experimented with a variety of forms of self medication will have figured out that exercise needs to be managed like a drug.
Setting aside the addictive substances famous for monopolizing users' lives, your lifestyle enhancers, legal and illegal, all create a cushion effect in which the user requires more of whatever it is to reach the desired level of whatever you're going for, whether it's mellow relaxation or euphoric energy.
Coincidentally, exercise can provide both of those, whereas most mere substances specialize in one part of the energy spectrum. But I digress.
The experienced user will know that occasional periods of abstinence improve the effect of "the stuff" when its use is resumed. In training we call these abstinence periods "rest days." Yep. You're just managing your habit so you get more high on less stuff. At the same time, hard-core exercisers may be using other substances to improve their performance, particularly if they've been sucked into the competitive side. That complicates their equation, but it need not complicate yours. Racing is the best way to turn any fun activity into a neurosis. A little is educational. A lot can make you delusional.
When I first took up the 30-mile commuting day I would ride 50-80 at least one day a week and try to mix up the pace a bit on other days to make 30 seem shorter. I don't remember when I ate and slept. I know I did. I had been a racer, so devotion to distance seemed normal. If you want to ride more, ride more.
When long and longer rides don't fit the schedule, you have to shorten some days. The Schedule has a way of eating away riding time. As long as the habitual exerciser maintains the basal level necessary to function, the mind and body absorb the fluctuations. And when circumstances taper riding down to zero, the gradual process takes care of detox and withdrawal. Or so it seems.
Schedule and circumstances brought me to zero a month and a half ago. Once you reach zero it's really easy to go a day at a time through weeks and weeks. The thing that got me into transportation cycling in the first place was the knowledge that if you don't put exertion right in front of yourself, between you and whatever you want next, you'll probably walk past it. Or more likely drive past it.
Have you ever been so completely exhausted that you could feel the energy you get from every breath and feel it leave you with every exhalation? You will only reach that point if you have to stay awake for some compelling reason. In my case it was usually a road trip. Back when gas was cheap and hotel rooms were dear, and I had no money anyway, I would drive straight through to wherever I was going, whether it was four hours away or 24. If I absolutely couldn't go on I would pull off and sleep in the car for a while.
Hotel rooms are still expensive. I hate shelling out for what's basically just a bed and a bathroom I'll use for eight hours or less. I can sleep as well in my car as I can in some overpriced roadside fleabag. At least in my car I know who raised the fleas. But I digress again.
A body habituated to exercise, that has been deprived of it to where real deterioration has set in, will react to the faintest breath of it the way that exhausted driver does, rousing on the inhale and nodding off again on the exhale.
My ordinary activities do require a certain amount of exertion in the winter. I have to split some firewood nearly every day, and carry loads of it twice a day. When snow falls I have to shovel, sweep and snowblow it from the area around the house and garage. But that never creates the sustained rhythm that generates the surge of well-being you get from regular riding, running, walking or cross-country skiing.
On Thursday I had a Dutch three-speed on the stand. I was running the Sachs Torpedo hub through its gears and laughing over the name "Sachs Torpedo." Wanna see my Sachs Torpedo? It does not provide a handy adjustment window like a Sturmey Archer or Shimano hub. You have to go by more subtle indicators. Sheldon Brown and Sutherland's were my guide.
Because the parking lot was finally clear and the weather was reasonably mild, I could take the bike out for a test ride. When I muckled onto it to left it down from the stand, the erector muscles on either side of my spine clamped down in a spasm. The wages of inactivity. I set the bike down without dropping it and dropped into a couple of stretches to relax the knots. Once the pain settled down to a dull ache and spread across my whole back I carried the bike down to do the test ride. When I came back in I ran through the warmup exercises from a tai chi class I took years ago. I don't remember anything else, but the warmup set loosens up arms, back and shoulders really well.
At home that night I lay on the living room floor to do some deeper stretches. I used to stretch a lot. While no one would be impressed with my contortions compared to a real professional human pretzel, I did have pretty good flexibility. Not anymore. But I did manage to roll and unroll my spine a few times and then run through another set of tai chi warmups. The feeling afterward compared closely to the way I would feel after a much more vigorous workout and longer stretching session back when I did those several times a week instead of a few times a year.
A body that had never exercised, or never been pushed to the high-intensity dilettante level that I used to maintain would not have gotten the same bounce. One thing you learn about getting high is to recognize the symptoms of being high.
A little does not go a long way. The lift is palpable, but brief, barely longer than the lift of a single breath in that deep exhaustion I talked about. If I don't get some sort of routine going I will fall further and further into the pit of lard, lethargy and despair that is modern industrialized life. Enough time passes and even the hack athlete forgets what power lies within. Even longer and the power itself is essentially gone. We all lose it eventually, but you can give it up much sooner.
Setting aside the addictive substances famous for monopolizing users' lives, your lifestyle enhancers, legal and illegal, all create a cushion effect in which the user requires more of whatever it is to reach the desired level of whatever you're going for, whether it's mellow relaxation or euphoric energy.
Coincidentally, exercise can provide both of those, whereas most mere substances specialize in one part of the energy spectrum. But I digress.
The experienced user will know that occasional periods of abstinence improve the effect of "the stuff" when its use is resumed. In training we call these abstinence periods "rest days." Yep. You're just managing your habit so you get more high on less stuff. At the same time, hard-core exercisers may be using other substances to improve their performance, particularly if they've been sucked into the competitive side. That complicates their equation, but it need not complicate yours. Racing is the best way to turn any fun activity into a neurosis. A little is educational. A lot can make you delusional.
When I first took up the 30-mile commuting day I would ride 50-80 at least one day a week and try to mix up the pace a bit on other days to make 30 seem shorter. I don't remember when I ate and slept. I know I did. I had been a racer, so devotion to distance seemed normal. If you want to ride more, ride more.
When long and longer rides don't fit the schedule, you have to shorten some days. The Schedule has a way of eating away riding time. As long as the habitual exerciser maintains the basal level necessary to function, the mind and body absorb the fluctuations. And when circumstances taper riding down to zero, the gradual process takes care of detox and withdrawal. Or so it seems.
Schedule and circumstances brought me to zero a month and a half ago. Once you reach zero it's really easy to go a day at a time through weeks and weeks. The thing that got me into transportation cycling in the first place was the knowledge that if you don't put exertion right in front of yourself, between you and whatever you want next, you'll probably walk past it. Or more likely drive past it.
Have you ever been so completely exhausted that you could feel the energy you get from every breath and feel it leave you with every exhalation? You will only reach that point if you have to stay awake for some compelling reason. In my case it was usually a road trip. Back when gas was cheap and hotel rooms were dear, and I had no money anyway, I would drive straight through to wherever I was going, whether it was four hours away or 24. If I absolutely couldn't go on I would pull off and sleep in the car for a while.
Hotel rooms are still expensive. I hate shelling out for what's basically just a bed and a bathroom I'll use for eight hours or less. I can sleep as well in my car as I can in some overpriced roadside fleabag. At least in my car I know who raised the fleas. But I digress again.
A body habituated to exercise, that has been deprived of it to where real deterioration has set in, will react to the faintest breath of it the way that exhausted driver does, rousing on the inhale and nodding off again on the exhale.
My ordinary activities do require a certain amount of exertion in the winter. I have to split some firewood nearly every day, and carry loads of it twice a day. When snow falls I have to shovel, sweep and snowblow it from the area around the house and garage. But that never creates the sustained rhythm that generates the surge of well-being you get from regular riding, running, walking or cross-country skiing.
On Thursday I had a Dutch three-speed on the stand. I was running the Sachs Torpedo hub through its gears and laughing over the name "Sachs Torpedo." Wanna see my Sachs Torpedo? It does not provide a handy adjustment window like a Sturmey Archer or Shimano hub. You have to go by more subtle indicators. Sheldon Brown and Sutherland's were my guide.
Because the parking lot was finally clear and the weather was reasonably mild, I could take the bike out for a test ride. When I muckled onto it to left it down from the stand, the erector muscles on either side of my spine clamped down in a spasm. The wages of inactivity. I set the bike down without dropping it and dropped into a couple of stretches to relax the knots. Once the pain settled down to a dull ache and spread across my whole back I carried the bike down to do the test ride. When I came back in I ran through the warmup exercises from a tai chi class I took years ago. I don't remember anything else, but the warmup set loosens up arms, back and shoulders really well.
At home that night I lay on the living room floor to do some deeper stretches. I used to stretch a lot. While no one would be impressed with my contortions compared to a real professional human pretzel, I did have pretty good flexibility. Not anymore. But I did manage to roll and unroll my spine a few times and then run through another set of tai chi warmups. The feeling afterward compared closely to the way I would feel after a much more vigorous workout and longer stretching session back when I did those several times a week instead of a few times a year.
A body that had never exercised, or never been pushed to the high-intensity dilettante level that I used to maintain would not have gotten the same bounce. One thing you learn about getting high is to recognize the symptoms of being high.
A little does not go a long way. The lift is palpable, but brief, barely longer than the lift of a single breath in that deep exhaustion I talked about. If I don't get some sort of routine going I will fall further and further into the pit of lard, lethargy and despair that is modern industrialized life. Enough time passes and even the hack athlete forgets what power lies within. Even longer and the power itself is essentially gone. We all lose it eventually, but you can give it up much sooner.
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Snippets of Effingham
On my days off I can spend the whole time hanging around my house if I don't make a point to get out. The cats need to go out and come in, laundry needs doing, little and large chores beckon. And a certain amount of time simply goes to sloth.
On Monday I used a trip to the post office as the basis for a ride. Yesterday I had to tell myself the ride itself was important.
The day was mild. I won't call it unseasonable, because I have hiked shirtless in November, and climbed ice two weeks later. It's just New England.
I threw on the helmet cam just for grins.
On Monday I used a trip to the post office as the basis for a ride. Yesterday I had to tell myself the ride itself was important.
The day was mild. I won't call it unseasonable, because I have hiked shirtless in November, and climbed ice two weeks later. It's just New England.
I threw on the helmet cam just for grins.
A lot of town looks like this.
This part goes across the tornado swath from 2008.
Here's a nice fast bit down to Route 153
Bustling downtown Center Effingham - also known as Lord's Hill - boasts the bandstand, the meeting house and several other historic structures.
The payoff for grinding your way up to Lord's Hill from the south is that you get to scream down this descent.
Not my personal best for this descent, but zippy. I know I should be more conservative, but once you hit a certain speed you might as well let it rip. A crash would already hurt a lot. So tuck and fly.
Route 153 levels right out after that. You pass through the Farm by the River. Say hi to the sheep.
And then you reach the river the farm is by: Ossipee River. I've watched the retaining wall along the road get lower and lower over the years.
After that it was just a short bumpy ride on the chip seal of Route 25 to get back to Green Mountain Road.
There was still time to let the cats play some more. Missions accomplished.
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