Last friday I had a bad attack of hives (usually life-stress coupled with some food allergy). Before heading into digital-mission to repair my colobox, I had blood drawn, and I got a phone-report of the results today. Apparently everything was OK, save for high blood sugar (107, where 105 is the recommended whatever), and high triglycerides (405, with 200 being the recommended whatever). If anyone can translate that into something I can understand, I'd appreciate it. In the Mean Time, I figure it's the clue phone saying to tweak my diet (I'm pretty low-fat, low-animal products save for cheese and yogurt) and increase the exercise thing. Or I should say start doing the exercise thing.So far my exercise regime is a walk with the spousal unit and a friend around a local park three times a week, assuming weather and schedules cooperate (in reality it's more like one to two times a week), and so far that's it for me. Our swimming pool (which we got with the housE) is closed due to electrical problems in the house (and we've very bad procrastinators, so we don't have any idea when that'll be addressed), and I'm terrified of powered lawn equipment. So I tend to stay in the shade and work / take care of web sites / read.
Now that the clue phone has rung, it's time to do something. At a gig last sunday at a garden tour, we discovered that Patti (the community band directory) is a bicyclist, and that she and her hubby go biking just about every weekend. I love bicycling, but doing the human powered transport (biking to the grocery store, for instance) is suicidal given the density of rednecks, big trucks, and rednecks in big trucks. So I haven't done it much. Back in virginia I lived right next to the Washington and Old Dominon Trail, a 45 mile rails-to-trails path that cuts through the area which allows a lot of travel to happen off of major roads.
Patti told us that there's a rails-to-trails closer in to Pittsburgh, which was enough to induce me to get the bike out of the store room. The next question is 'how to get into some kind of shape wihtout getting squished on the road'. I've got some rollers that I used during winter months, which also came out of mothballs. If you've never been on rollers, they're a real treat. It's like riding on ice (note there's no place to anchor the bike). After much wandering around the yard (avoiding getting stung near a hornet's nest in the pavillion), I found a place where I can use the rollers (I need to be able to lean against a wall to get started), and managed to have a sustained 3 minute workout. (hey! I'm out of shape, OK? Plus the concentration factor involved when riding on rollers is insane) Not surprising, I feel pretty good right now, so here's hoping I can maintain the effort. My carrot is if I can do a week of 10 minute session, I'll reward myself with one of those little mp3 players. Rollers get dull pretty quickly, and trying to ride with a small cd player strapped to you is an exercise in frustration. (plus there's no handy power outlet to bring out a radio)