Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Slack Line Therapy

I've been ill and haven't been able to do much but lay in bed and wallow in my own little hell. But today I've regained some energy, enough to set up the slack line and start re-learning some skills. Focus, concentration, determination, and awareness.

Learning to balance again


Friday, November 16, 2007

Exercise

I'm taking a hiatus from the "jazzercise" (that's Jonny's name for the crossfit gym group workouts, lol) for a more travel friendly version. This means getting creative and figuring out what can be done with the minimal equipment that might be available. I started this on my last job where we stayed at a Marriott hotel that had a very small gym stuffed with a bunch of machines. If you know anything about crossfit you know it doesn't involve Nautilus equipment. Luckily they had dumbbells up to 50lbs, treadmills and a bike that actually had fairly decent resistance settings. Between these things and being able to push two treadmills close enough together to do dips on the arm rests, I manage to find enough weight and intensity to fill up my stay. Except for the manager coming in and saying, "uh, that's not the way your suppose to use the treadmills" all went well and it was pretty easy to come up with stuff to do.

Now that I'm back home it's a bit harder. All I have is a pull up bar and today was the first day of working out at home. The workout was: 10 non kipping pull ups, 20 push ups, 20 v-ups - 3 rounds as fast as you can go with no rest periods. Then a one minute rest while I transitioned to a 2.7 mile run stopping half way for 50 squats. Total time: about 25 minutes

Working out for me has become increasingly important not only for the physical benefits but more importantly for the psychological boost it gives me. I love what I do (for work) but as a freelancer work can be sporadic and coping with the downtime can be tough at times. I'm finding a regular exercise schedule is one tool that helps me keep an even keel. The other is having good friends and family who care about me and are always there with advice and support. I'm truly fortunate to have such good people in my life. I love you all.

Peace out.

Travel

Work is getting busy and it looks like I'm going to be on location quite a bit this winter. I just finished up a 12 day catalog job in Charleston, SC and after the holiday will be off again to Florida for the next catalog in early December. It's good to be back on the road with good crews and friends and to have some time way from the Seattle winter.

My hang gliding time is certainly going to be leveling off with my increased travel. I plan to take some breaks after up coming jobs in SoCal this winter to fly with Chopper in LA and my buddy Andy in San Diego but wont be logging the hours like before. So I guess my hang gliding posts here will be pretty sporadic from now on, but really I guess that's nothing new.