Feeling old.

The other night at spin class, it seemed like the denizens of the studio were noticeably younger than usual. I normally suck at guesstimating peoples ages but it seemed a bunch of little girls crashed the class. The leader asked how old they were. They giggled an answer of thirteen all at the same time. Then they giggled about answering at the same time.

The leader said that she was twenty two and she remembered how it was to be thirteen. She was proud of them for trying a spin class. I don't remember what it was like being thirteen. I know, though,  that I would not have been in a spin class (I would have been "outside"). In contrast,  I can remember fifty three like it was today. Maybe because I'm currently fifty three. And I was in a spin class with thirteen year olds.

Sometimes I get the mind set to do an exercise class just to get it done. This class was one of those classes for me. To motivate the "kids" the instructor kept telling them they were doing great and encouraging them to keep it up. This encouragement seemed to be mostly at the time where the class would veer into the land of suck for me (most often high cadence standing up stuff).

At the end of these spin classes, the instructor leads an optional 3 minute or so stretching session. They don't like when people leave in the middle of the stretch since opening the door changes the lighting and ruins the stretching mood. I wasn't feeling the need to stretch that day so I followed the stretch-optional folks leaving out the open door. As I approached the door to leave, the instructor yelled "Sir, can you close the door behind you?"

Sir? She called me Sir?

Only then I felt old. I closed the door. And felt old for the rest of the night.

Sigh.

I resolve to be a Resolutionista

I saw a sign in the spin studio the other day, "December is the new January." I think it was a little bit of snark towards those who will show up in January after stating their new year's resolutions.  The irony is that the Resolutionistas are not there in December yet to see this sign. I wondered what the sign will say in January.

The good news was that I was in the spin studio to see it at 7AM on a Wednesday. My daughter, who is home from college, had a brief thought to get up early and join me, but her resolve around those plans disappeared as soon as she saw that the class was full with only the waitlist left. She slept in. I got up and completed the class anyway.

This is traditionally the time of the year to look back at what you accomplished and to look forward to what you will accomplished.  Were you naughty or were you nice? What are you going to do next year to be either nicer (or perhaps naughtier?) I'm normally very good at this in my professional life but I've found that in parts of my personal life I've been a mess for a while.

I found that if I make audacious statements of that I am going to do this or going to do that, I don't. in the past I did. So something needs to change.

I decided to be a type of resolutionista.  I resolve to do something about my weight/body composition and to stop finding excuses to not get back into shape. The difference is that this resolution can't go away for me or there will be grave consequences.

Most Resolutionistas disappear by February. I need to not disappear. The first step is that I've reserved a spot in a spin class on Friday. The resolution begins.

Complex in its simplicity.

First of all, thank you to all those who encouraged me. It helped.

Second, I came up with a plan I want to try. It has two parts:

1) Do something physical for 30 minutes each day beyond my normal activity. Doesn't matter what but it needs to be at least 30 minutes. Bias Monday and Thursday for swimming, Tuesday and Friday for biking or spin class, Wednesday and Saturday for sneaker stuff, and Sunday as a wild card.

2) Score on a scale from 0-10 the quality of my diet. Track everything I eat.

I'll post the results daily on twitter along side my normal stream of sarcasm. I don't want to overthink it but I want to see how long I can keep it up. My goal is do this until Christmas.

It will be my present to myself.

My best blog post ever!

Last weekend I wrote what in retrospect must have been my best blog post ever. I hadn't posted anything for a while but was happy that I decided to actually sign up for a race: the 4 miler in Central Park on Superbowl Sunday morning before the game.

I confessed how fat I've gotten in the 3 years since my Ironman finish (it was basically my ironversary) and how while I've got some training challenges in front of me, bigger problems for me are my diet, body composition and general health. I dreamed about where this race could lead, perhaps even another Iron journey as kid#2 will be in college in fall of 2016.

I posted that blog entry. And nothing happened.

Later that night, I checked my site to see what was up. The post was gone, In its place was a draft list of the races to lead up to another ironman that I jotted down for a future post but the original epic post vanished.

Blogger ate it, the best blog entry ever.

I guess I need to post more to try to capture lightening in a bottle again. Do some training, watch my diet, and get back in the game, Be the athletic muse for the writer that I can be. Accomplish something that could lead to something epic. Look forward, not backward.

Game on.

Stephen Siller Tunnel to Tower 5k Run/Walk

On Sunday, Mrs. Rockstar and I did the Stephen Siller's Foundation Tunnel to Tower 5k Run/Walk. My friend Tony belongs to a "Secret society" club whose mandate is to do good for the community. They coordinated this event a to get some folks to donate some money, get breakfast and a bus ride into Brooklyn, do the event, and get a bus home to have some lunch. Last year they had about 80 people. This year they had 430. It was a great experience.

I signed us up a while ago, mostly as a charity type of deal, figuring doing an event like this couldn't hurt. There were a reported 35,000 participants and it mostly a walk for us. It was very emotional. Many military and first responders were doing it and were vocal about it. Many firemen donned full gear, like Stephen Siller did on 9/11, to emulate his historic run.

I hope to do it again next year. I took some pictures this year so here they are:

The flag line entering the tunnel.

The folks running/walking in the tunnel. Everyone with the group wore yellow (except me). There was  patriotic music blasted for the whole length.

A sign on the wall to make you hope you are halfway. It meant that the uphill was about to begin.

 

What you see when you exit the tunnel, the Freedom Tower.

There are some other pictures I already posted on Instagram. Take a look!

CitiBike

I just signed up for an annual pass for CitiBike. For those from less cultured parts of the world/country, CitiBike is a bike sharing program that was put in place some time ago. The commuting bike novelty has worn off  in most of NYC but I haven't ridden one yet. Meanwhile in the 3-4 days each week that I have to go to my New York office for work, I take the subway from Penn Station where I get off the LIRR to Tribeca where my 21st floor office awaits me.

The weather in NY has been pretty good recently and I've seen a lot of people riding these bikes. I haven't been training much but figured any riding is better than none. I'm guessing that each way will be a 15-20 minute ride based on traffic (I've walked it in 45 minutes).  I'll start packing a helmet once I get the bike pass in the mail. If I ride 40 times instead of taking the subway, it'll pay for itself. No, I'm not going to ride in the snow or rain but on many days the weather should be fine. There are two questions I need to answer:

1. Should I track these rides by wearing a Garmin?
2. Should I track these rides in Training Peaks?

Note that this video makes me laugh every time I think of CitiBikes. Perhaps it is one of the reasons why I never tried one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSP2XQxMYEM

Motivation from unexpected sources

Last week I embarked on my newly crafted training plan only for my enthusiasm to peter out by Thursday. On Saturday I was home alone with my daughter who, as many teenagers do, slept in so I went for a 45' walk. Along this walk many of the TNT faithful were out putting in their miles for whichever event they were training for but my goal is to get to a solid 5k walking at a time. My ankles still hurt me but both Dr. Google and a real doctor said that is my new reality, at least for the next 6-9 months until my tendonosis heals.

I woke up Sunday completely unmotivated. My ankles were yipping. My back was hurting. The aches and pains of being me seemed to be winning the argument. I begged off my scheduled bike ride and sat around the house, flipping channels on the television, hunting for an interesting baseball game to watch while puttering around the house with the game as background noise. I instead found the rebroadcast of IMKona on NBC.

During the broadcast, Al Trautwig mentioned something like that there was no place quite like the finish line of an ironman and that unless you experienced it, even as a spectator, let alone as an athlete, you could never truly understand the emotions flying around. He said that the people that you meet while racing Ironman are unique and those short lived friendships can change your perspective on a bunch of things. I looked at myself lying on the couch and felt shame because these thoughts resonated with me. I only later realized that all may or may not have said those exact works but even so I now felt motivated.

There was a 5pm spin class still available so I signed up. Rather than a 45 minute class this was a 60 minute "survivor" class. Even so, I went and was glad I did. Monday I was flying out to Texas and hopped in the pool to have a quick swim before the travel began.

The motivation from that broadcast is still working for me. It is stupid hot here outside of Dallas so we'll see if I am still motivated tonight with the temperature hovering around 100 degrees. Too bad I don't have this recorded to watch the show again for another jolt of Trautwig motivation. May need to get it from some other unexpected source.

Who I am not who I was.

Last week was Ironman Lake Placid. While I knew some folks who were racing, there weren't part of my core group of training partners. Since this race conflicts with my family vacation, I decided to not go to Placid nor volunteer and instead spend time with the family.

It was a week of much needed downtime. In fact, I did close to nothing physically taxing. I did take a few extra naps, drank a few extra cheap beers (Rolling Rock for those scoring at home), ate a little too much food and read a good book. For activities, MrsRockstar and I went to Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame and later in the week saw a minor league baseball game. There was no training even though I brought my bike.

My friends who went to Placid to cheer and volunteer were texting me from Placid and afterward. Some signed up for IMLP2015 but many were trying to get a contingent to give Mont Tremblay 70.3 or some other HIM next summer a try. I realized that given my current condition, body composition and motivation, signing up would be a waste of money.

I wondered if my lack of motivation was a cause or symptom of my lack of training. To answer that question, I sat down and used my USAT-L1 coaching knowledge to craft myself a training plan that could get me to the last tri of the 2014 season, the Cedar Beach Sprint Tri on Columbus Day weekend. I figured if I could follow this plan for the month of August, it would be a good indication if I could give this tri a shot. Even if I'm not, trying to follow the plan would let me learn something about myself.

It isn't a crazy ironman plan but it looks doable. I know I have issues with my Achilles but that's ok. I wrote the plan based on who I am not who I was. The plan started yesterday with a bike ride scheduled. I ran instead and will swap a bike for tomorrow's scheduled run. Tonight, I get in the pool. It is focusing simply on moving most days with scheduled recovery time.

Most importantly, I got on the scale this morning. Yes, I probably have a few extra vacation pounds working their way through my system but my body composition is my biggest (pun intended) challenge. I am the heaviest I can ever recall but want to shoot to lose 2 pounds a week. At that rate I'll be ready to race........... sometime summer 2015.

Or maybe Columbus day 2014. That's who I am.

Low quality blogging

So I've done some stuff that warranted blogging recently but failed on crafting an opus worthy of your consideration. So, here goes a lower quality rendering of recent events.

Firstly, my daughter and I rode in the Huntington Bicycle Club's Gold coast ride. They had a variety of distances but I figured that even without any training knocking off the 25 mile route should not be an issue. I was wrong.

I've only done the very short 12 mile route with my daughter when she was about 8 years old but have ridden many of the roads that the 55, 75 and 100 mile routes cover. I forgot that someone once described this ride's route as "come to a crossroad, pick whichever seems to go up the most, repeat."We started the ride, realized I was in over my head, and crafted a "short cut" back to the car. Even so, 19 miles was better than sitting on the couch. I have yet to look at the power data as I don't want to cry about how out of shape I am.

Secondly, we had to swing up to Augusta, Maine for a few days to visit my other daughter at camp. Augusta has a great rail trail along the Kennebec river so we were able to get our for a run/walk. I don't have a picture of it but we saw a collection of water bottles for the runner on the side of the trail. While I do this sometimes with my water sometimes with concern, the Maine slant was that their car keys were left there too! I guess if you don't like your car, just pick some keys from the pile to try another. Another reminder that Maine ain't New York.

That's all I got for now. Stay tuned.

Almost an event - the Color Run

Last weekend my daughter, out of the blue, said she wanted to do a color run and there just happened to be one in Brooklyn on Sunday. She wanted my wife and I to join her as she said she always wanted to do a color run. I had no desire to do a color run, haven't been training at all (and that includes running) so I thought about it for about 2 seconds before saying I was in.

Mostly I haven't been running because I have a lot of pain in my ankles. Dr.Google led me to self diagnose Achilles tendinitis but even with reduced activity, the pain has become impacting on my lazy ass day to day even walking. Before this concept of a 5k color run I actually went to a real person doctor who said that it is probably due to scar tissue from my previous running escapades. He prescribed anti-inflammation drugs and stretching. It helped but I still gimp around. I felt I couldn't hurt myself anymore so we gave it a shot.

Highlights of the day:

• The race was about an hour away and started relatively late (9am) so we didn't have to get up at stupid o'clock.
• We ate some bagels before heading out. They always taste better before an event.
• I realized I didn't have a strategy except survival. I told my daughter and wife we would see what happens but to plan on walking most of it.
• I had never done a color run before. I needed a mostly white outfit that would basically be a throw away. A tee shirt from "Jacque C Penne" for 10 bucks and a $3 hat from Michael's were perfect.
• There was a lot of traffic. These events are popular!
• No matter how many portal-potty exist, there never is enough. An they always set a record for the vilest. I forgot the hold your breath method until it was too late.
• The lines were long for preregistration but went quickly. They were organized.
• We headed over to the corral and started relatively quickly.
• Very few people were running, most were walking so we fell right in.
• The color they throw is like a powder. There were 4 color stations along the course and some people were getting very colorful.
• My daughter ran up to me and said she was doing snow angels in the purple. She wasn't alone.
• There was a big party afterwards that we stay for a little while.
• The race itself wasn't timed. There was no medals or podiums.
• I think I won. I did get a race shirt that I wore afterwards.
• It took 3 days before all the color was off me. With a lot of scrubbing.

I expect we'll sign up again next year because this event, while expensive, was fun and got us a little active. Everyone seem happy at the race they dub "the happiest 5k."

PS: The bonus was that I didn't make my aches and pains any worse. Sort of a sign to get more active.

Is a graduation a beginning or an end?

My older daughter Amanda graduated from high school last Sunday. There were many festivities leading up to the graduation including a graduation party we had the week before (yes, I'm aware of this being like opening your Christmas presents on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas day), my younger daughter Courtney going off to summer camp in Maine, and, of course, the gala known as the prom.

Full disclosure, I am not a fan of graduation ceremonies but I am a huge fan of accomplishments. I didn't enjoy my high school graduation ceremony. My mother went back to college while I was in college and I didn't go to her graduation ceremony. She threatened that if I didn't go to my college graduation, I wouldn't have a place to live afterwards so I did. There was no way in hell I was going to my grad school graduation and I have never regretted that decision.

My daughter, though, seemed very happy through all the weekend's events from the pre-pre-prom picture session to the post graduation parties.

While listening to the many speeches given during the ceremony itself, I first felt there was not enough celebrating the milestone. Many speeches focused on the future. There seemed to be a canned phrase of "going to college, entering the workforce, or joining the military" as the next steps for the graduates. The advice on how to be successful in the "real world" seemed to me as comical in it's naivety - these are 17 and 18 year olds that have never seen the real world. Many adults, including yours truly, don't know how to be successful in the real world. It is hard.

But graduating high school is an accomplishment. I'm proud of my daughter for this accomplishment. I'm prouder for what I think she is going to accomplish in the future. That journey is just beginning, not ending with this ceremony. I view the ceremony as the starting line for the next phase in her life. My advice to her and her classmates, enjoy the ride.

PS: Monday I  paid my first college tuition bill. There might have been a tear in my eye then.

Writing an obituary.

"Rich Arcuri passed away last weekend from a work related accident on the day before his 50th birthday. He was a good man."

I always sucked at writing so I tried to avoid many (any?) of the writing classes through high school, college, and beyond. By avoiding those classes, I avoided many of the classic writing assignments. One of these classics I avoided was to write an obituary.

I found out last Saturday that Rich Arcuri passed away. I knew Rich through his brother Frank who trains with me from time to time and holds the dubious and distinctive honor of dubbing me "The Rock Star." I've met Rich, the other Arcuri brothers, and many members of their family through Team in Training and many other endurance sports training sessions and races. I consider Frank a friend but only really knew Rich, his younger brother, more as an acquaintance.

My wife and I went to the wake last night. When we got there we saw a line of mourners out the door of the funeral home and wrapped around the perimeter of the parking lot. We joined at the end of the line and, as we waited to go in to pay our respects, we talked with many people from different aspects of our own life that Rich touched. We had no idea how some of them knew Rich and they didn't know how we knew him. Some we talked to were on line waiting to get in, some were exiting, others were in the parking lot just talking in small groups as inside the funeral home was full beyond capacity. My wife and I originally expected to just "stop by" but wound up being there a few hours, most of the time in the parking lot catching up with other mourners. Even so, we weren't able to talk with all the people we wanted to. There just wasn't enough time. There never is for things like this.

Rich was a father. He was a husband. He was a brother. He was an uncle. He was a coach. He was an athlete who finished over 40 marathons. He raised a ton of money for charity. He was a friend. I believe the most important thing about Rich that everyone who knew him knows was that he was loved.When I spoke with Frank he summed up his brother perfectly when he said, "he was a good man."

Sometimes a slant on the traditional obituary writing assignment is not to just write an obituary, but to write your own, or at least what you think your obituary should be. When I read Rich's official obituary in the newspaper, I pondered what mine might say. Writing a hypothetical obituary as part of a writing assignment is very different from writing a real one that celebrates a person's life while at the same time mourns his passing. I hope when mine ultimately gets written I would be considered "a good man" like so many considered Rich. 

Rest in peace.



"We don't aspire to be the low cost alternative."

My daughter Amanda is graduating high school this week with a very impressive high school resume. While her school does not report class rank, we are guessing that she was 7th in her class of just under 400. Her weighted GPA was over 100. Her SAT score was in the top 1%. She earned 13 varsity letters and was a 6 time captain.  She was named to the all New York state string orchestra on violin and was also named to the ASTA National High Honors Orchestra. She has won every music honor awarded by our school district and has been described as debatably the most decorated musician in school history. She has made me and my wife very proud. After a very stressful few months on picking a college, she has decided to continue her studies at Duke University this fall.

Every school determined that we were not going to qualify for need based aid so our only option was merit aid. She found Duke most appealing although other schools offered her much more attractive merit packages with a couple even offering full scholarships. During a recent visit to Duke we scheduled a conversation with the financial aid office. They told us there was no merit options available for her. I explained that Amanda had full ride merit offers and we were still considered those offers. The financial aid officer said "we don't aspire to be the low cost alternative." I guess she had that conversation before with other parents.

Today we got the tuition bill. Luckily we've been saving for a long time and should be able to pay it. I sure hope that Duke will be worth what we are paying. Only time will tell.

Speaking of time, my younger daughter Courtney just completed the 10th grade. She is a very impressive student in her own right. I know I'm not looking forward to paying two college tuition bills in a couple of years. Somehow I'm sure we won't be looking for the "low cost alternative" for Courtney either.

Why blog?

I was in London last week at an off site planning event for work. One of the sessions in this event had to do with the use of an internal social media platform. The theme of this session was that management (aka me and my peers) should take advantage of the capabilities of this platform and blog.

As seemingly always, I had strong opinions on this topic. I felt that I had some experience in this area having written hundreds of blog entries as part of this "world class" triathlon blog.  No one in the event knew of my alternate persona and my mis-adventures in the world of endurance sports. When I explained this many, if not all, were surprised. They were surprised I guess first because of just someone talking about a blog wasn't a traditional topic of conversation but mostly because my physical state does not reflect a typical endurance athlete. Some of my peers tried to find my blog and a few of them were even successful. It was commented that my physical appearance currently vs. my physical appearance in the blog were dramatically different. This difference was not in the positive direction.

I also realized that my blogging has been infrequent at best lately. I thought about this a bit and was wondering if I wasn't blogging because I generally was unmotivated or could blogging more frequently actually translate into increased motivation. Motivation to improve my body composition. Motivation to lose weight. Motivation to get back into shape. Motivation to start somewhere.

I thought of a few decent blog topics to craft so decided I'm going to give this more focus for the summer. There may be less endurance stuff and more life stuff for a while but the mix could change over time. So the answer to "why blog" for me at this time could be "motivation." I know that many of my former followers have changed their social media platform of choice to Instagram or Facebook or Twitter (I'm in many of them too) and not everyone who followed me in the past still are members of the blogosphere. Let's find out who is still there and if this experiment could work.

Game on.

Beiber, musicals and allergies

Last week I was in Miami for a work thing. I won't bore you with the details except that we were in a nice hotel and vendors were sucking up to me. At the beginning of our first meeting, it was announced that Justin Bieber had rented the whole penthouse floor of our hotel so that's why there was a pack of 14 year old girls at the end of the entrance driveway into the hotel cheering as every car arrived. I didn't notice this (perhaps because I'm used to adoration) and I never ran into any of Bieber's entourage although others in my meeting did. I'm still be proud of the fact that I've never consciously listened to any of his songs.

The net of this trip with the 80 degree temperatures, on the beach, with people running on a trail was that I was psyched to exercise when I came home. I nailed a bike workout on Saturday and Sunday I had riding 1:45 on the plan. I woke up a little tired from the first real workout in a while but was going to ride in the afternoon after it warmed up a bit. My wife then told be that she went online and saw available 3rd row tickets to see Les Mis on Broadway that afternoon. There were two seats available.

I hate Les Mis. I believe it is painful to sit through most musicals and Les Mis is one of the worst. She offered to take my youngest daughter instead of me (my older one had a rehearsal herself). Deal! They bought the tickets.

I did my ride, very casually, coasting way too much. There was no rush to get home since the rest of the family was at the play. But this weekend was riding outside as compared to inside at spin classes. The only downside was that it seemed that all seasonal allergies took hold and I'm paying that price now.

I have only one spin class left in my prepaid pack. Maybe I'll use it later this week since the weather is supposed to be bad. There is something wrong with snow in the forecast in April. Sure hope, if I go, there are no Bieber songs at this spin class. Would a Les Mis song be worse? Maybe, maybe not.

Frozen: Top 5 of all Disney movies?

Before the family and I went to Disney World last week, my girls wanted to watch Frozen. They saw it first without me and said it was soooooooo good that even I would like it. So we watched it as a family. Again, for them. First time, for me.

I thought it was OK, just OK. It followed the Disney recipe of somebody dies, turmoil, bad guy loses, cute side kick, resolution of good guy wins, happy ever after, etc.

Both my teenagers said that they thought that Frozen was a top five Disney movie of all time, perhaps even top 3. They asked what I thought.

My first thought was that I obviously have failed as a parent.

Top3? Top5? What are they, nuts? The look of utter amazement on my face gave away my thoughts. Then I then asked which were better.

Having watched Disney movies thousands of times while my kids were younger, I knew Lion King was an easy first choice to be king. The Little Mermaid was part of this world.  I said Fantasia had to be included even though it included the featured the song that all double bassoon players strive to master (both of my children are classical string instrument musicians and have an overt bias against wind instruments). They said they never saw Fantasia. I think I heard Maestro Stokowski conduct a collective groan from the Philadelphia Orchestra.

I asked them what movie, in their mind, competed with Frozen. They agreed with the Lion King and said Mulan was up there too. MULAN? I took a deep breadth, sighed, and said what about the classics: Snow White, Dumbo, Cinderella, and the like. There could be some debate on the Pixar flicks on if they count or not but I put The Incredibles, Toy Story 1 and 2, and Up ahead of Frozen. Their retort was Bugs Life.

I then asked them to get real here. You needed story, songs, etc. They wouldn't admit they were wrong. Frozen. Sigh. They want me to watch it again. And probably again after that. They kept saying Elphaba (Idina Menzel) was a great singer. They kept humming and singing "Do You Want to Make a Snow Man."

So, what say ye? What are your top 5? How do I fix my kids?


PS: While at Disney it was fun to get the Disney "cast members" to make a choice in this debate. Lots of religion in Lake Buena Vista.

Shoe comfort

I have Sasquatch feet. Most of my conventional shoes are american sized 14 with various designations for wide: 4E, XW, or whatever. Sometimes getting non conventional shoes turn into a challenge and cycling shoes fall right into the middle of this challenge but I've generally been successful with some shoes more comfortable than others.

My least comfortable shoes were my mountain bike shoes. They are sized 48 Wide and look like the picture. The spin classes that I've been taking recently require either SPD or Look compatible cleats. My tri and road cycle shoes match my pedals but they are Speed Play since I get the extra long pedal spindles for comfort. So I've been wearing my Specialized mountain bike shoes with the SPDs. The biggest problem is that these shoes have a racheting strap for closure and it seems like my foot is too high for comfort. I felt it was the best I could get given my foot challenges.

I was mindlessly surfing the web and found an extra long strap specifically for these shoes. I ordered them hoping beyond hope and found that with the longer strap, these are now comfortable.

Celebrating these little things like this makes me happy.

Also, I now have one less excuse to avoid these classes so I might need to increase my class attendance frequency from 2x a week to 3x a week.  Better would be to ride outside but there is still about a foot of snow on most of the ground covering up what looks like a world class collection of potholes. That being said, most of the bike clubs are targeting group rides starting on March 1 for the early season centuries. Maybe I should train for and potentially do one since if I could knock out a hundred I'm probably not in as bad shape as I think I am.

At least these shoes are comfortable now.

A Different Type of Spin Class

I've been taking a lot of Soul Cycle spin classes lately. What is Soul Cycle you ask? Well, I describe it as the scene in Wayne's World where they are singing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and bopping their heads but on spin bikes. At high cadence. With a bunch of twenty something yuppies and a few, very few, post child rearing aged fogies. In the dark. With candles. And incense. Listening to blasting techno music you mostly never heard of. Except the requisite Beyonce' song. Where you take a break by using weights. Embarrassed by using only 1 pound dumb bells because the others are just too heavy. Did I say the classes were expensive? They are located in only the seemingly rich areas of New York metro and California (I have to drive a bit). The parking lot has too many Porsches and Land Rovers. They aren't mine.

So, why am I doing it? Although there are all sorts of challenges in social media about problems snagging a bike due to the demand, the class times that work for me (very late or very early) don't seem to have that issue. It gets me out of the house since I have to basically pay in advance and I'm so cheap I would dread to lose the money. The weather has sucked recently so it gets me some exercise. Some, not a lot. Not enough for a 70.3. But more than none.

I'm almost able to do all the choreography, yes choreography is included. The teachers are not taking as much pity on the old fat guy in the back row as they did before. The weather must be changing soon so I can ride outside. It better.

What do you do with good, old "stuff?"

I recently visited the Apple Store on behalf of my daughter Courtney. Courtney has a MacBook laptop. She recently bought a protective cover for so that when she puts it in a backpack, it doesn't get smushed into MacBook fragments, parts or even apple dust. Her school recently changed its policy and now kids can bring laptops to school. Too bad she brought the wrong size and needed it exchanged. Somehow that became my wife's job. I was just along for the ride.

When we got to the store, I looked around to see what was new. I'm typically an early adopter of technology in work and in life. My family is generally early adopters as well but they are much more believers in the Gospel of Apple. My wife went to see if they had the right size cover (our primary mission) while I looked around.

In my recent travels, and they have been many, I noticed that since the airlines have relaxed their rules regarding on board electronics, more people seem to be traveling with ipods. Not iphones, ipads, or laptops but plain old ipods. I wanted to look at them to see what had changed since I was using them while training a long, long time ago. Since training is hopefully ramping up, I need one. The new ones looked cool and cost less that I expected but I realized I probably had old ones home so I didn't buy anything. Neither did my wife as they didn't have the right cover size so our trip was a fail.

I went home to look for my old stuff. I found 3 ipod shuffles, and old Iphone that has hundreds of songs loaded, 2 nano, and a couple of  ipod touches. I found no headphones. I had to search for power cords and adapters but found a few that worked. I tested the shuffles and found all powered on. The first one worked.

I got my day to day headphones and used the first while walked a bit outside this morning. It felt a little like real life deja vu  but everything, including my body, worked. A good sign.

I'm still collecting our remaining istuff to figure out which would be ijunk and which could be ifunctional. I haven't even started on old computers yet. We tried to donate old computers in the past and most charities don't want them. I know that some will take tablets (aka ipads) but don't know of any that want ipods.

At sometime I'll need to figure out when do I buy the new stuff. Until then, I'm good with this old stuff. Maybe I should keep track of what I'm not spending to rationalize spending it on something else. Perhaps some time to make these blog posts more frequent?

Yup, that'll work.