A while back my car was down for the count so I had to use the bus to get around. That meant a lot of walking. That resulted in sone weight loss, waist reduction and stronger legs.
An oddity. The best (or only) compliments I ever got for dressing was when I costumed up for Haloween - figures. Full length canvas duster, boots, long sleeve white shirt, Black outback hat with chin-strap, opal bolo tie. The idea was to image a 19th century circuit preacher, part-time wolf hunter. Folks figgered it was just me.
I used to walk in preference to taking the bus. In the big city driving was an exercise in frustration - too much traffic and endless hunts for parking spaces barely big enough to fit the car, assuming you didn't want to do anything really stupid after parking (like, you know, opening the car doors to get out of the car). The bus was slow, usually smelly and the seats were designed for midgets with no legs. So I'd walk. As often as not walking wasn't much slower than taking the bus and sometimes it was faster. When parking is easy and free or virtually free it's easier to use the car for ever-shorter journeys. It still amazes me where I live now, where people will drive from the post office to the bank. They are literally across the road from each other, and by "road" I'm talking a regular 2-lane road with a 35mph speed limit, not a six-lane highway or anything.
Nowhere is too far if you have the time The place I used to walk was a little under three miles away. If I wanted to walk for exercise I'd go there, then cross the river and walk along the towpath and chalk up another 3-4 miles. Sometimes I'd then walk back home but usually by then I was ready to take the train a couple of stops and save my legs. It wasn't unheard of to chalk up 25 miles on foot around town when I really got going.
I was a compulsive walker most of my life, going for miles and miles. Living in the City I would hike up and down the hills or a good 10 miles at the beach in the morning. Think I might have worn down a bit but there was a time when walking was the only outlet for energy and stress. Not sure where it all came from. Or where it went.
It's funny, for the longest time I was your typical sedentary desk worker who slowly gained weight by eating slightly more than was appropriate while spending days mostly motionless in front of a computer screen. I'd take the elevator rather than the stairs, although that was partly from laziness and partly because it could be a good way to get a few extra moments away from my desk. But even then, if you put me in the mountains I'd want to walk, and walk, and walk. Once I quit working in an office I found I loved walking in the mountains even more and once I took to cycling I found I loved that too. Many days the only reason I wrapped up a hike or a ride was because I was running out of daylight and didn't have lights with me.
Best way to force yourself to get walking? Get a dog. Rain or shine, it's got to go for a walk. I love that we have x-country trails for the dogs as well. I was surprised at my fitness when I went into the bush this past summer. Hard climbing for sure but my recovery rate was good and was not spent at the end of the day. And that's mainly from walking and skiing with the dog.
The trouble with a dog is that if you have horizontal rain it's not really an option to walk round and round the hall at church, and even taking an occasional day off ceases to be an option. And they bark a lot too. Not really a dog person. I'm more about cats
Curious combination today. I started out chiseling some rough edges out of the inner face of the wall I'm draft-hunting in, and then filled a couple of holes with cement. I had an outside light that I never really liked so I took that off, pulled out the wire that feeds it, did battle with a bit of wood someone jammed into the hole to allow them to screw a backbox to the wall until I got that out, and filled the entire hold with cement. Then a cleanup with the shop vac and a generous spray of foam around all the joins between the brickwork and the door frame, and between the two parts of the door frame, and the drafts are much reduced. I also put a brush along the bottom of the door to stop the draft coming in under the door. It's weird to look at the bottom of the door with a thermal camera and see the deep blue seeping in from underneath it. I'm going to need to pull down a bit more of the wall before I can easily get to the section where I want to run the new cable out to the porch. There's a hole through the outside so I figure I might as well use that rather than drill a new one, and then I can seal up the rest of the hole with foam. That will stop the cold air (and bugs etc) from getting into the brick cavities, which in turn will keep everything warmer. This afternoon I went to church to record the online service for Sunday, and then went for a run. I had hoped to run the loop that starts and finishes at the church and is almost exactly 10k (6.2 miles) but didn't think I had enough daylight, so did a slightly shorter loop that came in at 4.7 miles. It's probably a good thing I did, the run felt like a real slog today and I'd have ended up running in the twilight with no lights on me. I had a neon yellow shirt on but it's amazing how many people apparently don't see a big yellow thing at the roadside. And now I'm sitting in my recliner waiting for my wife to get back from her fitness class so we can have dinner. I think this evening is going to be a restful one in front of the TV.....
Well, put on a raincoat. Dogs barking really depends on the breed. Ours only barks when she sees another dog walk past the house or perhaps a deer or moose. I don't mind that because it's a defensive thing and lets people know there's a dog here. She's a total coward otherwise. There is that.
I guess when something I enjoy becomes a chore it becomes less enjoyable overall. Kinda like the way turning a hobby into a "side hustle" turns fun into work and usually ends up making it less fun.
Still more blue than I'd like on my thermal images but it's now much more contained, which has the added benefit of being able to see where it's coming in from. One place is almost exactly in line with my expectations and the other isn't a great surprise. Fixing the first one should be simple enough, I just need to figure how long an extension cord I'll need to run a shop vac outside to clean 80+ years of accumulated crud out of a crack in the wall before spraying foam to seal it up. The second one is trickier - it's another beam that appears to have air gaps around it, but the beam is wrapped in folded metal and removing the nails that hold it in place is tricky. For good measure I don't want to damage it, because I'll want to put it back once I've finished sealing up the gaps. Another possibility would be to drill a couple of holes in the inner face of the brick with a view to spraying foam into the space, I'd just need to stuff a load of fiberglass or something into it first so I didn't end up trying to fill an entire wall using the contents of one can of foam. I can't see that being a successful project. The worst case is that I just stuff a load of fiberglass into the space to contain the cold but I'd really rather fix it properly.
I managed to pry off the metal sheathing around the beam. It was tricky getting my foam gun into place because of downspouts and the like but eventually I think I got foam everywhere I need it, as well as a few bits in places I didn't really want it. I can trim off the excess now - it will have dried overnight. So now I hope I got enough of it despite the challenges of getting the foam into all the spaces I wanted it. If I missed anything I'll need to drill a hole into the brickwork from the inside and spray foam that way, which will be a hassle I can do without. After my coffee I can go check it out with my thermal camera to see how much difference it's made. Hopefully there will be a lot less blue on the display.
My work has made some improvements but it's now clear I have another heat leak and I'm struggling to figure out where it's coming from. There's a cold streak running down the very corner of the room and it looks like cold air is spilling out of the bottom. I could seal the tops of the brick columns but that would seem to make the walls less breathable, so perhaps I'll end up drilling a hole in the very bottom and stuffing it with foam and/or fiberglass to stop the cold spilling out around the bottom and into the basement. For good measure I also stuffed a load of fiberglass back into the window wells. I forget why I took it out, probably to spray foam around all the seams inside the spaces. Since it's cold out I put it all back in - the backs of the cavities are deep blue on a thermal image, so I figure I might as well add some insulation there.
A female co-worker going home after her shift, just barely turned onto a bridge over the Missouri river when a big pickup entered her lane and smashed her, head on. I arrived, a little while later, after they had pried her from the small ford car with the truck on top. I am amazed anyone could have survived in that car. There was ice and snow on the road, but mostly under control. Those over-sized tires on overly-rigged pickups are a hazard, imo. Waiting, in hope, to hear of her condition - a terrific mom of two, Jessica. Also, hard to calculate the damage caused by bull moose crossing roads in the last few days - multiple encounters and compound wrecks. Typical