Ever Stop to Think...

...and forget to start again? That is the way the holidays are beginning to make me feel.Discombobulated. A semi arrives tomorrow and disgorges my son's life. We will do triage on the pavement. There will be things that go to the new home. Things that go in the basement. Things that go to the curb. There will be much heavy lifting ( with good posture of course). Then there will be collard chips, to keep the team intact. There is nothing better than collard chips: fresh pieces of collards sprayed with olive oil, dusted in Parmesan, sprinkled with rock salt, microwaved for five minutes. YUM !

Connecting at the Crossroads

I dream of pedestrian communities stitched together with bike paths. Tonight at 7:30 I was biking down C. Street laden with bags of CSA collards and warm bread when someone called my name. It was a friend who was out walking a dog she had promoted from foster dog to family dog. The dog was fluffy white and a bit spooked by my flashing red night lights and my neon jacket. Then I heard a second familiar voice and saw a second dog walker. The five of us met in the middle of the street and exchanged info while the dogs sniffed one another in delight. Get folks out of their cars and connections happen. Dogs encourage connection. Biking encourages connection. Tonight was spokal networking at its finest.

Raining On the Asphalt and in My Chest

Bad cold. I feel like I am breathing silk. Still, life goes on. I have a board meeting in San Marco at noon and in rain that mean I must USE THE CAR. The giant silver Buick encapsulates me and amuses me with NPR report on the global food shortage. I lumber across the Acosta Bridge and slide into my parking spot. After the meeting, I swim home. Then...wonder of wonders....the sky clears. I walk the miles to Lakeshore Cycle shop and pick up my new bike with the wonderful collapsible baskets. It is silver and responses to my slightest movements. It almost feels as if I am riding Cinders again the volatile bay quarter horse who threw my friend Carol under the semi. Sitting on him was always something that required my constant attention. One daydreaming moment and I would have been roadkill. Urban biking has some of that same feel.

Some have Psychiatrists Robert Redford has Utah

Still on nursing duty in the high country. The patient is improving slowly. Sister G has flown in from Florida to assist in patient care. In the afternoons I walk or bike for items to prepare for dinner. The mountains rise in the east like a movie set. Spandex bikers zoom by, heads down, legs pumping. Joggers trot by with the universal grimace. Tonight is supposed to be the last night of good weather. Snow blows in tomorrow. The Florida girl in me is apprehensive about navigating in the white fluff. I remember running in it years ago and falling down when the snow clogged my cleats.

Gatorade in the Baby's Bottle

Treking into the Utah clouds up to a gin clear lake in Big Cottonwood Canyon, I am reminded of a statement in a recent NPR interview with a Utah native, " We are born into the athletic caste. Our first bottles are filled with Gatorade."

I think for some residents in this state, that statement might hold true. While hiking, ROF and I were passed by packs of polite mountain bikers, a few surly marathoners, and two greying Leki pole users. At Dog Lake,our day's destination, a toddler was padding along in the alluvial mud. Her model thin mother scooped her up and told me, " This is her third time up here."

I didn't check the bottle.

They Shimmered Like Silver Coins in the Sunset

Biking along behind St. Vincent's Hospital around 6:00 P.M., I was suddenly amazed to see hundreds of palm sized mullet leaping into the air and heading south toward NAS. I have seen individual mullet leap many times and my son has always told me the mullet are trying to get away from something that is trying to eat them. This scene did not feel like the mullet were trying to escape a a predator. The school resembled a corps de ballet. The movements were somehow synchronized. The fish arced into the air and rose again a few feet downstream. Then the entire school slalomed through the crab pots and headed south. Each fish was rising and falling and making a hand clapping sound as it hit the silver water. Overhead, the cartwheeling sea gulls provided a type of motorcycle escort for the aquatic parade.

Once again, bike riding has provided me with a sensory sensation I would have missed inside the faithful Buick.

Deluge and Dieties

There are moments when the PIE- peace person in commuter cyclist mode, challenges the gods and the gods win. Yesterday, pedaling to the YMCA for an appointment, the sky was dark. Not that dark I thought. Entering Riverside Park, the sky was ebony; the winds were howling. I can make it I thought. I didn't. Correction, I did make it. I walked into the Yates foyer with rainwater streaming off every part of my body. Wrapping myself in two warm towels, I climbed the steps to the ladies' locker room, stripped off the sodden garments, wrung them out over a sink and used a hairdryer to dry them as much as I could before my appointment in the dungeon. Dear Matt, the dungeon warden, let me borrow his own shirt for the workout. Life is good.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes ( and Nose)

This morning the smoke has annihilated San Marco. I watched it puff in gradually as I was putting collard seeds in the garden. Some P.I.E. exercise there. I lugged the requisite bags of 50 lb.Black Cow to practice my basic dead lifting. I pulled in the miles of hose which replicates a move Jane Fonda taught us in the 80's. Of course, in her videos she was wearing sparkly tights while I'm wearing my older son's gym shorts. I think Jane would understand. She's older now too.

I could have double dug the collards thereby using my biceps,but I didn't. I drug a piece of copper pipe to make a shallow trench and filled it with my Vates collard seeds. These are the first seeds I have ever gathered myself, so I don't have a lot of germination faith. We'll see.

My long bike ride will be this afternoon. It will only add about five miles to my IFWA( If fish were anthropologists..) total which is now 35 miles. I want to bike 3,000 miles to tell myself that I really could bike across America if I didn't have other things to do. Of course, I know this is a major fantasy. Real biking across the USA requires serious spandex plus crossing major mountains. My biggest challenge is the Roosevelt Bridge. :-)

I'm P.I.E. not DUI

It happened again. The elegant little lady whispered the question to me in the Garden Club's driveway. " Victoria, when do you get your license back?" This time I was ready with an answer, unlike the first time that puzzling question appeared. I explained to her that I HAD a bona fide drivers' license. It had never been taken away for alcoholic indiscretion.

I understood that in her experience there were only a few categories of regular urban bikers. There were the wolfpack bikers who zoom by in spandex and reflector shades and the folks who had lost their license. Of course, there were the occasional Gen X riders on one speed steeds and the Yuppie family out for a lark on beach cruisers, but I was obviously not in either of those groups.

Isn't it sad that there are so few folks who use bikes as their regular transport that anyone who rides regularly is suspect? I tried to explain that I was a P.I.E person, someone who personally integrated exercise into real life. I walk, carry buckets of water and lift huge sacks of cow manure in the garden. As David Reynolds, my teacher, was fond of saying, " Effort is good fortune." I believe that. I truly do.

Tongue Tied ( For a moment anyway)

Another biking hazard besides Suburban Assault Vehicle drivers texting angry messages to dog sitters. The hazard is a wasp in the mouth. I was biking home from a family wedding and turned to tell my beloved how much I enjoyed the event, when gag. A crispy winged something flew onto my tongue. I spit it out but not before it buried his stinger in the right side of my tongue which began to swell until it felt like someone had slit it and had sewn a marble into it. I biked on home and made a banana smoothie...the long hallowed, cold treatment. It worked. The marble is now an English pea.

Biking in the Bold City Sauna

Twice today, I biked across the mighty St. Johns in 92+ degree heat. My clothes stuck to my body. The air felt like I was inhaling silk. I made it to my dermatologist on time. He had been in Tonga swimming with the humpback whales. I guess excitement varies for individuals.

Take Good Care of My Baby

More than a song by Bobby Vee, it is the whispered hope of the grandmother when she sees the grandchildren paddle off onto the vast St. Johns in a red canoe. True, their dad is at the stern and their grandfather at the helm. True, a canoe is great non-petrol transport. All true. Still, I wait with the mom on the bulkhead until they return from the visit to Aunt Nancy. They have had a memorable afternoon. It must not have been too terrifying because one of them lay down and went to sleep in the canoe. I read somewhere that no child feels fear until s/he sees it on the face of the mother ( grandmother?) I don't want them to know how fearful I am. I smile.

Love the chambered nautilus bench tucked deep in the garden. I have true prospect and reach on this bench. The camphor is covering my head and yet I can see for miles over the yard and down river. My beloved book The Pattern Language says humans were formed on the African Savanna and always want to be in a place they can been covered and see afar. I agree. When Chester the Wonder Cat comes stalking, and the Mexican petunias part, I know he is coming. Thousands of years ago it was someone with my past DNA watching for the golden lions with the long, sharp teeth. The great cycle continues, even if the lion has been miniaturized by time.

Take a Hike!

According to Dr. Philip Wu, a pediatrician at Kaiser Permanente, " Mile for mile, you burn as many calories walking as you would jogging, but with far less stress on your joints." And walking makes your carbon footprint smaller in terms of green house gas emissions.

Of course nothing is simple. According to British scientist Chris Goodall, walking burns more calories, but those calories are typically replaced by eating beef, an energy-intensive food that must be fed, watered, slaughtered, and transported thus creating emissions exceeded the exhaust produced by a reasonably fuel-efficient car.

Goodall conveniently forgot to include the emissions incurred by getting the gas to the gas tank which includes pumping crude oil out of the ground and refining it. An analysis by California's Pacific Institute using more data concluded that, for someone eating the average US diet, walking a mile and a half generates 230 grams of carbon dioxide--less than one quarter the 1000 grams of the carbon exuded by driving the auto.

Lauren O.Foster, author of a walking guidebook of Portland, Oregon,makes a case for walking's psychological benefits,"In a car, people are basically an obstacle. Walking you notice how much time and energy folks put into their property and their homes."

In addition, you have a chance for some spokal networking, chance conversations with folks known and unknown that weave the fabric of the neighborhood. At least that is the truth for me. I've had more and longer conversations while walking or biking than I had in the three decades I was car bound in Riverside Avondale.

Glass Tire Spikes

On a five miler today down a busy bike path to IFAS I noticed that the bike path was covered with the glass of deceased headlights, so I went up on the sidewalk. How sad that some bike paths aren't swept at all which renders them somewhat unusable.ROF has replaced his tires twice in less than a year.

Later, I biked to the John Gorrie for orientation on RAP's Saturday fundraiser. There was a discussion about limited parking for the event. I am still puzzled why folks will rev up their 2,000 lb.aluminum and plastic sarcophagus rather than walk or ride. Margaret Meade said, "If fish were anthropologists, the last thing they would discover would be water." I have always used that quote to explain obvious opacity.

As a culture, we are fat, depressed, economically distraught and worried about the environmental degradation from an excess of spewed carbon. Walking and/or biking solves almost all of these problems. Why can't we see this??????

In the D.C. budget smackdown,John Mica is removing all of the dollars for alternative transportation. It looks like we must widen highways a process we know creates additional gridlock. Sadness.

Gardening Exercise

Another one of my personally integrated exercise favorites is gardening. Done mindfully, I can get as much exercise as I do from a good yoga session,( and more basil.) Seriously, I have learned to integrate various yoga postures into gardening. Warrior one gets me over the weed bed and I can use Triangle to extract the weeds themselves. At the more mundane level, pulling a lot of the weeds always reminds me of the old Jane Fonda videos, except she wore color coordinated leotards and I wear my husband's teeshirts.

Snacks for 40 in a Cart

Zoomed down MacDuff Avenue today with my trusty Action Packer cart filled with pear muffins, freshly baked pear bread, organic apples, cheese and organic carrots. Determined to start Master Gardener Snack time on a nutritious note. The rest of the team answered the call and the tables were full of fresh veggies, black bean hummus and fresh fruit.
The cart tracks well and the bike path is a good one. I can make it to IFAS in 15 minutes pedaling at moderate speed.

No I Didn't Get a DUI

Tuesday a lovely,elderly soul genteelly inquired about my getting my driver's license back. I was confused by her question. She explained that since I rode my bike everywhere, even to the Cathedral on Sundays that she assumed I must have lost my license. Then I understood. In my neighborhood, it is OK to be a spandex rider on a bike with skinny tires, but since I was dressed in civilian attire on a bike with fat tires, I must have lost my license for that is the only possible reason I would not be driving. Southern ladies drive SUV's not Schwinn's.

What a strange world.

GROW

The Grow goddess on the river lawn reminds me that Gratitude Really (is the) Only Way. Today, I was zooming along the bike path on MacDuff thinking I was doing it all myself and wasn't I wonderful to be biking rather than trapped in the aluminum tanks. Something reminded me that that was bogus cerebration. Someone laid the asphalt and painted the white stripe; someone grew the veggies that gave me the energy to pedal; someone designed, built, and assembled my trusty bike. Someone gave me the Neon Mormon jacket and the black pants. My eyesight was improved thanks to Dr. Wayne Wood. My teeshirt was Robo's. Very little was mine in the the true sense. Why is it so hard to remember that?????

How the Mighty Have Fallen

Today, after the ADA meeting on historic properties at First Guaranty, I rode back home thinking about retrofitting problems. My deep reverie was broken on Oak Street by B. calling my name. I responded by twisting the handlebars too quickly and the next thing I knew I was down on the asphalt for my third biker fall in three years. The first was in front of St. V's ER when I was pulling the grocery cart for the first time. The second was the result of a too quick right hand turn to ogle some well used garden urbanite. That fall caused a Navy pilot to run to my aid. Today's fall caused my friend to run from his house thinking I was seriously wounded. I wasn't. Total damage was one broken nail.

Upon reflection, I think I have been saved from more serious injury these three times because I have been helmet faithful. In all three incidents, I banged my head fairly hard, but didn't even have a headache because of the protection provided by the helmet.

Sometimes when I remember that no one in Tokyo wore a helmet, no one in Spain or France did either, I am tempted to omit my cranium cover. Thank heavens I didn't do that today.

Greenway Tears

When I celebrated my Medicare birthday, I wanted to mark the event in some fashion. I elected to bike 230 miles with the East Coast Greenway folks. These are the visionaries who are attempting to build a cycling analogue to the Appalachian Trail. They have actually roughed out a section from Key West to Maine. Granted much of it is on major highways, but some of it is on trails, rail and otherwise. The trip was demanding especially the 40 mile introductory leg through the Hastings potato fields. The moment I will never forget is when an octogenarian cycled past and said, " It's OK to cry, Victoria, but you have to keep pedaling." That is the kind of wisdom I need.

Flat Tire Odyssey

My husband's bike tire is flat and he has an appointment with a friend to hit dimpled balls. I walk the flat tire to Open Road for Ed, the bike magician, to fix. He looks like a literature professor with his shock of white hair and glasses on the tip of his nose. He peers at the tire and begins to take tiny piece of glass out of it with a special implement that resembles a darning needle. He kids me about hanging out behind bars.Into the shop comes a friend who needs to have her seat raised so that her knees will not be hurt as she prepares for the MS-150, an 80 mile ride. She did it years ago and now wants to try again.

When Ed hands me back the tire, I walk out and take a side trip to a friend's garden. It is an urban oasis complete with a poetry kiosk. They have friends from out of town staying with them and all of them are roasting coffee beans in a popcorn popper. Four kinds of beans from four different parts of the world. The house smells like a Starbucks.

Going home I find my friend outside her home considering an entirely new bike. She is sitting on it fingering the price tag.We look at her new landscaping and I walk on.Suddenly, I hear my name. Across the street a former student is standing with his daughter. He tells me he has just returned from Maine where he met another former student of mine. The man he mentions was in my class almost forty years ago but still remembers me fondly. The fact that he remembers me causes me to smile.

I head on home. Once again, because I have not been in my car, I have had three interactions I might not have had otherwise. The fabric of community has been woven just a little tighter. Plus, I've had a decent aerobic interval complete with weight bearing points.

What is PIE PEACE?

This less than deathless prose is not about pies, key lime or otherwise ! PIE is an acronym that stands for Personally Integrated Exercise. Peace is not an acronym. It is that energetic, do the next right thing feeling that exercise provides.

First, some background.For fifty eight years, I lived the life that my culture encouraged . I had a successful career, produced two beautiful boys,took exercise classes, ran distance, divorced, remarried,concocted great vinaigrette etc.

I lived on the same street in three different houses for thirty years. There were some bumps in the life road but, on the whole, they were speed bumps not barricades. When I turned 63, I gave my car away.

The give away was not altruism. Granted, my younger son needed a car. But,it was easy to give up my Gator blue CRV partially due to the fact I live in a 1920's neighborhood that was designed before cars had the upper hand. I can walk to the ER as well as to grocery stores and world class restaurants.

I think the real impetus was my long time interest in the legend on the old maps" Pass this there be dragons". I have always loved the slight unknown and have found the biggest adventure occurs when I stretch my personal limits.Now, being a woman who came of age in the 1950's, my limits were very well defined. Numerous Thou shall not's etc.

As a woman in her sixties, I have the sense that there is less time to explore limits, more of the sand in in the bottom of the hourglass. I am not being morbid,simply factual. My people are not long lived folks. I am also not someone who desires to take the QE2 to England, move to wine country, or sail to Surinam.I have grown deeply sensitive about carbon footprints and legacy.

What is important? Really important?

I think family and community and earth care are key factors at this stage. I want to stay healthy and I want to engage my community. I want to tread lightly on the earth. How can I best do this?

The real answer is, " I don't know." Every solution seems to produce consequences that I could not foresee. Still, I think giving up my car helps. I exercise whenever I need something. Quite frequently, I meet someone on the street and we have a conversation, thus building community. My husband and I call this spokal networking to differentiate it from social networking.

This blog will help me build a journal of my attempts to integrate exercise into daily living. Yes, I still go to the YMCA for classes,(I don't seem to Zumba well alone), but most of my exercise is housework, biking for daily needs, and gardening. Perhaps composing this will help me turn events into experience. I hope so.