Tag: biking

What a Wonderful Morning!

Shirleyjdietz3 Comments

I’ve been home for two weeks in a row now which seems unusual to me. I’ve been riding my bike for exercise almost every day and have logged 40 miles this week – not a lot for an avid biker but for a late middle age woman, it’s not bad.  I have almost established a habit for my Saturday bike ride. My motto is “twice the distance at half the speed”. It makes for a relaxed and interesting ride since I plan to explore a bit or go somewhere different each time.

I live in a city that is full of mobile home parks and they are wonderful places to ride.  On the weekend, there is almost no traffic to worry about once you enter a mobile home park and when you do meet someone they most likely are walking or riding in a golf cart, they wave.  Saturday rides are not just for exercise, they are for calming the mind, stirring curiosity, and enjoying the sunshine and breeze (when you ride a bike there is always a breeze…). Come with me.

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The traffic was intense on this street…

There are a thousand ways to do pretty much the same type of housing. If you don’t believe that, you need to ride through a mobile home park to convince yourself it is true. I’m not a big fan of mobile homes to live in myself, but I love to look at them, at their porches, their landscaping, their ramps, their weird colors, roof lines, windows. The mystery house of the morning was the usual basic shape but the street side had only a garage door. Both other visible sides had no entryways. What’s with that? There is a reason hermits don’t go to mhp’s to live, mainly that they are very social places and people live to decorate their entrances with pink flamingoes, flags, name signs and plants. But no visible entrance? I couldn’t figure this one out.

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On to the next attraction – the champion camphor tree. Pictures do not do justice to its hugeness. Nature always inspires me and I am in awe looking at this tree. The sign explains.

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Bradenton was on national news lately with heavy rains that flooded the area. This next picture shows a drainage ditch that filled to overflowing and did flood the parks that I rode through.

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Can you imagine water rising to cover the road? It did.

Commonly there is a fence of some kind around each park, but if you know where to find them, there may be gates or walkways connecting one to the other.  I crossed a shaded wood bridge over the ditch to the next park.

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Doesn’t it invite exploration?

Without having to cross any major roads or deal with busy traffic, I finally made my way through a small golf course to this destination. I love shakes…

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One hour, ten miles – it was a great ride. Getting out and doing something active, just for the fun of it, is important for people of any age. I find it is essential for me. It made a wonderful morning, on a wonderful day.

Do you sense this need? What do you do that meets it? I’d like to know.

 

 

Well, Imagine That!

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It is cold chilly here in Florida today. We get a few days like this every year and although I like to be able to go outside without breaking into a sweat, I often use the temperature drop as an excuse to stay inside more.  But as I’ve written, I’ve been riding my bike lately and have actually been knitting a hat to keep my ears warm during my morning adventures.  I’m going out, cold weather or not.  I am encouraged and inspired by a blogger I’ve started following at www.bikelikecrazy.com.  My five miles in the sunshine doesn’t measure up to her daily 10 mile commute to work in snow and ice (yes, she does that).

I’m also thinking a lot about my imagination, which needs exercise as much as my body does.  It is a good thing to be totally present in the here and now, which is where I feel I have been for quite a long time.  Doing life, dealing with its circumstances and spending time with the people accessible to me, has been my focus.  Writing about life takes time and imagination, and has not been my focus.  I haven’t been writing.  The few things I’ve cranked out have been a struggle and I’ve not gotten much satisfaction from them.  I’ve told myself that this is probably a stage to be expected.  I should not be upset with it, but I should expect it to pass.

So, in my imagination I am writing a book, a very satisfying book.  It begins with people living ordinary lives, but with a sense of calling or higher purpose.  This sense carries them through difficulties of all kinds, and grief unspeakable at times.  This sense frames their everyday activities in a meaningful way.  It makes them examine every relationship with others with a keen eye as to what might be happening. The enduring quality of this “sense” means it is picked up by their children, and their children’s children.

Some of this I do not have to imagine because it is contained in the diaries and personal letters of my ancestors.  I am thankful for their attention to recording what they experienced. The things they have written have made a difference to me – one person, many generations later.  The thought that one person in the future might be encouraged by something I write is reason enough for me to be diligent.  My imaginative effort does not have to include fame, book deals and sequels in order for me to want to do the work.  However, it also doesn’t hurt to imagine those things since they are pretty safe there and it gives me practice not fearing them.

Someone in times past was inspired to write “now to the one who can do infinitely more than all we can ask or imagine according to the power that is working among us”.  I think that inspiration came from a God who wanted us to imagine not just mediocre, impoverished imaginings, but big, creative and challenging ones.  Practice in doing that is what I need, and a good time to do it is while I’m on my bike.

I’m putting on my hat and getting to it. WIN_20160207_120517

On Riding a Bike

Shirleyjdietz4 Comments

When do I really get serious about taking care of my body?  I’m asking the question because I really don’t know.  So many years have gone by when other things came first on my list.  There was only so much time and other things were urgent.  And didn’t I get enough activity in the course of daily living? I wasn’t a couch potato.  I lifted, pushed and pulled, walked and ran and stood up most of the time.  I had a young body and it took care of itself (because it had to).

Time has changed a few things.  Specifically, my blood pressure is higher and I think it’s having effects on other systems, like my vision.  I don’t want to start medication and deal with all those side effects, and of course, there’s the problem of my hating to swallow pills which I avoid by never remembering to take them. But I can exercise. Walking would have been my first choice but after feeling a few twinges of pain in my right knee, I’ve switched to riding my cheapo bike.

Because I am on the way to being more serious about exercise (I’m not totally there yet…) I give the bike ride a priority place in my “somewhat retired” daily schedule.  Morning, right after the gate to the nearby mobile home park opens for the day, I strap on my fanny pack, turn on the health app on my phone and get going.  It’s a fairly safe place to bike a large loop and not surprisingly, I am one of the fastest things moving on the road.

Biking in the mobile home park reinforces my desire to take care of myself seriously.  There are lots of people there who are trying to be active.  Many of them have been “not serious” longer than I have judging by the fact that their exercise consists of riding to get coffee and donuts at the clubhouse in their golf carts. The other bikers I see are usually stationary, talking to their neighbors.  Lots of people are walking but it’s the kind of walking where you can hold hands with your walking partner and take long looks at scenery.  And today I saw an elderly woman, probably the most serious exerciser I’ve seen there in a long time, who could barely stand upright and had a decided list to the right.  But she was moving as best she could.  Every time I think, “get serious now or this is the next version of you”.

I’ve had people (the husband) say “well, you’re not getting much exercise riding a bike here in Florida where it’s flat”.  But they are wrong.  First of all, it’s not flat.  I know there must be some kind of incline when I ride east.  I imagine there might be one riding north as well (because north is “up” on the map). And then there is wind resistance.  Pushing air is exercise and don’t let anyone tell you differently.  It’s true that wheels make moving easier but they don’t move by themselves – as evidenced by the husband’s bike which has not moved an inch in months.  I push hard and go fast and I feel the burn.

Which brings me to the part where I challenge myself, to keep it interesting.  My health app SHealth, Shea for short, is my co-conspirator in getting serious about my health.  In fact, she nags me to the point of irritation.  I’m always being asked if I want to record my sleep, or add a meal.  And she gets downright bossy when it comes to exercise.

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Yeah, just be more active yourself!

Shea gets on the job when I’m biking and talks me through the whole painful process, starting with a little five second countdown.  At each mile she announces my progress and tells me how long I have to keep going to reach my goal, which is five miles, at my present speed.  Behind the scenes she is mapping where I’ve gone and the places where I’ve gone the fastest.  And in a world where I will take any little bit of encouragement I can get, I love hearing her sweet voice at the start of the last half mile “Almost there – you can do it.”

Today I broke a speed record with my fastest ever average of 10.6 mph.  I found out that several of my gears actually work and I really booked it (going west, remember the incline) which brought it up, along with the fact that I didn’t have to wait 5 minutes to cross the highway before getting to the gate. If I get much faster I’ll have to leave the park where the limit is 15 mph.

I sweat when I bike so don’t tell me it’s not a workout, and do encourage me to keep it up.  It only takes half an hour and I’m breathing hard the whole time.  It’s better than a pill for my blood pressure – certainly doesn’t have as long a list of adverse effects – and it does make me feel a little more serious about taking care of myself.  (But it doesn’t mean I’m not looking for a used golf cart. Those things are handy.)

 

Another Wild Ride

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I left for work this morning prepared to hitch a ride north with my employer, to go to Gainesville for the weekend to get my car back. “Being prepared” consisted of having a stuffed backpack. However, early on I began to feel that it was just too soon for me to be rushing off again for another long weekend. Truth is I felt guilty that the husband had no clean socks or underwear and I didn’t even have any laundry soap in the house to remedy the situation. Things needed to be done. I needed to stay home at least another 24 hours. Lucky I had the bike with me, huh?

So this time I rode the bike with a backpack on – makes a bit of difference in balance. All the way across the bridge I kept thinking about falling over in a freak accident and tumbling over the rather low railing into the pass below and being sucked out to sea in a rip tide. (been watching too much Anne of Green Gables). As before, I just barely made it to the bus in time.

I think the husband is going to make me take the bike back. Do pawn shops take things back? I don’t know.  I felt kind of bike-stupid going into this whole thing but (my excuses – next) that feeling has only been magnified times over.  As I mentioned in the previous post I wanted something cheap that rolled and that is pretty much all I got. Now that I have had time to closely examine this bike I realize that in order for brakes and gears to work there have to be cables coming from them, attached to the mechanics below.

Gear shift on left moves easily (because it has no cable) Gear shift on right doesn’t move (rusted ).

Why did I not see these missing cables? Because they were missing? Again, I don’t know. I also think the frame is too light for me and perhaps I should not have valued flexibility over stability. Stability is much appreciated when vehicles are a mear 24 inches off your shoulder and blowing past at 50 miles per hour. Made me miss my car.

Anyway, all the above, plus having forgotten my sunglasses and having to squint for an hour and a half, created the perfect recipe for a headache which I’ve been trying to get rid of the rest of the afternoon. Live and learn, right?

Adventures on a Bike

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I’m speaking of the kind of bike that one pedals with their own power. I decided I needed one because the county buses have a cool bike rack in the front. With a bus AND a bike I can get anywhere I need to go within a reasonable time, or so it would seem.

The first adventure was not actually on the bike, but rather buying the bike. I looked on Craigslist and could have spent all day calling people and seeing the one bike they had for sale but, I saw a bunch of bikes advertised by a pawn shop all in one place. Somehow that made sense. And the shop was only about a mile away, even better.  The bikes didn’t look nearly as good in person as they did in the pictures but I finally found one that fit my parameters. It looked light enough to lift onto the rack on the bus. It had brakes.  It wasn’t ridiculously hard to mount. That was about it, oh, and it was cheap. I bought it. The salesman was kind of surprised.

Today, the husband took me and my bike in his truck and dropped us off at work. (My car is presently out of town visiting a relative.) When I finished my daily duties it was nearly 1 pm giving me almost 10 minutes to get to the bus stop. No dallying allowed – I pedalled as fast as I could manage and just barely made it. I am not in shape for racing 2 miles, including up a Florida hill (bridge) so I’m just saying I was mighty glad to sit in a cool bus and catch my breath. I did good putting my bike on the rack and I watched to make sure no one took it off, hoping to steal it. That really does happen sometimes.

The next thing I learned was that when you disembark the bus you must remember to put the bike rack back up if you have the last bike on it. If you forget the driver will honk at you – a bit of an adrenalin rush there.  I had a choice of routes to finish the trip home. One was short and had no sidewalk and sandy shoulders on the road. The other was sidewalk all the way but longer. I chose that one, partly because I had noticed a strange wobble in my front tire and didn’t want to be close to traffic in case I had a “fall over”.  The long way became even longer as I tried to cut through a couple trailer parks that had no cut-throughs. The wind was blowing briskly in which ever way was opposite the way I was going. I don’t think my bike has any gears that make pedalling easier.  It has levers and one of them moves but nothing gets easier.  I was getting seriously tired and didn’t know if the bike was going to make it – kind of like riding a dying horse. But I did get home, right befoe a rain shower, thank you Lord.

I may have to ride the bike again tomorrow. I’m not sure I’m looking forward to that.