Pilcrow

Life continues to be very busy for me, a lot of that being due to paid work, which is mainly why I continue to neglect my journal. But I wanted to take note of my cycling today. 

I mentioned back in January that I had something of a financial collapse at the start of October due to a serious lack of work in the summer and seriously overextended use of credit, followed immediately by a sudden surge in work that carried on right through the winter (and hasn't let up yet), much to my relief. One thing I didn't think to mention in that post was how much bicycling I'd done in those three months. Because my ORCA bus pass was tied to one of my credit cards that had been cut off, I was trying to save it for emergencies, because I didn't know how soon I'd be able to afford to reload the ORCA account. (And it turned out that my credit card had been cut off just before the last time I'd tried to reload the account, so I actually owed ORCA money.) And with just a small stash of quarters available, I couldn't actually afford to ride the bus regularly, as I'd been doing.

Fortunately, I had my bicycle; so I just started cycling everywhere. That turned out to be surprisingly easy to do, even with wearing my laptop-holding backpack, even despite the very hilly terrain of Seattle. I'd say I was out on my bike at least five days a week, and probably averaging 50 miles a week. Just cycling from my place to Bauhaus, which I was often doing as I had so much work to do, meant about 8 miles round-trip. 

So that was actually rather fun most of the time, and I felt great about getting so much exercise. But finally by mid-December I was tired of cycling in the cold weather, and reluctant to cycle when it rained. And then one day when I got home and stepped off my bike, my lower back said Aaaah!, and I figured I'd better take some time for that to feel better. By that time, my finances had recovered enough that I could afford to ride the bus again. And then as it happened, in the week or so it took my back to feel better, we had a good snowfall, which settled the matter for me: time to put the bike away until spring.

Well, spring is finally here. Actually judging by how I've been suffering with allergies, it arrived about two weeks ago, right on schedule with the equinox. But yesterday I finally felt able to get through the day without taking allergy medication, and today was just too gorgeous, sunny and mid-60s, for me to pass up the chance to get back on my bike. So I went out for a ride along the Ship Canal Trail (which I'm so happy they finished back in October) into Magnolia and up through the Ballard locks to Golden Gardens Park. Then I went back through Magnolia (walking the bike up the footpath to Commodore Way) and along the Elliott Bay Trail to the Olympic Sculpture Garden, up Broad Street and 5th Ave past Seattle Center to Mercer Ave, and then over to Dexter Ave and home that way. Google Maps—15.7 miles, estimated 1 hour 39 minutes. I was actually gone about 2 hours 20 minutes, but I spent a little time walking through the locks (both ways) and around Golden Gardens. That was probably a longer trip than I should've done today, considering it's been over three months since I last did any cycling, but I felt good enough that I didn't want to head home just after the trip to Golden Gardens, and overall I still felt fairly good by the end of the ride. 

Now I need to get my bike into the shop for a tune-up. I also need to get some bungee cords and figure out how to strap my backpack down to the carrying rack I had installed when I got the bike, so that I don't have to lug it on my back and possibly hurt myself again. And I need to get a stand-up pump, because it turns out that trying to reinflate my tires with a handheld pump is a really hard workout that I could do without. But once those things are done, I can start riding regularly again. I'm looking forward to it.

I'm still pretty tired. As has been all too usual, I stayed in bed until almost 11, despite as usual waking up just before my first alarm was set to sound at 8:45, and getting out of bed to shut that and the 9:00 alarm off. I did spend most of the day cleaning my home, since my mom's arriving tomorrow to visit for several days, but that shouldn't have been enough to make me tired. Actually, now I remember it took me a while to fall asleep last night, too many distracting thoughts, so that probably has a lot to do with it. Well, with my mom visiting, I'm going to have to get up at 8 while she's here, as she certainly won't tolerate the schedule I've been keeping. That should help me get hold of my schedule and reset it to getting up by 9, as I've been intending to do for months… but then in two weeks I'll be attending Decibel Festival through the weekend, which will have me up very late every night for several days and will destroy my schedule again.

Today is the 250th day of the year. Due to illness and a couple other times my schedule was just too tight, I still have 13 days to go of doing 40 push-ups daily. They're not as difficult as when I started, in that I'm not sweaty and breathing hard the way I was early on, but each day does still feel like a challenge to finish 40. I'll have to come up with a new plan soon, to start when that series finishes. I suppose I could just keep going and do 40 push-ups every day of my 40th year, but I feel like 10,000 is a good round total to achieve and I'm ready to work on something else; also, my understanding is that I should have been spacing them out more, alternating days of rest with days of doing push-ups, in order to get more development out of the effort. I'll still keep push-ups in the routine somewhere, to maintain what I've developed. I probably should be doing some kind of pull-ups—that was suggested to me when I had to take a couple days off because of soreness in my right shoulder—but I don't have a good way to do those in my home. I also should work on stomach crunches, so that's probably what I'll add in next.

Trivia wasn't much fun tonight, as only a half-dozen of us regulars showed up, and no one else. Celeste did run a five-round game for us for fun, without the usual cash prizes (which wouldn't have made sense with so few people), which was nice, but definitely part of the fun is having a large crowd there and a sense of real competition. Apparently trivia's been this dead for three of the past four weeks, and attendance this year overall has been rather low, making it costly for the bar to keep offering it, so there's a good chance it may be canceled if things don't pick up in the next month or two. I've had "talk someone else into attending trivia" on my monthly to-do list since I started in July; I don't really have a good reason why I haven't tried that yet, I've just had the vague feeling that either my friends won't be interested or else that they're already busy with other things. If I never ask, then I'll never know.

I got home early from trivia since it was a short night, and I really wanted to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies. But first I had to finish a load of laundry, and then I went through my Bumbershoot photos and uploaded the few that were worth keeping, and then I knew I had to write this entry before starting to make cookies. Now it's 11:40 and I'm tired enough that I think I should just go to bed.