Monday,
November 27, 2017
Thanksgiving has come and gone
and tomorrow I will pay a visit to my urologist for my CAT scan to determine if
I have bleeding polyps or not. My goal
of averaging 20,000 steps a day for the month is still in play, though I managed
to get only 8,000 on Thanksgiving. Leaf
raking on Friday and Saturday at Mimi’s helped me make up most of the steps I’d
missed, though ten hours of it did leave my shoulder and elbows aching. Ahh…the beauties of getting old.
With temperatures heading for
the sixties over the next two days, I am hopeful of a bike ride or some other
serious workout. The CAT scan and
scoping may work to screw up that plan, but we will see. Otherwise, I need to pound out 23,000 steps
for the remainder of the month. My feet
are feeling the effort.
Tuesday,
November 21, 2017
“You’re supposed to be that
indestructible force in whom I can always be confident will never slow down. What’s going on with the blood in the urine
thing?”
My good friend Henry, a regular
reader of the blog, was appalled to find the chink in my armor. I explained the situation and assured him
that though I likely had some issue that would kill a mere mortal, I would
survive the storm with something akin to a Band-Aid.
I finally got a hold of the
doctor’s office and they quickly scheduled an appointment for me to see my
Urologist later in the day. I arrived at
that appointment and gave them the obligatory urine sample. They did not want to see the one I’d been
carting around since Sunday in the back of my car. What a waste of a perfectly good, and bloody,
urine sample.
Doctor Luria walked in the
office with an assistant and introduced himself.
“Have we seen each other
before?” he asked.
“The last time I saw you, you
were yanking a tube out of my penis and causing me pain that made me want to
hurl all over you…but no hard feelings, doc,” I replied.
He smiled and then asked me to
bend over and pull down my pants where upon he stuck his gloved finger where
the sun doesn’t shine and announced, “prostate is good.”
This man hates me.
“Did you have any pain while
passing the bloody urine,” he asked.
“Nope,” I said, assuming this
was a good thing.
“Okay…let’s order a CAT scan
and a scoping of the urinary tract,” he said to his assistant.
Clearly I’d pissed him off and
he was going to cause me more pain. I
countered…
“If I’d have said it hurt like
hell when I’d peed would you not have ordered those tests? Because I can change my answer right now…”
He explained that since I hadn’t
had any pain, that I likely hadn’t had a kidney stone and so he wanted to see
if I had some up there hiding and if I might have bleeding polyps, too.
“I know there are some leftover
kidney stones because you told me when you took out the last one. You said they might stay up there forever and
not cause me any problems. Let’s not go
back up in there and start them moving again,” I said, using all of my medical
courses and operating experience to convince him of the foolishness of his
plan.
Again, he smiled and ordered
the tests. He did not seem to value my
expert council in the least.
So…I’m scheduled for both tests
next week. I went home and hiked my
four-mile loop, reaching the last mile, which follows the Towpath, just as
Miggie called to say she was dropping her mother off and was heading home. It was a little after seven and I was walking
in the dark.
“How about I walk into
Peninsula and meet you at Fisher’s. It
is rib night, after all,” I said.
“You want to walk all the way
there in the dark? Won’t you be scared?”
she said.
I’d already told her how I’d
heard a lone coyote howling near the trail I’d been following along the mostly
deserted road I hiked. I may have said ‘timber
wolf’ though when I’d told her.
“Why not? I feel great and we both know I’m indestructible
and that there’s nothing on the trails scarier than me,” I replied.
I hiked into town over the next
hour making it a seven-mile hike and getting over 24,000 steps in the
process. By the time I laid down in bed
to call it a day, I will admit that my feet were feeling every one of those
steps.
Hike:
Two hours.
Training
Heart Rate: 75 bpm.
Calories
burned: 700.
Bonus:
24,000 steps.
Monday,
November 20, 2017
Once again, I went on a writing
hiatus. Not intentionally, mind you, but
I did get out of the groove while visiting Jack in Georgia. My goal of 600,000 steps for November has
become a difficult challenge because of that trip. I logged 15, 13, 10 and only 4K on the four
days I visited. One of those did include
a three-mile run, however, and that felt surprisingly good. I was concerned that running on pavement for
the first time in this century might cause me some problems, but everything
turned out okay. Since my return, I have
been pounding the trails and averaging over 23,000 steps per day to try and
make up the difference. I had 389,000
through yesterday, so I still have to average 21,000 for the remainder of the
month to achieve my goal. Then…Sunday
morning happened.
“Why are you reading about
finding blood in your urine?” Miggie asked, looking over my shoulder as I
perused WebMD.
“Because I had quite a bit of
blood in my urine when I went to the bathroom at breakfast this morning,” I
said.
She was very concerned…and so
was I, quite frankly. I’ve had several
bouts with kidney stones over the years and my first thought is that I was
about to have another attack. I had no
corresponding back pain, however, and so I was reading on worrying about all
the other possibilities. I had gathered
a sample and planned to take it with me for a doctor’s visit the next
day…provided I could get one.
Regardless, I headed out for my seven-mile hike and 23,000 steps for the
day.
I called by family doctor, a
Cleveland Clinic MD, and went on hold for the obligatory ten minutes. Once connected to the appointment desk, I
explained my condition, but admitted it was much clearer this morning.
“It’s kind of rust-colored now,
but I saved a sample from yesterday, which was full of blood,” I concluded.
“I will pass this along to the
doctor’s office and someone will call you,” she said.
And that was the last I
heard. Since I am also waiting for a
call from my heart doc with the results of my wearing the heart monitor for
thirty days following surgery (that was several months ago), I’m not too
hopeful about receiving a call. I guess
blood in urine is not enough of an emergency to return a call, but I think I’ll
follow up today. It may happen to them
all the time, but it’s the first time for me and I’d like some answers…
Hike:
60 minutes.
Training
Heart Rate: 75 bpm.
Calories
burned: 350.
Bonus:
23,000 steps.
Tuesday,
November 7, 2017
You can always tell when
someone has no clue about the difficulty of a job when they set you up to do it
without asking you first.
“Home Depot will be delivering
the new washer and drier on Monday and I figured you could hook them up. Oh…and I told them not to worry about hauling
the old ones out because I figured you could do that, too. It would have cost us $30 for them to do it!”
the Director told me.
Now bear in mind these old
units are in a basement with narrow stairs and two doors leading to the
outside. The machines would have to come
up those stairs and make an immediate turn on a small landing. Two doors would have to be removed. Another person would have to be employed to
help lift the load up and out. I would
have to then load them both onto a truck and drive them somewhere since we do
not have curb side waste removal. All
these things are known by the person asking the question, though I highly doubt
she’s ever picked up a washing machine and tried to drag it up some
stairs…without a refrigerator dolly (or with one).
I’m no shrinking violet when it
comes too hard – or risky – work, but sometimes you need to push back. I laid out all the reasons I’d just stated
and said, “…and $30 would be a hell of a bargain compared to what it would cost
us to remove them.”
She considered this for several
moments…I’m thinking the math would be about $250 for me to move it in time,
money, extra person and gas…but she considered a couple of more moments before
agreeing with my line of thinking.
Sometimes I just want to scream ‘trust me to make these HUGE executive
decisions!’ Ah well…I’m just a man,
after all.
I brought Mimi over to see the
new place. We went to dinner at Fisher’s
where I ordered the ribs, but skipped dessert.
After dropping her off back in Gates Mills and driving home, I noticed I
was still 3,000 steps short of my daily 20,000 goal. This would not do.
It was biting cold outside, but
Dakota and I when on a 2-mile hike to make up the difference. No…not a workout and those have been few and far
between lately, but I continue to eat mostly Paleo and the extra steps seem to
be helping me drop a couple of pounds.
After the latest round of home improvements are complete and I have my
cycling trainer set up in my Man Cave, I think I will get my riding mojo back
in high gear and have a good winter of conditioning.
Monday,
November 6, 2017
Dale ‘Greybeard’ Sanders broke
a 13-year old record for oldest man to hike the entire Appalachian Trail in a
single year in 2017. He is 82. And it’s not the first impressive, physical
thing he has done. In 2015, he became
the oldest person to paddle the 2,300 miles of the Mississippi River. In reading up on him, it became clear that he
has spent his entire life physically active and constantly challenging himself
and his body to do amazing feats. His
next endeavor will be to paddle the length of the Missouri River – a 3,800 mile
quest.
Why? What’s the point? Couldn’t you just hike, bike, or paddle
around the neighborhood every day and be equally as fit? Of course you could. So why does Dale do these things and more
importantly to no one else but me, why do I want to do them? I mean I really don’t know!
I had mentioned bragging rights
a couple of days ago and in the context that hiking the Pacific Crest Trail
just to brag about it was not nearly a good enough reason – or one that would
get you to the finish line. This written
by an author who had hiked the Triple Crown of long-distance, American trails
and was advising others on how to do any one of the three if that was their
plan. And it’s not the only reason I
want to do it, though I am a bit of and ego maniac, I am just struggling with
what goes on in my brain that makes me even think about doing it.
I think I may be looking for
the thing to define myself and my existence.
For many decades now, I’ve been that fitness kook guy, always trying to
do something no one else is doing. I
started on that path when I realized at an early age I was no more than an
average athlete. I didn’t hit a ball
well, sink baskets with any regularity, or run particularly fast. When I played, I won more than I lost, but
not by much. I was never going to beat
those more gifted…or determined…or both.
Nope. I could, however, go longer
or do things no one else was doing and therefore be the best at it.
Am I still doing that? I mean Tour Ohio was something I invented and
then did. Riding the perimeter of the
state on a bike, kayaking some river from source to mouth and then hiking the
Ohio/Erie Canal Towpath hadn’t been done so I tried doing it. It was challenging…and fun…and something to
build upon.
As I head into retirement, I know
I need to stay busy…and active. I do
like to write and I love to inspire others and so if I can do inspirational
things and then write about them so that someone will actually read them and
act – well – that’s a pretty good thing.
At least I think it is. In any
event, I will continue to ponder why I do what I do and report back. In the meantime, I hiked another three miles
through the results of an overnight storm that blew down 25 trees on my
trail. That’s a lot of climbing over,
under and around debris for me…and for Dakota.
It was a hell of a storm. I
pushed myself to 23,000 steps for the day and continued through six days well
ahead of my goal of 20,000 a day for the month of November. I have a long weekend coming up that will
challenge the average though. I will be
driving to Georgia on Thursday to see Jack and then back on Sunday. I see a few more 30,000-step days to make up
for what I will miss. Poor feet…
Hike:
60 minutes.
Training
Heart Rate: 75 bpm.
Calories
burned: 350.
Bonus:
23,000 steps.
Sunday,
November 5, 2017
First…I managed over 25,000
steps on Friday because, well, because I can and then Saturday it was over to
Mimi’s to see what needed to be done. I
knew that the landscaping crew had cut the acre of grass in front of her house,
but she calls it ‘the field’ and doesn’t have anything else done to it. This time, though, the grass had been too
tall and the clumps were laying heavily on the lawn.
“I don’t want you to kill
yourself out there. I know how hard
raking that damp grass is,” she said.
Well…it is a bitch, but rather
than drag it the length of the Yellow Brick Road, I decided instead to
wheelbarrow it to the tree line to the sides of the property. Excellent decision. By the time I’d raked the leaves and grass
and gathered it all for deposit, I’d managed 23,000 steps. Twenty-five would be a snap since I had the
rest of the afternoon, but I was thinking thirty – something I’d only done two
other times since Christmas when I’d received my Fitbit.
Miggie was supposed to meet me
at Horseshoe Pond, but she was tired from cleaning a house all morning with her
mom so Dakota and I plowed on to 30,000 steps alone. Between that and the heavy raking, I was
ready to collapse for the evening when I arrived home.
I ate the Paleo Salad I’d made
on Friday for dinner with thoughts of the fat I must have lost from a good,
hard day.
Sunday was not quite as
productive. I did get up and paint first
thing, but after a sausage omelet, I went to Home Depot to pick out supplies I
would need for three building projects I was doing. Once home, I got the notion that some dead
pine trees in the yard needed to come down.
As I began cutting with no plan for where the pieces would end up, it
dawned on me that I was surrounded by a national park full of dead trees that
had fallen and were decomposing for the good of the earth and that my trees
should join this circle of life. Problem
was, I needed to drag them the length of a football field to the tree line
beyond…and they were heavy. I grabbed a
long strap normally used to attach a kayak to my roof, looped it around the
base of each tree and one-by-one pulled them like a draft horse across the
field. My legs and lungs were screaming
by the time I completed the fourth and final pull, but my Fitbit said only
9,000 steps.
Sweating, exhausted and filthy,
I made my way to the porch where I announced to Miggie that I wanted to go for
a hike.
“But you’ve been working pretty
hard. Don’t you want to take it easy?”
Fair question…and yes, I did
want to take it easy. But that wouldn’t
be the ‘cowboy’ way and besides, I’d just read an article about an 82-year old
man, the oldest ever, who had completed the Appalachian Trail in one year. I had a lot of conditioning to do over the
next two years and pushing my body when it was pleading for rest was one of the
best ways to get ready. I headed out
with an umbrella in hand for a 4-mile hike.
So…thunder, lightning and rain
accompanied me. My Fitbit was acting up
and not recording steps, but I did manage to push it over 20,000 by the end of
the hike. I plopped at the kitchen table
for dinner after a shower to eat and write up construction plans for shelving
and a closet before collapsing in my chair to read more about the Pacific Crest
Trail. God help me on that trip…
Hike: 90 minutes.
Training
Heart Rate: 75 bpm.
Calories
burned: 550.
Bonus:
20,000 steps.
Thursday,
November 2, 2017
So the rains that weren’t
supposed to be continued, though it did warm up into the 60’s. After doing some more painting in the house
on a project that I’ve vowed to finish this weekend, I put Dakota on a leash
and headed out the door for a new hike I’d mapped out. Yes…I have over a hundred miles of towpath at
my disposal and never have to set foot on a road to access or use it. However, it is populated with hikers, joggers,
and cyclists and with Dakota on a leash this can all be problematic so I avoid
it. I have ridden on a road that dead
ends into a beautifully rehabbed covered bridge, now open only to foot traffic
and so I took a trail to this road and walked it for over a mile. It winds through the Park with a limited
number of homes off of it and, therefore, very little vehicle traffic. I had three cars pass me during the walk and
each waved and smiled as they went by respectfully slowly. The trees on both sides pushed up against the
road with their radiant fall colors and the silence was nearly complete. I made my way to the bridge where I picked up
a trail that led back to the towpath and to my house. It was the best and most peaceful walk I’ve
had since moving to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and reminded me that you
can find beauty and solace in non-traditional hikes if you’re looking.
I had purchased a head lamp for
Miggie in hopes that she would come out on some hikes after dark. She tried it on and we headed for the towpath
after dinner in total darkness. This
doesn’t bother me in the least; the moon will illuminate the trail well enough
to see where I’m going and since there are no roots, rocks or other
obstructions over which I might trip, I feel entirely comfortable. Miggie, on the other hand, does not like the
dark and I found out just how much as we walked along.
“I’m freaking out! Let me hold your hand!” she said.
I accommodated and asked her
what made her feel so unsafe with me right there. She explained how, as a five-year old on
Halloween, three older teens had stopped her and stolen her candy. She had been walking alone in the dark then
and thinks maybe that’s why she still has the fear today.
We were lucky enough to have
heard several coyotes yipping and howling as we walked (I liked it, anyway) and
as we approached the path that leads to our home from the towpath, I noticed
several pairs of eyes glowing in the dark just inside the tree line.
“See those eyes?” I said as I
pointed.
She saw them and wasn’t too pleased. I moved closer expecting coyotes, but found a
mother cat and three kittens instead.
She anxiously steered me towards our street and the streetlights
illuminating the remainder of our hike.
So…probably won’t have Miggie’s
company on parts of the Pacific Crest Trail.
I will try to convince her to be part of a support team for resupply,
though. Daylight savings time is ending
and I think I’ll be doing a lot of hiking in the dark for some time.
Hike:
90 minutes.Training
Heart Rate: 75 bpm.
Calories
burned: 550.
Bonus:
25,000 steps.
Wednesday,
November 1, 2017
“…and it should hit the low
60’s with some sunshine later today here in Cleveland,” the radio announced on
my drive to work yesterday morning.
Good. I’m already sick of colder weather and when
you add the rain, I don’t want to even leave the house. I was anxious to get out and do a workout
after work in weather more attuned to the season.
Well…they lied again. Like Charlie Brown lining up the kick with
Lucy holding before yanking it away at the last second so he would fall on his
butt again, I was sure this time the report was right. Forties and rain as I drove home. I mean – really? That’s not even close. If I missed by that much when I was driving
the tractor at the farm, I’d run over a car or two parked nearby…and then
they’d fire me! Ah well…Cleveland
weather.
I painted for a couple of hours
waiting for the rains to stop, but they never did. Not even Dakota wanted to go out. I resigned myself to not having 20,000 steps
on the first day of the new month and picked up and finished my book about the
hiker on the Continental Divide.
He spent his final days of his
six-month trek plowing through snow and weather below zero in the mountains of
Montana and into Glacier National Park.
His final night in the high country found him face to face with his
first, and only, Grizzly Bear. Fortunately,
it walked away instead of eating him and he was able to complete the walk the
next day. Nothing I read about his
adventures made me inclined to walk the Continental Divide. He did his hike in 1986 and much has changed
in those thirty years to make it a more defined trail, but I’m still not
biting. I can’t get the snow and rain
out of my head, though. I’m sure I’ll be
spending countless days and nights in both in two summers.
The Houston Astros are World
Series champs for the first time in franchise history – which began for them as
the Houston Colt 45’s in 1962. Well…whoopee
doo for them. Our last World Series win,
the longest drought in Major League Baseball, will be seventy years this
summer. We had the best team in baseball
this year and the best Indians squad ever and still didn’t win. Can I live long enough to see it happen? What is the longest a human ever lived? I’ve read stuff about Moses and other Bible
stars making to 900+ years, so maybe there is hope. God help me and all Indians fans if the
weather man starts to predict us winning…
Tuesday,
October 31, 2017
Halloween. The day after Jim died in 2010. That day in 2010 was, to that time, the worst
of my life. I really had forgotten the
date and instead chose to remember my brother and celebrate his life on his
birthday – October 2nd. This
time however, I was reminded by one of the staff at the Farm who was
particularly fond of him. She asked me
how I was doing, thinking that I would be remembering Jim and I told her how I
chose to forget that day.
“That’s probably a much
healthier way to remember him,” she said.
And it was. In fact, Mitch, who knew Jim well and worked
with me, agreed that we should go out to the burn pile, get it started up, and
have our lunches out there in his memory.
He loved making fires you could see from outer space and so it would be
an excellent testament.
Anyway, I’ve been pushing
myself to get in 20,000 steps every day and was pretty sure I had over half a
million for the month. I had a small
window of opportunity before I was supposed to meet Miggie at Fisher’s for a
rib dinner. We’d have to hurry through
that and get home in time for trick or treaters at 6:30. Kathy had texted me about hiking, so I picked
her up and with Dakota in the back seat, drove to Horseshoe Pond. We were walking on Tree Farm Trail when I
mentioned how John had commented on the neat rows of pine trees through which
we were passing. He had thought they had
just grown that way, but I reminded him we were walking on property adjacent to
a Christmas tree farm, probably land donated by them to the park and that the
neat, perfectly spaced rows of pine trees were not an act of God, but planted
many years ago by some tree farmer.
“Nope…I think he’s right,” she
said.
I stopped her and pointed at
the rows to the left and right of the trail and said, “you think that these
rows of trees twelve feet apart and in perfect columns for the next 100 yards
just happened this way?”
“Sure. Why not?”
This logical question was hard
for my brain and tongue to get around.
“BECAUSE…THEY…DIDN’T!” I said.
As perfectly a logical answer.
We agreed to disagree…agreeably,
though I reminded her, “your life would be better if you’d simply accept that
because I’m a man, I’m right.” She wasn’t
buying that, either.
I finished the hike with 20,000
steps and would continue to pile them on throughout the Halloween evening. I built a fire in my mobile, metal fire pit
and had several of the neighbors over to sit in my driveway and hand out candy
to the kids on a very crisp fall evening.
A hike over to the community center netted me some candied apples from
the owners of the development and over 23,000 steps. Not a workout, but not a bad day either. I went to the bother of totaling my steps on
my Fitbit for the month and was pleased to see I had 582,483 for the
month. I’m starting to think in terms of
the 5 million steps I will have to take to complete the Pacific Crest Trail in
a five-month period of time, so I am at least half way to the monthly total I
will have to achieve. Almost none of it
was with a loaded pack, though…
Hike:
60 minutes.
Training
Heart Rate: 75 bpm.
Calories
burned: 350.
Bonus:
23,000 steps.
