Day 8.129 First Friday Notes

Answer to yesterday's flash quiz is below.

First Friday notes:

1) The GOP is a joke. And not a funny one. These bigoted blowhards have big bucks and truckloads of political equity. There remains people who genuinely buy into their befuddling brand of bias, hypocrisy and fear mongering. If you are reading this and in the 1% that manipulates the strings on these pathetic political puppets, please drop dead (but not before funding my latest project - one that promises to keep your indentured domestic work force healthy and distracted).

2) Tomorrow is the first day of the 2015 college football session. I am a happy guy. The UW Huskies are 500-1 longshots to win the NC. With a wager smaller in size than my bi-weekly renumeration from professional spinning services, should the Dawgs sniff out some Coach Pete magic and snarl more and wag less, I could retire comfortably in the colline d' italia or Kona (pic) for the remainder of my days. Assuming they will end somewhere between 2008's 0-11 debacle and the NC year of 1991, I will enjoy watching these young, talented, yet inexperienced, pups morph into menacing Mountlake duck-mauling mammals. WOOF!

3) I finished watching (third time) the first season of 24 last night. There is a very simple reason why. It is good. I went almost 30 years without watching TV. That was network TV, you know - crap. Lots has changed over the course of that three decades. You already know this. I will plead indifference to my many good-intentioned friends who insist that The Wire, Game of Thrones, West Wing or Breaking Bad is superior entertainment. You may be right. You probably are. But I don't care. Much like The Godfather, Lord of the Rings or the Bond franchise, I am a student of this specific game. After watching all nine seasons twice I am now, at last, seeing the fine line of belief suspension stretched thin. They aren't perfect. There are painful moments of tortuous dialogue (Sherry Palmer, Terry & Kim Bauer, Victor Drazen) from which not even Dennis Hopper could escape. But in every scene, every time, Jack saves the day. The fun is in the ways and means he carries out the impossible task du jour. Jack has morals. He is loyal. He is a good soldier. He is fearless. He is flawed. He will do whatever it takes to accomplish the mission. I like that.

4) Doing a photo session today of the house in which I currently live. To put it on the market. It is my brothers place. He worked his butt off to buy and build. I wish it could have been a 'happily ever after' home, but it was not to be. I will link the FSBO Craig's List post once I have all the pieces together. Another longshot.

Answer to yesterday's flash quiz: Nothing.

Day 8.128 Name That Thing

No rhyme and no reason.

That I can deduce in comparing my notes, logs and files with the print-out.

Yesterday was my ten month check-up with the UW cardiology team. Data was downloaded from the pacer, an amazing technological function in and by itself, but staggeringly important when considering the facts.

The smaller than a mouse device not only samples and then corrects, the electronic nodal conductivity keeping my heart (yours does it automatically) beating in sinus rhythm, but records it as well.

You want a flash quiz to illustrate the robust complexity of all this?

The MEDTRONIC MVP pacemaker is set to keep my HR above 70bpm. Without it, Bradycardia and my preference for endurance sports training and racing, would send that rate plummeting down to the high 30's. That is an additional 40 beats per minute at metabolic rate. I have no limits on the top end, and have seen my max go from post-op 142 to 150 since returning to 'work'.

OK so here is the quiz:

Let use 70 as the metabolic number of beats and add an average of 100 (three hours yesterday were at 130), to get the daily beat count. I am going to guesstimate it at 90. That totals 2,160/day.

For the sake of adding some complexity, atrial fibrillation, especially chronic, makes the math almost impossible to calculate, accurately. Because it is not regular. Even at a resting HR, in a controllable situation, the poor bastards stricken with it can see fluctuations ranging 50 or more beats. It is not uncommon to see tachycardia a-fibbers go from 80 to 210 in a few seconds. Yikes!

So let's round it off again to a manageable 2K.
That is 14K a week and 56K a month.

Making data collection more interesting and dynamic is the fact that each of those 56,000 beats is recorded in four ways, the uptake, the peak, the rate of recovery and the time of recovery. So each beat has four parts.

Giving us some 224,000 data bits in any given month.

I am getting tired just thinking about all this. And I my have omitted few important details altogether.
Regardless, the pacer records it all. When we download it (I chose to do it without anethesia and cognizant - a trick I learned from Jack Bauer) the chart looks like sound waves compressed from a Mussorgsky symphony to one inch of screen space.

Yet the talented cardiology team can read it like we read comics in the Seattle Times.

In the time since the last download I have gone into a-fib a total of 7 times, with the longest lasting 4 hours and 44 minutes.

My log and records confirm that I was doing the same thing each time this cardiac event took place, research I find fascinating. So then, with or without rhyme;

Name that thing.

Day 8.127 Full

0400 Rise & Shine
0530 Spin set
0845 Spin set II
1220 Boat to Seattle
1345 Appointment at UW MED (more on that tomorrow)
1845 Spin set III
2040 Three commutes by moto. The streak is alive!

And I? Barely. See you tomorrow.

Day 8.126 Gotta Do This

Gotta do this.

I keep thinking about time. Time passed, current time and time remaining. There are things I would like to accomplish prior to whatever happens when my heart fades (or reverse crescendos) to its final beat (a transition I rehearsed last night).

There is not a damn thing I can do about the events of the past. Except for tweaking the way that I look back upon them. I can, and I will, give my best effort to keeping focused and present today, now and right here. Time remaining? That is the fun part. And I feel I have an obligation to my soul to maximize the value of whatever time remains. To procrastinate is to die.

I really don't like the 'bucket list' concept. It is too morose and too trite for simple tastes. And mine ARE simple.

I do, however, LOVE the idea of doing what I want to do. Living with abandon. Getting out and mixing it up with life. Setting a course for the winds that fill my sails. If I go off-route, run out of food or scrape a knee, so be it. I like the adventure. I like the freedom and I like the challenge. There is really no such thing as being lost is one listens to the compass of the soul. True North.

The challenge is keeping myself emotionally in the game. There has to be equal (approximate) elements of mind, body and spirit.

It is very simple. Go and do. And so it goes.

The latest:

Crater Lake, Oregon.

The rim ride is 33 miles from Park Service HQ.

Depart Seattle (BI) Wednesday, August 19 @ noon.

425 miles (4.5 hrs) to Eugene. Paint town purple and gold in a nice way. Motel.

Thursday, Aug 20 drive from Eugene to Crater Lake (2.5 hrs)

Ride the rim. (clockwise)

Post ride, drive to Medford, OR (1.5 hrs) Dinner and Motel.

Friday, Aug 21 Drive from Medford to Crater Lake.

Ride the rim (counterclockwise)

After second rim ride Friday, depart CL for Seattle (6.5 hrs) Home by 1900.

Epic adventure for intrepid Argonauts and all PBers.

Day 8.125 Then There Is

A few years back we conducted a protocol that spanned an entire quarter. Three days a week for three months.

I called it The Mountain.

It was a focused and consistent progressive indoor cycling experiment. We started fast and finished strong. Wherever those places were found on each athletes physical fitness timeline - a rough way of saying - do your best, where you are with what you've got - we began. In earnest.

The outline is a simple one that I borrowed from a famous Zen proverb. So popular, in fact, that it became the lyrical accompaniment for a couple of rock tunes. Here is the hook:

First there is a mountain,
Then there is no mountain,
There there is.

From Donavan P. Leitch to the Alman Brothers, and of course, the Dead, we have long pondered the meaning of these sparse but juicy lines. Sometimes we ponder with folk, sometimes with the blues and often with rock.

My take is this (with apologies to DT Suzuki): When we begin an endeavor there is challenge. We are not sure it - whatever IT is - can be done. Think marathon or Ironman or Grand Fondo here. That is the uphill struggle associated with its accomplishment. It can seem Sisyphean At first. We begin, committed to the process along the path.

Soon a strange and wonderful, miraculous and magical thing happens if you are dedicated and disciplined enough to keep your eyes on the prize. Suddenly one beautiful day, the mountain is gone. The run, ride, swim or challenge is gone. You have flattened it out through your hard work and your powerfully positive attitude. You now see the results of your labour. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and you are elated with this new gratifying topography. There is no mountain. You have earned the flat.

I would love to announce that this is the end of the story. But it ain't. Because once you have earned the flat, removed the mirage of the mountain keeping you from your goals, climbed it simply because it is here, adapted mind, body and spirit to the obtainment of your lofty goals, and flattened the course figuratively, metaphorically and metaphysically, you face this:

Another mountain. A bigger challenge. More work. Smarter work. Work with a smile, teeth grinning vice grinding. Your heart knows this as well as your spirit. Don't worry, it won't take long before our head figures it out too. And THAT my dear friends, is a major moment.

When your head, heart and humanity (mind, body and spirit) are all in harmonious alignment, YOU CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS.

First there is a mountain,
then there is no mountain,
then there is.

What are you experiencing today?

Day 8.124 Laundry for Free

I am doing laundry.

Not a chore that I enjoy.

It is Sunday afternoon, we started the day at 0600, drove 50 miles, offloaded our bikes, rode 36 challenging miles, 17 up the ridge the hardest, got stuck in open bridge traffic (again) on the way, but made it in one, smelly and fatigued piece, home.

And then this.

I have nothing clean to wear for our 0530 spin class tomorrow. I go through 15 kits a week.  If I don't do it, nothing gets cleaned. We do not fold.

Amazon.com's drone service notwithstanding, I have few options.

I collect quarters from my change tray, grab the dirty clothes bin and head out.

This moment I am 16:10 into the wash cycle.

I come to this laundry mat for a couple of reasons. It is still relatively cheap (2.25 per load) and whoever the owner is, he, or she, has decorated the walls with images from a tropical paradise, roughly six degrees south of the equator, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. God Bless.

Every time I come here to sit & spin I look at the murals and drift back to those good old days.

Fifteen years has gone by, but not a single one of those days has passed without some reminder of that incredible experience.

There was purpose, there was effort, there was teamwork, there was camaraderie. We used to say, One Team - One Mission. We were the footprint of freedom. We rocked.

It was my job to balance the military tension with R&R. That meant morale, welfare and recreation. That was my job. Provide for the troops. Try to keep them in the gym vice on a bar stool.

And I loved every minute of it despite the oppressive and relentless scrutiny of a division known as Navy Quality Assurance Evaluators, whose only job it was to grade the way that I managed, and later directed, the entire department.

This grade so that the American taxpayers could rest comfortable and secure in the knowledge that DOD dollars were being spent well.

In this case, I believe that they were.

But I still miss doing laundry every Sunday night for free.

Day 8.213 WOOF

I will tell you something now that you probably already know.

When we started this internet literary fiasco over eight years and 2,300 posts ago (an era now recognized the good old days), I had a plan. Not perfectly crisp and in the focused cross-hairs of my altruistic vision, but something new, different and for me anyway, disciplined and autobiographically exciting - in a non hedonistic manner of course.

I was mentored in college by a creative writing teacher who suggested that when struck with writer's block, go with what you know.

At the time, the early seventies when we called blogging journaling, that advice would have seen me limited to a very few items.

In 1972 all I really knew was baseball, music and girls. Almost sounds like a Beach Boys chorus.

My 1973 the list had been pared to the latter two. My baseball career was officially over. I had walked away.

In 1974 some interesting items joined the parade. Travel, adventure and literature. That is not to say that music and girls lost their priority ranking, more that they were now augmented by life on the road. That magical augmentation.

In 1975 I got married. I was on my way to winter in Mexico after a year in the orchard.

In 1979 the marriage was over. I might try to explain the what and whys at a later date, but today is reserved for something else.

We had moved back to Southern California, to enter the auto parts business with her family as a last ditch attempt to salvage what was so obviously a fait accompli.

I flew back to Settle on the day Mt St Helens erupted on May 17, 1980.

I have been here ever since with stops in Rome, Paris, OZ, UK, Spain, Cyprus, Mauritius, Norway, Alaska, Alabama and Asia. I also spent the better part of the nineties on a coral atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

In 1984 I went to a University of Washington football game.

It change my life.

In 1990 my girlfriend, whom I adored, called me one-dimensional. She insisted that my entire existence was about sports. But I'm in the sports publishing business and being caught-up, ahead of the curve-ball so to speak, is what makes me good at what they pay me to do, which is how I am able to pay for this expensive French dinner and $25 bottle of Bordeaux, darling.

She came up with a solution.

If you desire to continue in this relationship (we made eye contact and nodded affirmatively) then you need to move a little out of your cultural comfort zone. There is art, language, ballet, gastronomical celebration, water skiing and horticulture all waiting for you. And me too, she said, not wanting, I think, to end her opening  remarks in the category of weeds.

To say that I was amused with her assessment and subsequent good-natured ultimatum, would truly be understatement.

My sweet angel, what dost thou suggest?

You can keep one.

One? One what?

One team. In one sport. All others are toast. We will replace your considerable time spend in fandom with quality time of the trail of culture. Together, you and me.

But, but, but, but, but……..

No buts.

I took a deep breath, wondering if it might be my last inhale of freedom and exhale of independence.

I heard a voice inside plead and beg. I looked in her sky-blue eyes and saw that she was as serious as death and taxes.

Ugh, well, OK.

Which team?

NOW? I have to choose now? Can't a do-up a report and take all this just a touch slower?

I don't think so. Needs to be now.

Well.

You in?

Yes.

What team?