Been enjoying the time away from streaming, it’s given me a chance to rethink what I actually want to do with these last few (hopefully) decades, what do I want my days to be filled with. It’s helped that Doris and I have been spending several hours with each other every day. It’s been glorious.
This has been the first week of my return to a daily Ashtanga yoga practice. I’ve just been doing a very modified half-primary series (through Navasana) but still. Just the sun salutations have been enough to wake up a whole bunch of muscles I forgot I had. They’ve been complaining all week and are finally starting to stop. I remember from triathlon strength training (Joel Friel) reading about “anatomical adaptation” when everything gets dialed in to be able to do the actual training. I feel like I’m coming off of that. The Triathlete s Training Bible has AA for 6-8 weeks I think. But since I’m not planning any really heavy weight lifting at this time I suppose I can just stay in AA for a while, at least until the daily soreness goes away. To be honest, I missed the whole-body feeling of soreness. I came to associate that feeling itself with health, which reminds me, I need to actually read Exercised, a book about the culture of exercise and how some join and others never do and the contrast between the two global communities, those who exercise and those who don’t.
As for the bike stuff, I’m sure the people who like watching IRL POV bike streams are a little curious what is happening. The short answer is those streams got postponed while I wait for all the stuff to convert my Keshy into an all-season gravel adventure cycling bike. That gear has finally all arrived and I just rented a storage unit in walking distance so I can do all the bike work streams from there. I really want to decorate that storage unit and do it well. They are good with me doing everything there and it has power for string lights or something. It is also open 24x7 so no worry about not getting done with something before it closes. I figure I can do entire 3+ hour streams from there while working on the different bikes. I will have to eliminate a bunch of useless stuff to make room, but I need to do that anyway. If I end up doing a lot of those I’ll turn on Starlink Unlimited again.
They did jack the Starlink Roam cost to 167 per month (up 17 dollars) and added in-motion (which was already possible without them adding it). That’s just too much for someone not using it daily. I dropped the Mini to the 50/month minimal plan (50GB total) and added another Verizon modem (two total) since most of my daily bike streams will be in populated areas with good mobile coverage. The Verizon is 60 per month for 150 GB. My Goblin route is very well known to mostly all be supported. The weekly trip to Charlotte on the greenways does have several unstreamable spots that require the Starlink and I can just use it then. The Starlink will stop after it maxes out the bandwidth (unlike ATT which begins charging overages). The greenways are mostly only coverable by mobile anyway with all the tree cover.
This does bring up the question of what I’m doing from day to day. So far the only things that is consistent in my new routine are the following:
I feel the healthiest I’ve been in a very long time, even more than when I was riding the bike daily. The yoga completely shuts down stress and inflammation. It’s absolutely amazing. I am kind of mad at myself for ever stopping a daily practice. It is the best possible medicine for any possible ailment I face. I can never stop doing it again.
At the moment, yoga dominates everything for the day. Doing half primary demands a lot more sleep and attention to my diet in order to recover from it at my age. If I tried to work and do a bike ride as well I’d never recover and just spiral. This has been hard for me because I really love cycling outdoors. I can even stare at the tree tops and sunrise through my patio window while I write this, and my hot wife in her PJs coming back from walking the dog. Sometime as simple as a daily hug in the morning does so much for my soul. In fact, I read that people who kiss their spouse in the morning live several years longer.
I’m also considering some ASMR coworking music streams. I’ve always wanted to do them—especially the outdoor ones.