Daily Archives: March 15, 2014

Travel

And Parts South

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Imbolc                                                             Hare Moon

Road trip.  I love traveling with Kate and we’ve had many good trips already and will have many more.  I also love traveling alone.  Or, you might say, I just love to travel.  Less so now maybe than in years past, but not by much and now that’s only so because of the strong pull home has for me.  It takes some time to get past the inertia created by a place that fits my life so well.

Once I get on the road though, I’m there.  I love the randomness of travel, the mistakes and the happy accidents.  This is, I’m pretty sure, a direct reflection of my father’s love of just getting in the car and going somewhere.  He had a traveling gene, maybe one from that blacksheep Grandpa Elmo who finally lit out for the territories. It’s no surprise that Mary’s in Singapore and Mark’s in Muhayil, Saudi Arabia.

That’s not to say I don’t appreciate the destination.  I plan to descend into Carlsbad Caverns, have a wonderful workshop in Tucson, get in some hiking in the Catalina Mountains and see as much of Chaco Canyon as I can.  After being reminded of its existence by Mark Odegard, I may also take a side trip to Manitou Springs, Colorado, a vestigial remnant of sixties culture stuck in the Rockies west of Colorado Springs.

But along the way I’ll have a lot of time by myself on the road. I’ll see new towns and new topography.  Some things will appear that haven’t occurred to me, but that seem good at the moment.  And, of course, there’s road food.  Especially the tex-mex and other Mexican flavored cuisines of the southwest.  Not long now.

Health

Finally

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Imbolc                                                                         Hare Moon

Finally.  A combination of resistance and aerobics that feels good, burns calories and tests my balance.  It’s taken a long time to find a good fit, but here it is.  I do 4 high intensity intervals at 1.5-2 minutes each.  The first two are on the treadmill right away and take about 15 minutes with the cool down to 110 bpm and then backup and then back down again.

After the second interval cool down I do half of a half of a p90X workout.  They’re designed to go just over an hour and to work all the muscle groups of the day several times.  By doing half of a day’s workout I get in roughly 30 minutes of varied resistance work.  I cut it in half to do the third interval.  Then, when I’ve finished the resistance work I do the final interval.  Takes a little more than an hour altogether, but it’s so varied it doesn’t seem like much.  Burning 550 to 650 calories a time, 5 days a week.

The non p90x days I do an aerobic only day at around 130 bpm for 45 minutes.

I like this because it’s intense, varied, helps me gain and maintain muscle mass and maintain my aerobic fitness.  It’s taken a lot of experimentation, but this is a keeper.