Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’ll be rebooting this blog in a couple weeks, just in time for the new year.  In the meantime I just read an interesting article on being fat.

FAT CITY

I’m not sick, but I’m not well

Flagpole Sitta – Harvey Danger

I’ve had a few comments about my post yesterday about my mom dying.  I appreciate the kind words.  This blog isn’t just about weight loss but about healing, and cycling.  Getting healthy is what I need, both physically and emotionally. The reboot of this bog will come soon.

In the meantime I picked up a trainer for my bike so I can get in shape by Spring and be on the bike as soon as I can.  I got the Cycleops Fluid 2 trainer.  I’ll put the bike on it tomorrow and try to get on the bike every day, even as the snow flies.

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit.

Napoleon Hill

The last time I posted to this blog was June 25, 2013.  It seems like a lifetime ago.

I need to back up a bit.  I retired in 2011 after being a UPS guy for thirty-seven years.  When I left work my younger brother was dying of colon cancer.  Since I was the only one not working I became the one to take him for doctor appointments and chemotherapy.  Very quickly I had to spend more and more time until it consumed a large part of it.  In May of the next year he died.  It took a great deal out of me.

A few weeks after he died my mother suffered an odd attack that seemed like dementia and put her in the hospital for a few days.  Due to her panic attacks and agoraphobia someone had to stay with her twenty-four hours a day.  I was retired so did what I could.

We found that she had lung cancer and that was causing the symptoms.  Immediately she began chemotherapy.  On the way there she would smoke a cigarette and say that it didn’t make sense because she had smoked for seventy years and it had never bothered her.

As time went on I spent more and more time going from chemotherapy to pain specialists, to physical therapists, to radiation treatments and so on.  Each time I would take her to lunch and she would tell me her marvelous stories.  I made a point of recording many of them.  Here is one.

As time went on she became frail and we had to move her into my sister’s house where I would come at six in the morning and stay with her all day.

It was so hard watching her fade away.  She was the funniest and smartest person I have ever met.

Mom died September 6, 2013.  It truly knocked the wind out of me.

I’m finally coming back to my own.  The transition to retirement, my brother’s death, in between my two aunts’ deaths and then mom.

I’ll be rebooting the blog soon.  I’ve gained some of the weight back but I’m optimistic.  Stay tuned.  The future is bright.

Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength.

Betty Friedan

When I started doing this I weighed myself every day.  I haven’t weighed myself since the beginning of the month.  I’m back to doing what I need to do.  I’ve cut down my calories and I”m on the bike.  Life is good.

Yesterday I had to go over to UPS to pick up a package.  If you remember I worked there for a while (37 years).  It was actually nice to see some of the guys.  Surprisingly at least five guys commented on how I’ve lost weight.  I don’t see it but it must be noticeable.  First day of summer was last Friday and I’m doubling down.  I’m doing it.

Aging seems to be the only available way to live a long life.

Kitty O’Neill Collins

This seems about right

Finishing races is important, but racing is more important.
Dale Earnhardt

Possibly the worst race design and clusterfuck I’ve ever seen.  And I watch a lot of bicycle racing.

Parking is a nightmare for me… I still have sensors on my car that help me park.

Jordana Brewster

Probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

Mark Twain

I played in a poker tournament last night and the host told me that a hoodie I had ordered back in January.  I had purposely ordered the hoodie in XL instead of my normal XXL.  During the first break I tried on the hoodie and it fit, and fit well.  What I’m doing is working.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Where have I been and how could I abandon this blog?

I didn’t abandon it and I’m back.  Let me tell you what went on.

Last month was the busiest I’ve been since I retired from UPS.  I played in three championship poker tournaments and went to Maryland for a week to help teach banjo.   Plus my mother is taking up more and more of my time.  I’m not making excuses, instead giving reasons.

The trip to Maryland was exhausting.  It is a ten-hour drive and I did it in one shot.  Driving most of the way and napping at rest areas.  Once there I helped my friend, Patrick Costello (from The Daily Frail), teach beginners clawhammer banjo.

If you’d like to see more pictures from the trip go here.

I got very little sleep and worked my ass off, but it was worth it.  Everyone got better and had a better understanding of the music when we were done.  I’m glad I did it.

Now back to this blog and what it’s about.  I weighed myself when I got back and I actually gained two pounds!! This is the first time since I started that I’ve gained at a monthly weigh in.  This will not stand.

I immediately got back on the horse and it is coming off.

I’m back and in charge.  Expect my posts and expect a skinnier me.

You never have the wind with you — either it is against you or you’re having a good day.

Daniel Behrman, The Man Who Loved Bicycles

Ohio blows, and I mean that literally.  It has been windy and cold until today.  On Sunday at the start of my poker tournament it was snowing.  Today it is in the 80’s with high winds.  Only in Ohio can you get frostbite and heat stroke in the same week.

I was surfing the net and found this guy who takes photos of things disassembled.  Here is one he did of a bicycle.