The Other Don Kelly

Morning weigh-in: 190#, 14.5% BF

I never knew her name; amongst ourselves we always referred to her as “Little One” because she was so small. Short, tiny even, and with a sweetly smiling, childlike (almost doll-like) face, though her voice had a rough edge and could be filled with anger. She was homeless, but she was always clean and well-dressed, and she was already a fixture when I moved to Bethlehem — sometimes you’d see her hanging in Wired Café, or passing through Brew Works to use the bathroom, or sitting at a little table she’d set up on Broad Street, selling handmade knick-knacks. Local vendors liked her and helped her out a bit.

She was hit by a car and killed crossing Broad Street this week. (Some more about her here and here.) So sad — it’s a tragedy no matter who was killed, but this just seems worse because I know who she was, and her life seemed so tough.

Morning weigh-in: 189.5#, 15.5% BF

I want to sit down with Scott S and a large paper map of the Lehigh Valley, like the folding kind we all kept in our cars before Google Maps came along, so we can sketch out some of the recommended bike routes for my map routing project. So, I need to get a map. I tried the local CVS (no maps), a local gas station (maps of  New Jersey, Philly and Reading — WTF? — but nothing for our area), and the local market (nope). The market was 0 for 2, since I also needed a new battery, one of those coin-shaped ones and they didn’t have those either.

I also went on Garmin Connect to look for some of my old rides in Jim Thorpe, and I found that their “Explore Activities” feature, which is  basically the search page for activities, was broken. The tech support chat guy went through the usual “have you tried clearing your cookies?” bullshit — no I am not going to clear my cookies, some of them are useful, and the problem is on your server, doofus. It took a while to even get him to know what I was talking about, like giving him URL’s to his own company’s website, and he eventually was able to reproduce the problem, but he had no answer, no timeline for a fix, and he even sort of intimated that the engineers will get around to it when they feel like it.

Meantime I was looking at the VMB website last week, where I ran into a problem with the calendar. I posted something about it to the forum — no response, Facebook PM’ed the guy who used to run the site — no response. Today I used the website contact form, which sends an email to club leadership — so far, crickets.

What’s gone wrong with the world?

So anyway, I did a basement trainer workout last night, then we went out to The Mint. Today was an outdoor ride, out to the community college and back.

Morning weigh-in: 190.0#, 15.5% BF

Spent most of the morning working on various projects in the basement, mostly cleanup and brew equipment maintenance, but I also managed to find and set up my trainer. I’ll get in a short ride later in the day, hopefully.

I’ve been pretty religious about the morning yoga and exercise, so that’s good, and blogging has been pretty consistent as well. Next up in my resolutions list: the cello. I got it out, tuned it up, and have been playing a few scales every day but that’s about it. I should be ramping up soon enough…

Morning Weigh-in: 188.0#, 14.0% BF (I’m still convinced that my actual body fat percentage is much higher…)

This weekend was like being shot out of a cannon.

On Saturday we hosted Sarah A’s 40th birthday party, which was basically about 40 people, including maybe a dozen kids — actual children, that is, not twenty-somethings. We got up early and I started the outdoor oven — we would be making pizza for the party — then we cleaned the house, got in some supplies and, with some help from Sarah’s parents and Mark, decorated for the party. The party itself started at 4:00, we cooked the pizza around 6:00, which was awesome but just a drop in the ocean of food we had on hand, and those burdened by kids (including grandparents on babysitter duty) all left by around 8:00. The rest of the party was smaller, and less intense with the kids gone, but things didn’t wind down until around 1:00.

Sunday should been a later morning than it was, but Anne was going to meet Ben and Renee at Lake Nockamixon for some ice skating — I dislike skating, but I could go for a hike while they were on the ice. Unfortunately, when I went to warm the car up, it wouldn’t turn over… Call AAA, change the plans a bit: Renee picked up Anne while I stayed to deal with the car. The same mechanics came out as for the last car problem two years ago, and they got lost again on the way.  They jumped the car and it started up, I ran it for an hour to give the battery some juice, and we were golden but it’s going in for a battery check tomorrow.

In the afternoon we went to Stroudsburg High School, to see Anne’s teacher do a violin concerto with the Pocono Community Orchestra. We went up (in our car, which added some excitement) with Jeff and Krista, and got there way early so we explored downtown Stroudsburg for a bit (OK, we found a bar), then saw the concert, which was awesome — the orchestra was OK, but Mike was incredible.

We stayed in last night, and were in bed by 10:00. Unfortunately, I must have pulled something in my upper back or neck, and could not get comfortable — this is the same back issue I’ve had before, by the way. I finally found a halfway comfortable position, but it was not what I’m used to and I woke up with vertigo — remember that? Ugh…

I’ve made a big decision though, and today I will be putting the bike up on the trainer. I’ll try to maybe get in a half hour of moderate spin every day, enough to keep me from falling apart — it’s just been too cold lately, and now it’s about to warm up and become mucky; it’s time to train indoors for a while.

I was rushing through that last post, and though (in discussion with others) I noticed that New Years resolutions seem to have become a bit passé, I still like to think about where I am at this time of year, and where I want to be in the coming year. So here are some more, more realistic resolutions:

• Ride More: It’s a bit surprising to me how much I fell off my cycling, especially considering how much I really like it. So, definitely I plan on riding more.
• Ride MTB A Lot More: I’ve got time, and I have a great bike that barely sees any of the riding that it was meant for; I should be doing a lot more mountain biking. Meantime, the few times I got out this year (and last year) I had so much fun it was almost a religious experience. So OK, there will be a lot more mountain biking this year.
• Start Every Morning With Yoga/Exercise: I started this morning. Again, I don’t know why I don’t do this more, it feels so good when I do it. Well, now it’s a resolution…
• Get Serious About The Cello: I see a lot of fun happening that I could be a part of, but I take it up half-heartedly over and over again, never get past square zero, and then I drop it, losing whatever I might have gained. I think I might look into going back for lessons again, as well as just, you know, practicing…
• Step Away From The Computer: Say what? Not really, but I think I can do with a lot less of that listless browsing that eats time and just makes me feel like I just wasted an afternoon watching television.
• Blog More: I think I’d like to be able to say I write something every day. We’ll see how that goes, but I’ll make the attempt.

Anyway, that’s all I have for now. My next list will probably be “places I want to ride this year.” For now, I am off to do my belated annual New Year’s Day hike.

Happy New Year to all my readers! Not much revelry last night: we stayed in with Emmi and Kyle, baked some Chicago-style deep dish pizzas, and only braved the five degree outdoors to bang on a pot when the new year arrived. (They left for Durham this morning.) Unfortunately, our new year is starting on a somber note: we’re leaving in a few minutes to go to upstate New York, near Ringwood, for the wake of a friend’s brother. So no hike, no bike ride… Tomorrow will be our traditional New Year’s.

Some resolutions:

• Blog more.
• Ride more.
• Ride MTB way more.
• Uh…