Wanderings.

Ericka inspired me to write. Go Ericka! She is focused on healthy living and doing what’s right for her physically, so I thought I’d share what I’ve been doing lately.

I have been frustrated with some physical issues myself. My right leg is a lot weaker and stupider than my left. I had an injury to my hip flexor among other things, years ago and compensated and that has caused some problems even in my back and shoulders. Maybe no one would notice, but I do.

So, I’ve really been enjoying the benefits of Crossfit lately. The workouts have been challenging. I stumbled upon them after looking into Parkour and finding the community a bi hard to find and train with. The type of fitness Parkour and Crossfit both emphasize is really very similar, with Crossfit being more heavy on the weight bearing stuff. They define fitness in 100 words:

Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast. Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports.

That’s pretty clear. Thats what you do. But behind this simple description of fitness, you’ll find a lot of thoughtful, very workable stuff on the site, from how to start, and detailing all the exercizes with short movie clips and or slide shows to intelligent writing on various fitness related and exercize related topics in the CrossFit Journal. CrossFit Journal is a pay-for service, but they do have a free sample on their site that is a really good read to give you some straightforward solid background about fitness principles behind crossfit. Examples might be, why you might want to have a good all around fitness level rather than specializing in endurence, or strength or size. Or, how short intense workouts can figure into better fitness for you.

So what does it look like to keep up with a crossfit workout? You don’t have to make many decisions really. You can just follow the Workout of the Day on the front page, and post how you did when you finish. People who post are supportive and answer questions about the exercizes. You can modify the exercizes to make them easy enough for you to do, or do them as they are.

Crossfit goes 3 days on and one day off and just continues to alternate that way. So it doesn’t line up with a week exactly. That tends to throw off the routine a little as well, which I like.

If you have a complex question or concern, you can check out the forums. I’m impressed with the level of discourse there. Everyone keeps it very clean and focused and on topic. You can contribute and learn.

Give it a try! Good luck!

Mercury Cafe
www.mercurycafe.com
2199 California St
Denver, Colorado 80205
(303) 294-9258
8pm->
(open mic goes 7pm – 1am)
(click map for directions)


I’m playing at the Mercury Café open mic night tonight, but I don’t know exactly when. I’d suggest just coming after work, as this place is a bar and restaurant, and we can get some drinks and possibly dinner and socialize a bit.

I’ll try to get as early a spot as possible, but that will probably be 7:30 or so. Please don’t feel pressured to stay to hear me – I understand we don’t all want to stay out too late!

This is no grand performance! I have been putting off playing in front of people for too long, so I’m just putting an end to that tonight. Some of you were interested, so I decided to extend the invite further so we can all have an excuse to go out and have a few drinks. And maybe next time, Jeb will play??

I’ve included a couple of pictures so you can see the place is very casual (click the first image for an album):

Thursday Night

There is a time for everything. Lately, even though I have been living in a new place most of the time which I get to explore and enjoy, I can still turn that into drudgery with old habits! Little addictive behaviors like sinking into a TV show I don’t care about or opening the laptop only to have it swallow me whole.
Labor Day weekend was approaching, and Robin and Richard had layed out a possible plan that looked really good. I bid Fred and Jess farewell at work to catch my plane on Thursday and set off for San Francisco.

Republic Plaza is conveniently situated right next to the 16th Street mall which is sort of the main retail drag in Downtown Denver, featuring restaurants, places to shop, dine, and work. Across 17th on the other side is the Brown Palace which is around 100 years old and built out of sandstone among other things. The interior is ornate, one of the bars

inside called The Tavern has good scotch, and the shuttle stops outside. You can see the shuttle coming down Broadway every 15 minutes.

I was enjoying the scotch and bread and talking to the bartender when I saw the van coming down Broadway. I immediately ran out the door and into the shuttle. When we got to the airport, I realized that the wallet and the cellphone were back with the scotch and bread doing not a bit of good. The Brown and Supershuttle both were really cooperative and sent my stuff on one of the shuttles up to the airport and I flew standby later that night.

Despite all that, I got to San Fran and met Richard and Robin about 3 minutes after getting off the plane. Now Richard is a wonderful cook. Really more of a chef without a restaurant. And who needs a restaurant when you have markets and a kitchen in San Francisco? We caught up a bit on the way back to The Presidio where Richard and Robin live.

We stayed up pretty late that night and got to bed around 3 I believe.

Friday

I slowly awoke to Richard leaving for work and Robin staying for work. Her window overlooks the West Bay, and their dog, a Cataluna Hound gets to spend a whole lot of time with her. Today we plan to visit Richard for lunch at his workplace. They have an excellent cafeteria there with organic locally grown vegetables and animals, and I can’t wait to try it.

First I go to Clement street which is sort of south and west of Richard and Robin’s place. It is jam packed with Chineese and Russian places. I’m headed to the Green Apple, a book and music resale shop. I’m looking for murder mysteries for Mom and generally just lookking around. I called Ted from here who is a great lover of books, but wasn’t able to reach him at that time.

Robin tells me that Danny, Trisha and Holly are coming for a visit at the end of September. I’d really like to see them all again the next time I’m in Houston. I miss Holly’s stories and have missed a lot of Danny and Trisha’s lives. It would be nice to catch up a bit and see what’s going on in The Montrose and in their world.

Robin shares about the history of The Presidio on the way past the Golden Gate Bridge to the building where Richard works for Pacific Union, a GMAC franchise. Interestingly, this business is in the same building with LucasFilms and LucasArts. They did some very significant and interesting work on this land

Richard points out how easily you can tell the LucasArts employees from everybody else. The cafeteria overooks this building now a part of the Art Museum that is the only building left over from the World Fair of 19__. This Fair was significant to San Francisco as it provided them with an opportunity to prove they had overcome the earthquake. Interestingly, the neighborhood to the west has structural problems due to the way rock and soil get pulverized in earthquakes

I have the shrimp pasta with some garlic, basil and cream sauce. It was so good the night before, I wanted something similar.

While there, Richard showed me around the office and we took pictures of some of the art from LucasArts used in the making of some of the movies. We also laughed a lot, told stories and played Jedi. We took pictures next to the Yoda fountain which is affectionately called “The Moneymaker” by Lucas et al.

Robin pointed out some euchelyptus trees, though I never smelled them. I suppose the wind blowing as much as it does doesn’t let the scent collect long enough to smell from the road.

Robin is excited to show me Sports Basement. She and Richard can’t go in often or they will buy way too many happy things. They rent out wetsuits $50 for 4 days so you can go play in the Bay. I got that and some goggles, as it seems to be one of my functions in life to make them available to all the world.

Later on, Richard came back to the house, and we went down down to the beach with Bryn the wonderdog. Bryn is a pretty dog. She looks nice in pictures, but you really don’t get an idea for how cool she is until you see her in person. She’s just really well adjusted to people, especially for a puppy. When she plays, she can get a bit agressive, but really she doesn’t stay that way for long. At home she’s happy to see you, but she doesn’t bug you -she just likes to be near.

These kinds of dogs are pretty strong. She can jump and catch a frisbee with ease and she gets a lot of air doing it. I couldn’t get a picture of her doing it this weekend because the wind was so strong, it would blow either the frisbee, or the dog, too far to catch it many times.

The bay is cold. Even with the wetsuit for the first time, my body was in mild shock. You just go with it, and it’s OK. Breathe really deep tread water with broad movements. I didn’t swim much the first day, but just got used to the water on the pacific side of the bay.

We didn’t want to spend too long at the beach, because we were about to go to Burma Superstar, one of R & R’s favorite restaurants. Richard tends to balk at the “Tower of Tofu”, as he believes people were in fact entitled -no, intended to eat meat.

It was getting a bit brisk on Clement Street when you usually have to wait for a table at Burma Superstar. We got seated pretty quickly though, and ordered the Tower of Tofu and the Samosas as appetizers. Richard, what else did we eat?

Saturday

Robin, Bryn and I went down to the beach, so Robin and I could play with Bryn and I could go swimming. Bryn didn’t like me getting into the water too much and growled and jumped at me.

The silicone earplugs worked really well. They totally kept the water out without any thing actually sticking in my ears. They just stick to the outside. Robin and Bryn walked about a mile and a half from where I started swimming to the place where we agreed I’d get out, but the bay curves, so maybe I swam half or three quarters of a mile. It’s hard to tell. The wetsuit makes a big difference. I tend to sink in water, and the extra buyancy gets me up on top of the water and swimming a bit faster. Or I can swim slower and not sink to the bottom which is nice. The cold water is so invigorating.

We got back to Chez Paoli and Richard was packing up the picnic food to go to the wine country. We got out toward the wine country and I started to get really hungry. The cold water and the swimming was too much for how little I had eaten, so Richard had mercy and pulled off. I got a big thing of Gatorade and a cheeseburger. I’m not sure the last time I had beef. Probably about a year ago at Fogo de’ Chao. It didn’t sit so well, but it did help.

Richard explained some of the differences in eating grapes and wine grapes and how much the flavor of a red, and many other interesting things on the way to Russian River Valley. We stopped at the Hop Kiln first. They had a free tasting, so Robin and I went through all 6 of the wines in their tasting to see what we thought, while Richard unpacked the picnic outside. It was all good wine, but the late harvest really stood out to me, so I got a bottle.

Richard layed out some nice hard swiss, aged Monterey Jack, a very rich creamy blue with a rind, and a cheese named F_____ which he affectinately called “God’s Feet”. It really did smell like feet. And it was wonderful cheese, especially with the fresh pear I was eating. 3 different kinds of apples including Pink Lady which is my favorite. A hard bread like Fusilli, with hummus and tsatsiki to dip them in, and some pluarts (sp?) -a plum apricot hybrid.

On to the Roshambo winery. It’s very edgey and modern. Robin likes this place. Richard thinks it’s wierd. And I thought that was fun. When I told Richard I really couldn’t taste much at this point, he recommended just tasting certain kinds of wines when you go out. This time, I think he was just doing Savanion (sic) Blanc and Syrah. There was a wine I had here that was kind of flintey that I liked better than their grand finale.

We drifted across the street to the Rabbit Ridge winery which was really humble by comparison. Just some very normal looking structures on the property, and some good wine. Richard got the last of the 2001 Syrah. I tasted the 2003.

Next it was off to drive around. I think Robin was hoping for some more wineries, but they were all closing. It was 5 by that time, and all the ones we passed close at either 4:30 or 5. I was happy either way. The wine, weather and company were all nice. I thought we had done what we had come for.

So we wander around until we get up to San ????, where Charles Schultz used to live. We meet Richard’s brother Robert there at the Portafino Cafe’ where I get to hear lots of fun stories about Richard, Robert and their families. I guess I can’t repeat all of them here, but it was great fun. We started off with calamari and then I had the house salad with gorgonzola or some other kind of similar blue cheese. I had the talapia which was pallatable. For dessert, assorted fruit of which the mango was memorable. Really sweet and with a firm texture that gave way almost like flan. We had coffees all around, though I was sticking to lots of water still recovering from swimming, and the hamburger.

So we headed home and when we were almost there, decided to veer off after the tunnel on the Waldo grade up to the Golden Gate Bridge. There is a park with some ruins of an old fort there overlooking the bridge and the city, and the bay bridge off in the distance.

We got home and crashed.

Sunday

Episcopal service, last swim, computer museum, airport.