Friday, December 25, 2009
Row row your boat....
I've been rowing 3-4 days a weeks and about 4-6 miles each time. It's been fun getting to know all my old friends again. I'll see Dolphins just about every day shrimping in the channel. A Brown Pelican will fly across about six inches off the water and splash down a few feet from my boat and beg for fish. He doesn't like bandannas or power bars and tosses them back after a quick taste--I tell him baggers can't be choosers. Osprey can been seen about every quarter mile on Wappoo Cut and sometimes I'm luck enough to see one catch a fish.
Then there are people AND every kind of boat imaginable. I made my case with the attached photo. Roger the Earth-Ball Guy is taking the boat pictured around the world. His boat is basically a floating dock with 3 outboards motors, a bio-sphere to keep out the rain, plenty of electronic gear to communicate with on the adventure and a generator for power. It cost less than my rowboat; talk about on the cheap. Here is his web site: http://earthball.org/
Merry Christmas
Friday, December 18, 2009
Send your rent check to China!
I'm an average guy to the point of being boring. However, I knew 3-4 years ago--and pointed out in this blog-- that 1. housing prices were to damn high, 2. people were borrowing to damn much money 3. they weren't going to be able to pay back the money unless the price kept going up and they sold their house 4. price were NOT going to always go UP.
Double duh...you don't have to be a genius to know people don't need to be borrowing 4-5 times their annual salary for a house. It's INSANE!
So what the hell were all those idiots in Washington thinking? Now..a year later and ...no one lost their job, Congress will make some half ass changes and everyone will blame everyone else. With the confirmation of Bernanke to a new 4 year term we will know it's business as usual, the idiots continue to rule and failure will carry NO penalties. Can you tell I'm pissed yet?
Let me make another prediction. It ain't over folks. People are going to start walking away from those home loans in droves and the siht is going to be right back in the fan.
Think I'm wrong? Then you don't believe in market principles and the number one principle is people do what they perceive is best for themselves. What would you do if all you have is a big mortgage on a house which is worth half of what you owe and you can rent the same house down the street for MUCH less money and save or spend the difference?
What about all this credit card debt? For the last 10 years idiots have been transferring it to their home loan and starting a new cycle of living BEYOND their means. Yeah I know...the government will continue their policy of rewarding bad behavior and do another bail out.
Here is the problem: our government is doing the same thing as all those people who borrowed money they could NOT pay back and one of these day they are going to socialize the whole country and we'll all send our rent checks to China.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Plan B...
After back to back 30 plus mile weeks I've thrown in the towel. My left knee had enough. After reducing my mileage to 14 a week for three weeks the knee is not any better. In the mean time I've dusted off my Yoga cheat sheets and recommissioned my rowboat. I'm back over 30 miles a week but about 20 miles are in the boat.
When running I could put my heart rate where ever I wanted by changing the effort. If I wanted a 70 to 80% effort--good for the heart-- my Garmin GPS allowed me to set these rates as training levels and would give me an alarm and depending on the alarm I would easy back or work harder--trust me, that alarm could be a really pain in the ass but you knew you were getting a good work out. The Garmin also works with the rowing and you can change fields to get different information for different sports, for example using mph when rowing and pace when running. The strange thing is it's been impossible to get over about 60% of maximum heart rate when rowing and I don't understand why it's this way? Any ideas?
Hopefully I can do enough running to get in 3-4 cardio work outs a week.
The Yoga really helps eliminate some of those little aches and pains. The big problem for me with Yoga is it just gets boring. I'm mixing it up these days by doing more shorter secessions, usually about 15-20 minutes every day. I'm also doing some standing stuff, warrior and balance poses, when I walk the dogs. AND.... there is always housework Yoga, helping a friend move Yoga and playing with the grandkids Yoga.
