Pilates

Today was another 90-minute ride on my wonderful bike path. The weather was warm and sunny. The backhoe which almost crushed me about five days ago was nowhere to be seen. So that was good. I was going around him and he started moving with his big tank like "wheels" and I pulled my bike and body out of the way just in time. It was really close. I don't even understand why he is tilling up all the natural weeds and grasses on the canal bank, anyway. It's a project that has been going on for about a month and I'm ready for it to be over. 

My husband is just finishing up his master's degree here in Leuven. And then he is going to hopefully find a good job. We don't know where that will be, but hopefully it will be somewhere where we both can thrive and be happy. 

I have a very strong desire to get a home Pilates/personal training studio going again. It's something I'm really good at and it helps me feel like I'm doing something purposeful with my days. It's such a wonderful feeling to help someone get out of chronic pain or to help them become stronger, leaner, healthier, and happier. 

It's also one of the things I'm really qualified to do. I have a degree in Sport Studies. Then I did series of four trainings on the Pilates reformer which gave me a solid foundation in the most important Pilates apparatus. I also did a 1-year Pilates apprenticeship with a woman who apprenticed under one of the original apprentices of Joseph Pilates. So that makes me something like a great-granddaughter of Joseph Pilates. I have several certifications I've earned over the years including Hatha yoga teacher, personal trainer, Pilates teacher, master trainer, Resist-a-ball trainer, and stretching expert. I volunteered for 200 hours as a Physical Therapy Aide in which the physical therapist who was my mentor let me sit in with every patient so I could learn as much as possible. I also have a Sports Nutritionist Certification, an Senior Fitness Certification and a Healthy Eating for Weight Loss Certification. 

I've also collected over two thousand different exercises that I use to make it so that no two workouts are ever the same when you come to see me. There's always something different. I believe this kind of variety keeps the brain active and challenges the body to get much better results than if you do the exact same thing every workout. I miss teaching and really hope that wherever we end up I'll get to do it again. 

So that's what I've been thinking about lately. I'm getting ready for a new life. Who knows where we'll end up? 

Sunflower Ride

 

I rode off today with the goal of riding for two hours. I had two nut bars with me and a bottle of water. The weather was misty, but not rainy, and pleasantly cool. 

The path wasn't too busy. The town I live in has about 100,000 people when the students are in school, but only 30,000 people during school breaks. It's dramatically different to walk around town or to ride your bike during school breaks. 

I noticed a few caterpillars wandering across the path today and did my best to miss them. Then I passed a dead rat in the middle of the path. It has obviously been scavenged by some magpies or crows and looked like a nightmare. I made a mental note to find a big stick so I could flick the rat off the path. Yuck.

Further down the path I saw some beautiful sunflowers. They were so lovely and I managed to get a good shot of them on my way back. I stopped somewhere in there to eat a bar. 

At about one hour and six minutes I stopped just before a road and turned around. I felt good, a little tired but fine. 

When I was at about the 45-minutes remaining picnic benches I stopped to eat another bar. At this point I was really feeling it. I haven't pushed myself physically this hard for a long time and I wished I had packed a banana. 

When I passed a downed tree, I stopped and broke off about three feet of a big stick. I clamped it onto my bike rack and road forward, searching for the dead rat. Then I found it and parked my bike to the side. It looked absolutely awful. Just super nasty. With one good flick of my hearty stick, it went flying into the grasses to the side of the path. A road biker smiled at me when he saw what I was doing. I felt totally grossed out and immediately like I needed to take a shower. I felt proud of myself, too, for taking care of my beloved bike path. 

When I got back on my bike, I was tired. Dreams of a rest day started to float through my head. A rest day is probably a good idea since I've been riding a lot. 

Soon I was past the 17-minutes remaining spot and I got my second wind. I pedaled hard and made it home with a total time of 2 hours and 12 minutes. It was a good ride. 

Perfect Winds

The winds were perfect for today's ride. They were out of the west the whole time which means that the bike path was protected from them by the small line of forest that lines the trail. I only noticed them a little when I turned to ride past the horses. There is a little section of the bike path that loops around a factory. That takes you past a field with cows and a couple of fields with horses. My husband tells a joke that goes: "Those cows are really outstanding in their field." It cracks me up and I think of it sometimes when I ride past the cows. 

I've decided that I'm done with riding my bike over about a 50-foot stretch of cobbles. I rode over it the other day and it rattled my water bottle cage right off my bike. The cage broke into two pieces when it did that so it was unusable. So now I just stop, get off my bike, and walk over the cobbles. It's so much better.

There was a downed tree that blocked almost the whole path. One my way north I rode around it, but it felt too tight. So on the way back I walked around it. I saw a rock in the trail and kicked it out of the way. I also kicked a branch out of the way. I hope someone comes quickly to remove the downed tree. 

It was a great ride today. The temperature was cool enough to need a long-sleeved shirt, but no coat. And there were hardly any other cyclists on the trail. 

Classical Music

I like to keep lists of things. I have a list of all the birds I've seen in my lifetime, a list of mammals, a list of dragonflies and damselflies that I've seen. I have a list of every city I've ever been in and every country I've been in. (Cities: 246, countries: 28) I also have a "Favorites" list which has my favorite books, movies, foods, and music. I've recently been working on my list of favorite classical pieces. That's what I was thinking about as I set out on my ride today. 

Some of my favorite pieces are the ones everybody knows like Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers" or Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." Some are a little less well known like Bach's "Little Prelude No. 1." It's a perfect searching task which is something I find to be very soothing. And the music itself is also soothing. Sometimes it's stirring, too and evokes a deep feeling in my heart. It taps into a reservoir of feeling that doesn't usually rise to the surface in my everyday life. And it is very pleasant. 

One of the things I discovered with all my searching is that I love Mendelssohn. So I set out to make a list of all my favorite Mendelssohn pieces. I looked on Amazon Music and also went to the library and checked out a Works for Cello and Piano cd which has 12 of Mendelssohn's pieces in it. So far, I love it. It looked like they had about fifteen different Mendelssohn cds available to check out. That could be fun.

It was a cool, cloudy day for riding and the canal rippled under the variable breezes. I'm fascinated by slow, moving water. And I spent some time just looking out at the water as I rode. I passed some ducks and geese. The goslings are getting so big! They almost look like adults. 

I stopped at one point and kicked a rock off the path. I did this yesterday twice. It just takes a second but might help my fellow riders. I noticed that someone had cleaned up all the glass that had broken on the part of the path where the goslings are. We've got to take care of each other.

Bicycling and the way it soothes the mind is one of the joys of my life. It's a way to refresh me in body and spirit. I used to listen to music while I rode on trails or on Mt. Tabor, but now I don't. I think that's not very smart and that you need your ears to help you be aware of other riders. So instead I just spend time with my thoughts as I ride and then come home, open up some music to enjoy afterward.