Fitness

I'm making progress in my fitness. Many people pay good money to work out at a gym by getting a high paying job which requires them to sit still all day. I have a modest paying job which is like working out at a gym for 8 hours a day. I am slimming down too. Lower fat foods, smaller portions, and my belly is getting more trim for the first time in years. It helps that I don't eat breakfast and barely eat lunch and dinners are half the size they used to be.

Now that the rains have transitioned into summer thundershowers, oddly enough, with afternoon thunderheads visible Every Day, I can really bicycle to work after all.

Dad and I went to a big-box mass quantities store in Roseville after visiting my aunt. I looked at their frozen food options and said "Nope!". I just can't see eating meat and melted cheese wrapped in dough as appetizing. I gave up Pizza ten years ago. I guess giving up quesadillas is my next quest. They don't seen appetizing. Even the potato chips I eat for snacks are healthier because I can counter the carbs with insulin and I'm actually using them immediately so I have lower sugars overall, anyway. I will probably start eating chips at 4 PM, giving myself an hour to raise my sugars before I head home up that 600 foot climb. Its better than fatty foods.

My coworker who'd made broad promises as a hiking partner is always busy and hasn't provided a phone number or home email I can reach her with so I guess that was an insincere offer, or one she quietly retracted after finding me annoying or short tempered (I am when I'm stressed). Oh well. Whatever. Dad and I can hike. I'm looking forward to the snow melting in the high country. I want to visit Sardine Lake again. Maybe hike up to Upper Sardine Lake since I've never actually been to that one. Just Lower.

Lower Sardine Lake

I can't say I'm too excited about downhill mountain bike riding anyway, having done it and finding its really unsafe. As I don't have health insurance, I plan to skip that. Not that motorcycle is safe either, but the way I drive, if I ride equally cautious I should be equally fine. 

Seats One. 

I wish I could get the Deus or even the Kawasaki W650 for a motorcycle ride up there for the day, maybe with a deli sandwich and some iced tea and cookies. Ride up, stop often, sit still by the lake and just contemplate the peace and quiet of the northern end of the Sierras, imagine the Glacier that used to sit there. 

Kinda like this: Fitz-Roy Glacier, Patagonia.

Wonder how long before the glacier reforms and starts scraping this all away again. A few decades? A century? I really enjoy picturing that. No woman is going to sit still for that unless she's a geologist herself and having dated two of those, I can say their ambitions run at different speed from mine. Incompatible ambition is one of those Irreconcilable Differences. 

If I am fortunate enough to live long enough to pass the bio-event horizon and reach human immortality, something considered to be hypothetically possible if we can decode and defeat both cancer and the cellular suicide gene(s), then I very well may get to watch the glaciers come back. Babysitting a glacier would be very interesting to me. But I'm a geologist. We like our rocks, and our rock shaping processes. Science is more interesting than religion. Science can be proven and duplicated. Religion is hearsay. And denial. LOTS of denial. 

There are many trails in the northern Sierra I haven't been to yet. Places which are good for Dad to walk in as well. I kind wish I owned a trailer, like an airstream I could restore, and turn into a really comfy place to sleep by the trailhead. 

Its more trouble than a motel, true, but I could spend a week in a place, just soaking in the atmosphere and when I've hiked enough, leave. Being a snowbird has some appeal for my retirement one day. 

Here's an example of the road quality, by someone else bicycling. Not the best roads or surfaces. Not horrible, depending on day and traffic, but definitely rough. I try to imagine what this place would be like post-oil, Post-Dollar, and post-socialism and there's no reason for it to exist. It doesn't make sense. For now, its a roof and a job and basic food. Someday I will broaden my horizons, leave town, and try not to make any friends. My solitude is valuable. Other people are far more likely to hurt me than I am myself. In solitude, I can be myself without other's expectations getting in the way. And without their broken promises or insincerity. 

Airstream Sport

This one looks big enough for my needs, even for extended time. When I leave with my things sold off and the bare minimum in a trailer behind my chosen tow vehicle, I will not look back. I will find pleasant streams and fish for dinner. I will photograph the dawn light and the wildflowers and I will listen to the peace and quiet of abandoned places and find some calm to replace this spinning hamster-wheel of inevitable disappointment my whole life has been. 

For now I will bicycle and try and find my peace in mindless work. When I have more time on the weekend I will hike. Bike and hike enough times and I'll be thinner and fitter than ever before. Almost like when I was a runner, or back when I hiked for geology in Montana. This is my fitness plan. Not a gym. Not social interaction. Certainly not dinner parties with my father's friends. I'm pretty far opposed to obligations. I prefer being alone to being polite. Does that make me a terrible person? Do I care about a socialist society which expects my gratitude when it robs me or demands my obedience? I already know I'm unfit as a husband, and unfit as a boyfriend and unfit as a lover. I don't get to have those things. But that doesn't mean I welcome paying for people who do nothing else. I've got words for that: