Bob Evans and photography...

Saturday, July 27, 2013

I started the morning with breakfast at Bob Evans.  Savannah and her boyfriend and Kyle joined Holly and me.  Bob Evans is my favorite chain restaurant and breakfast is my favorite meal to get at my favorite chain restaurant.  Most people know this about me.

“Okay…here’s the thing.  I’m putting together the cycling course for Tour Ohio and I want it to include as many important landmarks as possible for people who might ride it after me.  I could do a 20-mile detour from the main course to ride through Rio Grande, which is the place where the original Bob Evan’s farm is located and the first restaurant was built.  I’m thinking it’s a no-brainer to take the course past the farm,” I said in an effort to get some confirmation.

No one seemed to disagree, though I don’t think that would have mattered.  I may feel differently when I’m riding that way and need to put in an extra hour on the bike to pass that way, but I don’t think so.

Heidi and I drove the three hours to Youngstown and arrived 30 minutes early.  She quickly found the bride and started taking pictures while I scoured the church, met up with the groom and shot some pictures of my own.  I spent the remainder of the day trailing behind her and taking some of my own shots of interest.  My stomach ached most of the time and I declined the dinner at the reception.  We finished shooting around 8 p.m. and I drove her to another wedding she was attending as a guest before making the two-hour drive home.  I didn’t arrive until ten and again…no exercise.  I suppose I should just consider this a well needed healing break…a chance to get my stomach feeling better (though it didn’t) and for all the overuse injuries to heal.  

Painting...

Friday, July 26, 2013

Heidi took the bus from Akron to Cleveland where I picked her up after I finished working.  She was accompanying me to Columbus to help with the painting and the move and then we would leave Saturday to go to Youngstown where she was photographing a wedding and I would be acting as her backup, taking candid shots and getting pictures she wouldn’t be able to get because she’d be stuck with the bridal party.  That…and she needed a ride.

We arrived in Columbus in the early evening and I began prepping immediately.  Savannah wanted me to paint her living room and bedroom, two different colors of course, and they’d likely need two coats each.  I had to hurry since Heidi and I would need to be on the road by 9 a.m. the following morning.  That also meant another day without exercise and poor eating.

I painted until midnight, getting two coats on each room, and then assembling her bed and putting in her bedroom before heading for the hotel and a little sleep.  I was tired and felt like I’d had a workout, but knew that nothing I had done had prepared me in any way for Tour Ohio.  Unless of course I could use my painting skills to pay for the right to camp and get a meal from someone somewhere on the Tour. 

Cat scans and truck reviews...

Thursday, July 25, 2013

I arrived early and hungry for my cat scan at Hillcrest Hospital.  I was told not to eat or drink for four hours before the procedure and was rewarded with a delicious concoction, lemon flavored, to coat my stomach to help the machinery get a better picture.  An elderly woman in a wheelchair was sitting in the same waiting room when I began to drink.  She had a stocking cap over her head and was painfully thin.

“I’ve got plenty of this stuff if you’d like a drink,” I offered as a way of greeting.

She chuckled.  “Already drank mine,” she said. 

Her name was Florence and she was battling ovarian cancer.  She’d been in the hospital for several weeks, but was being discharged later that morning.  “I guess they want one more picture of me to see what progress is being made,” she said as she attempted to hike the skimpy blanket she had over her legs up around her shoulders.

“You need another blanket,” I said and left to find her one.  I came across a nurse who pulled two out of some kind of warming oven and returned to Florence and wrapped her in them.  It was such a small, simple gesture, but I could see how much she appreciated it.  We talked for awhile before I finished my drink and left for my cat scan.

Which took all of about five minutes.  I was told to call my doctor’s office in two working days for the results of that and the blood test they’d done earlier.

I met Jason after work to look over another pick-up truck.  We took it for a test drive straight to Dan’s place where he jacked it up and climbed underneath.   “It’s gonna need the oil pan replaced and the rear differential is leaking, too.  That’ll mean you’ll be spending a couple of thousand on repairs in short order,” he said.

To hell with that.  We returned to the dealer and told him the prognosis.  He didn’t want to lose a sale and offered to knock $500 off the price. 

“I guess you didn’t hear what I just said.  It’ll cost $2,000 to fix it and you want to knock off $500?”  We declined and left.

We drove to ‘The Local Tavern’ where I had a good burger and lousy service.  It was getting late and I knew I wouldn’t be exercising so we sat and talked for an hour before I headed home to load the car with all the supplies I’d be needing to paint Savannah’s apartment the next day.  Tour Ohio was closing in on me and I was missing workouts.  I would be concerned if I wasn’t in decent shape, though I always feel like it could be better.  It could.  I could definitely use some time in the water and a little long distance hiking wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world either. 

Too many errands...

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

I

 suspected that the day would get away from me and I’d be unable to work out…and I was right.

I came home and ran out to Sherwin Williams with Savannah to pick out the paint we’d be using to paint her new apartment in Columbus on Friday.  We grabbed some apple cider for smoothies and I dropped her back home and drove to pick Jack up from work since his Jeep is now a total loss.  He went with me to drive to Junction Auto in Chesterland where Jason was waiting to get my opinion on a pickup truck he wanted to buy.

“I’m no good at dickering for a different price,” he said.

I am.  I know the Manager from years of buying vehicles there and respect their operation, but when it comes to used vehicles, you just have to be careful.  He was looking at a Dodge Ram for 19K and a very healthy $350 monthly payment.

“That’s the best you can do for a price?” I asked the sales person.  “We came out here looking to spend no more than 15K.  Don’t suppose you’d come down a tad?”

She took the ticket back to the unknown man behind the curtain and when she returned with a $500 reduction, we headed for the door.

We returned home, took the seats out of the minivan and loaded it with the furniture Holly would be driving to Savannah’s apartment on Thursday.  By the time this project was finished, it was 10 p.m. and there was no exercise in sight.  Not that I’d felt much like doing anything as my stomach ailments continued.  Hopefully the cat scan scheduled for the next morning would reveal the cause of my discomfort.

Car Accidents...

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Nothing good ever comes of a phone call at four in the morning and the vibration from Holly’s cell phone by the side of our bed proved to be no acceptation.   Jack was calling to say he had been in an accident on his way to the gym.  He goes there for a two-hour workout before going to work each day.

I changed quickly and drove the short distance to the gym.  It sickened me to see his Jeep, smashed and horn blowing, and the other car turned sideways and equally crumpled, in the middle of Wilson Mills.  I parked quickly and walked to where he was standing.

“I’m okay, dad.  I don’t know what happened…I don’t think she had her lights on.  I never saw her,” he said.

We spent the next half hour going through the things you need to do at an accident scene and eventually went home to try and get some sleep before work.  Blame was undetermined at the scene since Jack had turned into her path, but she appeared to have been driving without her headlights on.  She, too, was uninjured except from the impact of the air bag.

Jason had been driving our second Jeep Cherokee, having switched cars with Savannah for the summer to allow her to drive his Buick, which got 30 miles to the gallon; a much better equation for someone driving to Avon Lake each day.  When I saw his name pop up on my phone, I quickly answered, thinking he was checking on Jack.  He wasn't.

"Some lady just rear-ended me.  There's not too much damage and she was at fault," he said.

I laughed.  "Real funny.  So...I'm guessing you heard Jack totaled the Jeep this morning?"

"Dad...what?  No...I didn't hear about Jack and I did just get rear-ended," he said.

I realized he wasn't kidding, told him the story and hung up the phone wondering what the odds were of having two cars in separate accidents on the same day...two identical Jeeps, to boot.  

My stomach continued to bother me throughout the day, but I didn’t let it stop me from exercising.  John joined me for another ride and we did the same one we’d done last week a hair faster.  He isn’t riding much and the rolling hills of the Waite Hill course provide quite a challenge.  After the ride, I made a smoothie for us and ate some cold chicken.  It was about all my stomach wanted to handle.

Bike duration:  One hour and 54 minutes.

Training Heart Rate:  120 bpm.

Calories burned during workout:  1600.

Stomach pains return...

Monday, July 22, 2013

Shortly after returning home from the ship yesterday, my stomach pains returned with a flourish.  I’d felt good since the end of March, but here they were again and on what appeared to be a 4-month cycle.  I went to bed early feeling nauseous and will tremendous abdominal pain.

Morning showed some improvement, but I wasted no time making an appointment with the digestive doc I’d seen for my colonoscopy.  He was able to fit me in that afternoon and after a physical exam and much questioning, decided he wanted to order a cat scan and blood work.

“I’m looking for gall stones and other things, and I want to know more about that bulge  above your naval.  It looks like a hernia,” he said.

I told him how that had been there for several years and didn’t bother me so, like any such things, I ignored it.  We scheduled the cat scan for Thursday and he sent me home with some ulcer medication.  “If we don’t find anything from the blood work and scan, I’ll want to do a endoscope,” he said as I left.

I put in a solid Survival Workout since I didn’t have time for a ride before celebrating Jack’s birthday.  It had been two weeks since my last and I could see that my strength levels had suffered, as I knew they would.  I can only do so much right now and my focus continues to be on training for Tour Ohio.

Survival Workout:  60 minutes.

Training Heart Rate:  100-150 bpm.

Calories burned:  600.

Aboard the Pathfinder

Sunday, July 21, 2013

I may have felt good riding four-plus hours yesterday, but that kind of stuff comes back to haunt your legs…as it did on today’s ride. 

I started out feeling a little lethargic and went downhill from there.  I didn’t fight the feeling and decided it would just be a scenic, serene ride – pain or not.  I took to my Waite Hill course, which is full of small to medium-sized hills, and completed it in my normal time of a little more than two hours.  Once home, I hurried through my personal cleaning process of jumping in the neighbor’s pool, made a smoothie and drove downtown to the Cuyahoga River and the Osborne Stone plant.  I was going there to meet my nephew, Nathan Duer, who serves as Chief Engineer on the 700’ Pathfinder barge/tug.  He wanted to show me around the ship and go over navigational charts for our upcoming kayaking trip for Tour Ohio.  I drove onto the property and pulled up alongside the ship, which was in the process of unloading its almost 18,000 tons of stone, quarried somewhere in the upper Great Lakes and transported here.  I saw my nephew on the deck and tried to hear what he was yelling.

“WE CAN’T REACH THE DOCK WITH THE GANGPLANK.  YOU’LL HAVE TO CLIMB UP ON THE LADDER WE’RE THROWING OVER,” I understood him to say.

I was holding my camera, some maps, a pad and a book on the Lake Erie shoreline and realized I’d have to climb this extension ladder, angled at 45 degrees ship to shore and bouncing on the cable over which it was being propelled down to me with one hand.  If I should slip, I’d drop thirty or so feet to the muddy Cuyahoga River between the ship and the pier…not a good scenario.  To hell with all that I thought as I took hold of the ladder and began to ascend.  When I reached the top where a hand was holding securely to the ladder to keep it from swaying and falling, I handed him my gear, put a foot on the steel cable which acted as a rail for the ship and was supporting the ladder, and bounded off the ladder and onto the deck.  I landed cleanly and with grace and dignity.  Thankfully.

Nathan took me on a full tour of the barge/ship, including climbing down into the bowels of the 7,000 horsepower engine room that propelled this beast at 10 knots through the waters of the Great Lakes.  It was an impressive vessel, particularly the tug that did the propelling.  I was surprised to find a workout room outfitted with weight training and aerobic exercise equipment, though it was steaming hot and rather small.

“Interlake Steamship is looking to improve fitness and wellness of its employees,” he said, which surprised me since it would seem that the work would require people to be in good shape.

We climbed four stories to the bridge where we went over some maps of the waters heading east of Sandusky Bay.  There did not appear to be any opportunities for camping.  We then finished our tour and I climbed down the normal gangplank to the shore below.  I had some work to do on the kayaking course and little time left to act. 

Bike duration:  Two hours and 5 minutes.

Training Heart Rate:  120 bpm.

Calories burned during workout:  1750.