Day Eighty-nine: Out of shape and out of practice

I went for a motorcycle ride today, 97 miles to my daughters house and 125 miles back. Aside from the fun, I learned (and relearned) a few things. First the reason for this entry's title: I don't envy women who have to hold their legs together for skirt wearing. Hugging a motorcycle at California speed limits uses the same muscles. I don't have them, or certainly not strong ones. I hate stop signs with lines. All during my ride I was trying to make my shifting smooth without racing, or lugging, my engine. When I got to Napa on the return trip, there was this one stop sign and cars were just creeping through it. In one of my own creeps I didn't give enough gas while releasing the clutch and stopped my engine. I moved it to the side, letting several vehicles behind me move on through while I shifted it to neutral and restarted it. Then I moved back in to traffic and missed my turn.

Lesson one: Know my route a little better, particularly the transitions. I should have remembered that 121 joins 29 for a short time. It wasn't a long detour.

In between Winters and Napa, I had my side of the road to myself. This meant that I could go as fast or as slow as I wanted to without slowing someone up or tailgating. The road was nice and curvy, which is almost always fun. The only possible time it isn't is when I'm riding into the sunset. It did make for a little more excitement going around literally "blinding" curves. Other drivers must have known that as everyone was going the other way. For a few miles after I first turned on to 121 from 128 I was riding in shade. It was glorious.

Lesson two: Time my ride or direction a little better. Better yet, don't ride when I have to stare into the sun to ride. At least I had my sunglasses on.

After that ill-fated stop in Napa, I didn't get to stop again until the hills of San Francisco and even though they weren't steep on Geary, they weren't the kind of stops that allowed me to do anything else. This meant that I didn't get my "winter" gloves on after the temperature turned positively chilly near Sausalito and was even colder in the fog of Daly City. I was able to take my sunglasses off without needing to stop.

I did have two other stops on the way home, one to get gas and the other to get the yellow jacket out of my helmet. What with the vibrations of the motorcycle and bees flying around in my helmet, my Life after Layoff is really buzzing.

I still am "buzzed" about a much longer ride but it is good that I only get 135 miles to 150 miles on a tank of gas. That puts an upper limit between breaks.

Day Thirty-three: Charged up and "raring" to go

Today started at 5:00 AM. Yes, I know it is a Saturday, but I went to sleep earlier the night before and I can only stay in bed so long. I've decided to up my Glucosamine/Chondroitin daily intake to the recommended dose. (I was doing half doses.) Maybe the proper dose will allow my joints to stay in one place longer.

The longer day allowed me to get more done. It still wasn't everything on my list but I'll just pretend the list was for the whole weekend. I did some things not on my list, such as: sweeping the drive. I live on a flag lot, which has a disproportionally longer drive and my non-flag lot neighbor's plants and trees hanging over the fence and dropping stuff on my drive. I decided before I washed my vehicles, I needed to clean up the the debris so the water from the washing wouldn't make the debris worse.

Then, to wash the truck I had to move it. After over 24 hours of charging, the battery was still dead. So, I took it out and went to Kragen Auto Parts for a replacement. When I got back with it, I decided that I'd better check and make sure it was fully charged before I put it in. It wasn't. So, I left it trickle charging and went off to do other things, like lunch.

Lunch was a Mango Black Bean Salad, a large Green Salad with pinto beans, and one of my cupcakes with Mixed Berry soy yogurt and fresh raspberries. After lunch I decided that I'd better make sure my motorcycle started. I was relieved when it did. Then I decided to check my tires' pressures. Surprisingly, only the truck's tires were fully inflated. I added air to the motorcycle's tires, the Prius' tires and my pedal bike's tires. Then I decided that since my motorcycle was running and had air in the tires, I should take it for a spin to make sure the battery was properly charged. I only had work to do if I didn't. Besides, it was a short trip of just about 50 miles, but to go even that far I had to get gas.

The nice thing is, when I got back, the battery was fully charged. Even better, when I put it in the truck, it started right up. So I positioned it for my multiple vehicle washing and went in to fix and eat dinner. I won't bore you with yet another menu, but I decided to start the "Almost No Knead" bread. Then I saw that I needed to use up an eggplant I had purchase and I wanted to make a Balsamic vinaigrette, basically balsamic vinegar, seasoned rice vinegar, and crushed garlic. It is really good and has very few calories. Since I was going to make my special "Gerson" ratatouille, lots of onion, lots of garlic, eggplant, and tomatoes, I could just clean more garlic at the same time and get two things for the garlic bother of one. My Life after Layoff is really cooking.

I never did get back out to wash the vehicles.