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"50 miles on the bicycle, 250 on the motorcycle and
another crash "
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Podcast
available
iTunes
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Friday 26th Dec 2008 |
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| Christmas
came early this year. It all started when I was went to my
doctor
a few months back. He complained that I was gaining
weight. I was now officially obese and he said my next very short step
would
be to morbidly obese. That didn't sound too good so I promised
to
lay
off snacks. I was stupid enough to tell my wife who said, "
You
know, your
bicycle has two flat tires and your motorcycle has almost 24,000 miles
on it. Do you think that might have something to do with your weight
gain?" I doubted it, then as I was trying on my suits I noticed that even my "fat" suits were a little snug. I looked in the mirror and thought, "Maybe I am getting a little bigger?" I had to work a show in Atlanta so I shove myself into my too tight suit and spend 10 hours a day for the next four days holding in my belly. I finish the show, put on my comfortable jeans which also seem a little snug and decided to go on a diet, a 1,300 calories a day. This is my first diet but having been on it for awhile I know it really isn't ever going to end. I'll go on this diet but I'll never come off it. I won't have to stay at 1,300 calories but I will have to keep it around 2,000 calories. Two thousand calories a day is the recommended amount for a guy my size. Let me clarify that a guy my size gets to eat about 2,689 calories a day and not gain any weight but a guy the size I am suppose to be only gets to eat 2,164 calories a day. That seems like a huge disincentive to losing weight. I don't know if I want to live the rest of my life on 2,000 calories a day. I think I could stick to 2,000 calorie meals but looking at the amount of food I'll be allowed I realized two things. I have eaten a lot more than 2,000 calories everyday for the last 52 years and also, almost everyone I know eats a lot more than that. I find a great site to track my calories. The Daily Plate on Livestrong.com I start to exercise more since it allows you to eat more. I'd also like to get to my goal as fast as I can because it's killing me to try and stay under 1,300 a day. I found out that if I walk very fast (4.5 mph) for 30 minutes that they let me eat another 372 calories. I walk a lot. I also ride my bicycle a lot. I put air back into the tires of my mountain bike and hit the road. I notice that none of the guys on road bikes wave at me. I also notice that they all pass me. I like to believe that it's because I'm riding a mountain bike on the street but it could be because; I'm a fat guy on a bike, my gear is not pretty, my shirt not colorful enough, and I am panting like a woman in labor. I ask one of my friends about it, he tells me that they won't wave at anyone riding a mountain bike since it would be like me waving at a tractor trailer from my motorcycle. I'm not sure I understand the logic since we are both peddling out on the street and a mountain bike seems closer to a road bike than a 18 wheeler does to a motorcycle, and anyway I do wave at the 18 wheelers. If I'm out on a lonely road and I see a guy in a truck I wave at him and he waves back. The more I ride the more I think about getting a road bike. The more weight I lose the more Cheryl wants me to reward my hard work. I think about getting a road bike for her that I could ride when she isn't with me and that she can ride when we ride together. (This is the real reason Road Bikers will not wave at fat guys on mountain bikes because we are too stupid to know that you can't share a bike with your wife.) I think it's a great plan. I'll get a fast road bike which Cheryl can ride on our Sunday rides together and I can ride the rest of the week. I even make the mistake of saying maybe I'll get her a road bike for her birthday. (I got her an iPhone after she told one of her friends that I was too stupid to wave at.) We went to the bike shop to look at bikes. I was still stupid enough to lay out my plan. So picture this a 5'10" 230 pound guy says to you "I'd like a bike that my 5'4" 130 pound wife and I could share." The customer is always right and the economy is having a tough time so the guy didn't laugh. I mean he didn't laugh right then but I'm sure he was laughing with his buddies later. Road bikes are like high performance sports cars and mountain bikes are like jeeps, not a modern Humvee but World War II jeeps. The guy slowly talks me out of it, focusing on Cheryl because she seem a lot smarter that me. He also understands that she doesn't want a bike. I buy it.  The bike I buy cost a lot more than I wanted to spend and a lot less than the bike I really wanted. It's a Specialized Roubaix C2 and is very different from my mountain bike. The first problem I have, is that I don't know how to shift it. I mean I know how to shift a bike but I can't find the shifters on this bike. The sales guy patiently explains that the shifter is "integrated" into the brakes. I smiling knowingly even though I have no idea what heck he is talking about. He moves the brake lever in toward the wheel as he spins the crank and the gears change. It's magical. I still have no idea how it works mechanically but it works. I can't take the bike home because the only guy that can set it up works days. I come back the following day and find out it will take 45 minutes to setup. I have to wear my normal riding gear which is a old Novell shirt and a pair of gym shorts (another reason real bikers don't wave at me.) The guy at the shop measures the saddle height, tilt, position fore and aft, the stem height and angle, the handlebar width, sweep, and placement on the curve of the brake levers, and finally the crankarm length. I've had medical exams that were less precise. He used a plumb to measure my knee placement and some kind of weird compass to measure my extension. I kept telling him, "I'm a grunt." I'm not planning on doing a "Century" or riding the Tour de France. I'm just a fat guy trying to eat an extra candy bar. Christmas I get woken up on Christmas morning at 7:00 a.m. My kids are both older, Kate is 12 and Matthew is 17. I decide right then and there that starting next year we will celebrate Christmas on Christmas eve. When I was a kid we opened presents on Christmas eve but since I could never reconcile how Santa could deliver presents without the kids first going to sleep I decided to go with the more traditional Christmas morning. Now that Santa is giving mostly cash I figure we should both be able to sleep in on Christmas morning. Matthew agrees immediately.    We open presents. Katie is the big winner there and still ends up with some cash. Matthew gets only money. I get a nice shirt from Matthew. Cheryl's present from me never arrived and I have to reorder it. I already have my present in the form of a road bike in the garage so we are done pretty quickly. The weather is 70 degrees a little windy but I do a 52 mile bicycle ride on Christmas day, this would allow me to eat an extra 3,177 calories. I love road bikes! I knock out 3 hours on the bicycle then get on the Motorcycle and head down down to FM-4 via FM 407 It's a great Christmas, I get over 330 miles on two wheels, a Prime Rib Christmas dinner which I can eat without feeling too guilty since even after I record dinner Livestrong.com says, "You may eat about 2,512 additional calories today." but I'm too stuffed to eat anything else.  I
ride the bicycle the following day because the weather is going to
get wet,
windy and colder. I ride my normal route of about 25
miles
and when I look
down at my GPS at the half way mark and see my "Average moving
speed: 16.8 mph" I think,
"I am so screwed." I have been riding a lot so
I've lost
43 pounds so far, but I'm still a big fat mountain bike guy riding a
road bike. I never average better than 14.5 mph so I've been
riding with a very fast tail wind. This is confirmed when I
make the turn into the wind. My speed drops 10 miles an
hour. I
also have a very hard hill coming up that allows me to measure
my
max heart rate
every time I ride it. Today it's two miles ahead straight
into the wind. I am ready to call it quits when I start up the hill but
I'm still miles and miles from home. I struggle up the hill,
ride
has hard as I can the rest of the way home and end up
averaging
13.8
mph for the day. That means that instead of getting 878 calories
an hour of riding I can only write down 703 calories an hour.
It
doesn't seem fair. I really don't use all of the "Net
calories"
anyway but it's a little disheartening to be a lot more tired and have
the computer tell me that if I would have tried a little harder I could
have eaten three more candy bars. I hang up the bicycle and change into my Insane Asylum Yellow jacket since I have to bring the motorcycle in for it's 24,000 mile service ($661.49) The rode is wet from the sprinklers at the intersection of Pecos Drive and Southridge Lakes. I stop at the stop sign take the turn wide to stay out of the big puddle and the bike slips out from underneath me. The rear wheel is still spinning as the bike slides across the ground on the other cylinder cover. I am really glad I bought a couple high-grade steel cylinder protectors since I have now laid the bike over on both the right and left cylinders. I can't get the bike back up, not because it's too heavy but because the street is so slippery it's like I'm standing on ice. It's 65 degrees so it's not ice, it's water mixed with oil. An older woman and a guy about 65 help me pull the bike up. I have a new scrape on the saddle bag and some scratches on the cylinder protectors but the bike is fine. I have cut my leg, not from the fall but from when I tried to lift the bike the first time and slid into it. Still as days go this is a good one, no real damage and plenty of riding on two wheels. Well I have to get out back on the bicycle or no dinner tonight. |
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Symbiotisches Veröffentlichen |
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