A Day in The Life

Happy tax day!? Did you do your taxes yet? I had to pay and I set mine up to pay on the 14th, as I am not paying any earlier than I absolutely have to! I hope that you got money back, or did not have to pay too much! 

I know I said I was not going to just talk about the bike trip. but Nicole's post about normal every day life the other day inspired me (plus Engie asked me for the nitty gritty about every hour of my day). I love hearing about other people's different days, so I thought I would do one for my current "routine." Each day is different, but on this day (April 7, 2024), I had wild camped near Lava Bed National Monument. I am going to do this day as a 24 hour period instead of the standard "awake" hours; you will see why in a minute. 

9:30 pm: After falling asleep while reading around 6:00 pm (oops), I wake up, thinking it is morning. Realizing it is not, I puff a few puffs of air into my sleeping pad (it seems to have a very small leak) and I go back to sleep. 

11:00 pm: Wake up, roll over. 

1:00 am: Wake up, roll over. Sometimes sleeping while camping is not fun.

3:00 am: Wake up, realize it's pretty cold out, put sleeping bag over head, roll over.

4:30 am: Wake up, hear snow hitting the tent, roll over.

5:00 am: Alarm goes off, hear snow hitting the tent still, decide to not get up yet, put on a podcast.

6:45 am: After listening to several podcasts, it is still snowing. Thermometer shows that it is 31 degrees inside the tent, so I can only assume it is in the mid 20s outside. After a period of hemming and hawing, I decide to get up and face the music.

Frozen tent

7:00 am: Mobilization tasks include (in this order generally): put on contact lenses, socks (in sleeping bag so they get warm), beanie, long sleeve shirt, hydration pack, buff (on neck), wired earphones (use to save battery, better if they are under jacket) and rain jacket. Take off sleeping shorts, put on hated diaper pants (bike shorts), and long pants. Deflate sleeping pillow (this is a new luxury for me), and sleeping pad and put in bag. Put sleep liner (adds about 10-15 degrees of warmth) in bag. Stuff sleeping bag in bag, filling all cracks. Lastly, put electronics, sleeping shorts and Kindle in the bag. 

7:15 am: Put on shoes. Exit tent. There is snow on the ground and on Bob. It is very cloudy and I am hoping that it does not snow all day. Pee in bushes, which involves removing two layers of pants, peeing, pulling up two layers of pants and tucking in two shirts. Brush teeth. Put on gloves, tighten wrist Velcro on jacket. The less wind getting in, the better. Eat a granola bar and skip coffee due to cold/snow and lack of extra water. Deconstruct and pack up tent. Strap bag with sleeping items on back rack. 

7:45 am: Start Garmin Inreach (this is a satellite tracker and SOS messenger), start Garmin Edge (this is a bike computer that tells me which way to go), start Coros watch (this logs my miles, elevation, heart beat etc.) Plug headphones into phone, start audiobook. Drink water. Leave camp, start pedaling. 

7:45 am - 8:30 am: Pedal, take photos, beat my hands on my handlebars and feet on the pedals because they are cold due to snow and 28 degree temps (according to the bike computer, this may not account for the cold, cold wind though). On this day I go through Lava Bed National Monument, who most of you have probably never heard of, as it is kind of in the middle of nowhere. It is full of lava and caves and is probably pretty cool to explore, but I do not do it this time, as it is very cold and I need to get a permit from the (closed) visitor center to be able to go into the caves. However, check out Skull Cave; isn't it cool? It may be worth coming back someday! 

Lava

8:30 am - 10:30 am: Pedal, take photos. Am kind of glad when there is a small (read: small!) hill as it gives me a chance to warm up a little. I go through the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge, where I am sure there are normally a lot of birds, but today there is not much. It snows most of the time, but at least it is not rain! I am craving a coffee, and the road has been a bit straight and I need a break, but there is nothing! I have literally seen no services for the last ~ 80 miles. 

Still cold!

10:30 am: Finally, I get to the Oregon border and there is a liquor store/bar/market on the corner and I fling down the bike and go in! It reminds me of home; there is nobody inside but the bartender points me to the coffee machine and lets me sit in front of the fire. As I sit there, I hear the cook or someone in the back talking about his night last night and it is entertaining to say the least. I look at the map, book a room in Klamath Falls, and warm my toes. A few locals come in and sit at the bar and they start asking me where I am going, and upon learning that my next stop is KF, the proceed to give me advice on which route to take that is the most scenic (and flat, I hope!) I end up taking their advice, because why not!? 

My new favorite bar

11:00 am: I pay for my coffee and drag myself outside, where the sun has come out! It is probably still in the high 30s, but having the sun at my back is priceless. I can hear three guys in trucks admire my bike set up as I leave. I follow the route that the bar guy told me to take, and he was right! It is pretty and there are not many cars, and the ones that do come give me lots of space. 

Lower Klamath Lake Road

2:00 pm: I arrive at KF and after having a bit of a harrowing ride along the main drag in town (no bike lane, fast cars), I get to my motel and check in. They do not have a room on the first floor, or an elevator, so I drag Bob up the stairs. He probably weighs about 75 pounds without me on him. I get into my room and complete my normal room review. Does the room have: a coffee machine, a refrigerator, a microwave? In this case it has the last two, which means I can buy cold things from the grocery store! 

2:15 pm: Before leaving to get food, I do the following: remove bike shorts and wash, hang to dry (they are thick and need time), put on sleeping shorts, remove wet tent from bike and hang to dry, start charging my power bank, get my Chico bag. I walk to the grocery store and buy too much food. This is very common. I always have eyes bigger than both my stomach, and my bike bag capacity. I will figure out a way to make it work though. I do buy a salad and some frozen peas, which I will have to eat right away. The rest, even the cheese and brats, can be stored on the bike the first day, as the temps are supposed to be pretty cold the first day (25 - 45 degrees). My weakness is tortilla chips, AND they take up too much room, but I buy them anyway. I also buy ice cream, which I will eat for dinner later. :) However, to my credit, it all fits in the Chico bag! Not only that, but this food, along with a few other bars and things that I already have, need to last me for the next four days, until my next grocery store.

Grocery haul!

3:30 pm: I am back in the room. I remove all of my clothing and wash it in the sink, and hang it up in front of the heater, which I have put on full blast. Even without clothing on, I am sweating, but needs must! I need my clothes to be dry by tomorrow. I eat the salad and some peas, and repackage some of the food (rice, coffee) so that I don't have any boxes. 

Dinner #1

4:30 pm: Done eating. I swap my charging item. I only carry one square, so need to do one thing at a time unless there are USB ports in the motel. Luckily, this one has two of them, so I can charge three things at once! Yay. However, I have eleven items that need to be charged! Isn't that ridiculous? What ever happened to going out in the wild with a map and a compass and a hunk of jerky? Actually, several of these items will last a few days, or can be charged with the power bank, but I always fill them up when I do have power just in case. 

4:30 pm - 6:30 pm: I shower and put on the game show network. Who knew there were so many games that are just like Family Feud? Also, when did all of the hosts become so annoying? Also, clearly older people are watching this channel, as there are a lot of commercials for medications, some of which may give you pain or swelling in your perineum! Really? All you need for that is to ride a bike for several days in a row. I go through my route plan again for the next week, while eating ice cream. I note down where the water sources are, how far it is between towns, possible reroutes I may need or want to do. I check the weather for the next few days. It is supposed to get warmer, with highs in the 60s in a few days, but it is supposed to rain after that. I hope that the second part is wrong. 

6:30 pm - 8:30 pm: I do some administrative things (write a blog post, pay my property tax, make sure everything is running smoothly with the house etc.) since I have WiFi and probably will be camping in the wild for the next several days. I also download some new books from the library, and make sure they are usable offline, and back up my photos that I recently took. However, the WiFi is NOT fast, and it ends up taking over 12 hours to upload my recent photos to the cloud. Annoying, but at least I can get some things done. I have some nachos (tortilla chips with melted cheese - I love having a microwave!) for dessert. 

8:30 pm: Brush teeth, take out contacts, pee (in a toilet! Yay!). Get in bed to wind down. Send a few text updates to people since I may not be in service for a while. 

9:00 pm: Put on a podcast and fall asleep. 

Is your normal morning or evening routine the same every day? What is the most random national park or preserve that you have been to and loved? 

A Day In The Life: Morning Commute

Sometimes it feels like groundhog day around here. Get up, brush teeth, coffee, commute, work, go home, run, eat, read, sleep...and repeat. However, I am not really very excited to start my taxes so...I guess I will continue my routine. To me, this seems like the mundane, but it is fun to sometimes hear how other people do tasks that are just part of everyday life. For instance, Stephany and Engie recently talked about doing laundry, of all things. But it sparked a discussion about how many times we wash our sheets (about once a month), whether or not we separate whites from colors (no) and how much we love (or hate) folding and putting stuff away. 

One of the mundane things I do every day is commute to work. I never really did the work from home thing, even during the pandemic, although my commute was different then due to the lack of available public transportation and of course the lack of wanting to be in public (or being allowed to be). I am lucky to have a car and I had to use it during the pandemic. 

However, now we are back to "normal" again and I am back to my old shenanigans. Here is what that looks like. First, I have to get to the BART (train) station. I do this in two different ways, depending on what I have going on after work that day. If I drive, it takes about eight minutes, and I park on the streets in West Oakland and take the BART from there. For those of you who don't know this, West Oakland is the last stop in the East Bay before the BART goes under the bay and into the city. Because of this, this station is the best because on the way home, you can take any train going east and you will have to go through this station no matter what. Also, from here it is only about eight minutes into the city once the train comes. 

West Oakland BART

If I ride my bike, I go to a different station, which is closer to my house. This is about a seven minute ride and is mostly downhill. I lock up my bike and take the train into the city, which is about 17 minutes from this station. 

Either way, I usually listen to an audiobook while driving or riding and then read my book while on the train. I have been struggling lately to pick up books in print, so this is my way of trying to keep the habit of reading daily, not just listening to books, which I find myself doing more and more often. I get off in the city either at Embarcadero or Montgomery station. 

Financial District (FiDi)

As an aside, I have been trying to make sure to get 10,000 steps a day. Although this is an arbitrary number made up by someone, it is good for me to have a target; otherwise, it is easy to cut corners or just go home and sit on the couch. I say this because the Embarcadero station is about 0.10 mile further to my office than the Montgomery station, so I try to get off at this one to get those few extra steps. Every step counts right? The other thing I do is take the stairs instead of the escalator and luckily the trains are either up on rails  or underground so I get to take plenty of stairs. By the time I get to work, I usually have about 2,000 steps. 

My walk to work goes through the financial district in San Francisco. At the time of the morning that I go in there are not too many other people on the streets. It generally consists mostly of construction workers sitting in their cars (I assume they go early so they can get parking) a handful of homeless people, usually on the same corner by the 7-11, and one or two finance people (I am guessing from the way they are dressed). 

I actually really like this portion of the commute; the city is quiet but still beautiful. I walk amidst tall buildings and I can jaywalk all I want because there is not much traffic. I sometimes walk past the Equinox, a gym that costs about $200 per month, but is housed in a beautiful building that looks like it belongs in Greece or something. 

Equinox gym

I get to my building, where I say good morning to the security guard as I swipe my pass. I then go up to my floor, where we have a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz (not from our office, only from the conference room). From our side of the building you can also see Union Square and the Salesforce Tower. I get a cup of tea from the kitchen and I get to work! All together, this commute normally takes about a half an hour, but is a bit longer in the afternoon when there is more traffic. 

View of Transamerica Tower (was the tallest until 2018)

View of Salesforce Tower (tallest in San Francisco since 2018)

Are you bored yet!? What is your morning commute like? Tell me about something "mundane" that you do regularly. 

Groundhog Day

Along with the phrase, "doing twice as much and only getting half as much done," I have heard the words "groundhog day" a lot in the last six months. If you have not seen the movie, which features Bill Murray, it basically is about a man who repeats the same day over and over. Much like most of us have been doing for the last six months! I was making my coffee the other day and it hit me hard for some reason and I thought it would be fun (or extremely boring) to go over what a normal groundhog day entails these days. 

I may not be quite as groundhoggy as some, as I have been going into the office since day one, but I still do get that "every day is the same" feeling! Here's what a day in the life looks like. 

3:30 am (yes, you read that right): get up

3:30 am - 3:50 am: bathroom break, brush teeth, make coffee and breakfast, eat, get lunch ready

3:50 am - 4:30 am: study

4:30 am - 4:40 am: work on journal (this is something I have been doing each morning for 10 minutes)

4:40 am - 4:50 am: read blogs or work on blog (another 10 minute/day goal)

4:50 am - 5:00 am: get dressed, let the cat out, pack lunch, fill water bottles with ice

5:00 am - 5:20 am: drive to work

5:20 am - 2:30 pm: work

2:30 pm - 3:10 pm: drive home (takes about a half an hour but sometimes longer with traffic)

3:10 pm - 4:00 pm: chores (water plants, empty dishwasher) and make/eat dinner or snack

4:00 pm - 6:00 pm: study (or run on non-study day)

6:00 pm - 7:30 pm: read books, catch up on news, do chores,  research vacations that ultimately get canceled, etc.

7:30 pm / 8:00 pm: bed time

Then repeat! Seriously, these days a trip to the grocery store is like a vacation, and a vacation is...well, what is a vacation? 

Are you experiencing this phenomena? What does your groundhog day look like? 

A Day In The Life

It annoys me when people who have not posted in a while start of a post by saying, "I know I haven't posted in a while, but..." or "it's been so long since my last post". It should be obvious if people are paying attention, but most likely, not as many people noticed as you hoped/thought. So I am not going to do that.

Having said that, I feel like every time I think about writing a post, the enormity of what has happened since my last post makes me hesitant. What do I even talk about? A lot has happened. Do I recap it? Do I just skip it and jump to the present? Where do I even start? I feel like in the past few months, a lot of other things have taken over my life, and now posting does not seem as important. Don't get me wrong; I WANT to post. I want to have things to post about. To be honest though, although I am busy, I am not very interesting lately, and my brain is pretty much useless. Therefore, that is why I am going to do a quick "day in the life" post, so years later when I look back, I can remember what a busy/trying/exciting/crazy time this was.

4:21 am: The alarm goes off. Sometimes I hit snooze and am reminded again in 5 minutes how tired I am and how much I do not want to get out of bed.  Usually I just get up. Why prolong the inevitable?

4:22 am - 5:10 am: Shower, eat a bowl of cereal, down a cup of coffee, and put on a pair of black pants and some sort of top. Study for about 15 - 25 minutes. **FYI, I got a new job which requires me to be licensed and there is a lot of studying involved. More on that in a bit.

5:11 am - 5:59 am: Walk to the bus, commute, study some more, walk from the bus stop to work.

6:00 am - 3 (or 4) pm: Work. I started this new job about 5 weeks ago and it has been a lot of learning new things, new terms, new processes and procedures, new software and new rules. I am also the "new guy" again, the one who people wonder about when I am roaming the halls. A typical work day involves a lot of spreadsheets and computer work, some phones, some handwriting orders (I know; who does that anymore) and some operations/organization items.

4:00 pm - 5:30 pm: Go to the gym, work out for about an hour, walk to the bus. I injured myself (Achilles) a couple of months ago, so have been doing more elliptical, bike and weights instead of running as much. **However, I do have three races to recap, including Boston, a 100k race and a 50 mile race that kicked my butt in a big way.

5:30 pm - 6:15 pm: Commute, more studying, walk home.

6:15 pm - 7:30 pm: Shower, water the garden (the tomatoes are looking great!), make/eat dinner.

7:30 pm - 8:30 (or 9) pm: Study. Try not to fall asleep.

9 pm: Bedtime. Hopefully.

You can't really get much more boring than that, can you? In fact, as I read over this post, I am falling asleep... So, yeah. The days are pretty packed right now, and not really with very fun stuff. I average about 2 hours of studying a day plus about 6 - 12 hours on the weekends. My exam is on July 7th and then if when I pass the first one, I have to take another one, which is as of yet unscheduled. Basically my summer is shot.

Hopefully soon I will post a couple of race recaps, as well as some opinions on micromanaging, tips on how to achieve having a successful garden and a dirt loving dog at the same time and some funny stories about my roommate's dating life. Until then, happy June!

What have you been up to in the last month? What is your average day like? Do you remember what it was like to be the "new guy"?

Will Work For Food

I am excited to say that I got through Hell and high mileage, that is, the high mileage week that was last week. I ended up running 6 days, which isn't ideal, but it included two short 3 - 4 mile lunch time runs, which are a great way to get out of the office and see the gorgeous weather. So those ones don't even count as work.

View on my lunchtime run.

However, Saturday WAS work. 20 miles on an already dehydrated body on a hot day was not the best thing I've ever done, or the smartest. I blame Roger, the 70 year old man who kept filling my wine glass on Friday night. You have to watch out for those old guys; they are sneaky. The more wine he poured, the more I lamented about how I was going to be hurting the next day (as I cheerfully swilled wine from the glass). When I woke up on Saturday not quite feeling 100%, I knew I only had myself to blame (and Roger, of course) so I bucked it up and put on my shoes.

The run was long and hard. The end. Normally afterward, I am Starvin' Marvin, but this time, I was only so, SO thirsty. It carried over into the next day, when I ran a trail race (100% better than Saturday's run! Recap later!) and had brunch afterward but wasn't really that hungry otherwise.

Then Monday rolled around, and the beast reared it's ugly head and screamed, "feed me, Seymour"! This happens quite a lot, where my rest day is also my "eat everything you can put your hands on day". So I thought I would do a quick rundown of what I usually eat on a normal day when I training (actually this list is what I ate on Monday, March 25).

5:45 a.m.: Steel cut oats with banana, sunflower seeds, almond milk, chia seeds, flax and coconut. Coffee.

8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.: 2 - 3 cups of coffee

9:30 a.m. (or 10 if I can hold off): Apple, some almonds

11:15 a.m. Salad with apples, grapes, almonds, sweet potatoes, garbanzo beans, quinoa and spinach

Breakfast salad?

12:00 p.m.: Lentils with rice

1:30 p.m.: Brussel sprouts with sesame oil and salt (lots of salt)

2:30 - 3:30 p.m.: Orange, carrots, celery with hummus, grapes, a mango, pirates booty, nori/seaweed snacks, trail mix (and anything else I have in my secret snack drawer at work), an applesauce

5:30 p.m.: more brussel sprouts, more lentils and rice (I was eating up left overs)

7:30 p.m. Corn chips with homemade "red pepper & hummus salsa", cous-cous salad with asparagus and orange bell peppers

8:30 p.m.: Greek yogurt with honey

In looking over this list, I realize a couple of things. One, I didn't really eat a lot, just a lot of times per day! Also, I didn't eat any meat, which is fairly common for me anyway. Also, the breakfast salad would have been really good with Craisins. Just saying.

Do you ever have days where you just can't stop snacking? What is your weakness / your go-to snack food? Are you hungrier the day of a big activity, the day after or both?

A Day in The Life: Finding Free Time

Lately I have been feeling a bit like I don't have time for the things I like to do. I know that I have definitely been blogging less. So I sat down to try to figure out if I am managing my time badly, or if one thing has taken the place for others or what is going on.

5:30 Alarm goes off.

5:45 I actually get up.

5:45 - 6:10 Get ready for work, eat breakfast, get dressed, etc

6:10 - 6:30 Internet time: blogs, pay bills, return emails. You can see why my internet presence has been diminished lately.

6:40 - 7:10 Walk to carpool, wait for car, ride to city, walk to work (morning commute). During this commute I really don't have time to do other things, as I am usually chatting with the driver.

7:10 - 4:00 Work. I usually take a half an hour walk somewhere in the middle of all this, in order to get some fresh air and exercise during the day. I am also going to start going to the gym 1 - 2x per week on my lunch break. In that case I will take an hour for lunch and go home later.

4:00 - 5:00 Commute. This takes a little longer than in the morning, since I take the bus home and there is more traffic. Also the walk on either end is a little longer. Each day for my commute, I walk about 2 miles total. I also try to read on the bus ride home, which is about 25 minutes. This is sometimes the only chance I get (make) to read each day.

5:00 - 7:00 Get dressed for a run, get ready for a run and then go running. Lately my runs have been anywhere from 1 - 2 hours long since I am in the height of Boston training (last week: 58 miles).

7:00 - 8:00 Cook dinner, eat dinner, make lunch for the next day.

8:00 - 8:30 Shower, get ready for bed

8:30 - 10:00 Free time. Lately I have been trying to use this time to read, but I have been so tired, so I admit that I often have been catching up on Top Chef or the like. Some days I also use this time to make big meals for the week, or to do some more internet chores. However, I have even been too tired lately to blog or comment on blogs.

The Verdict? Maybe I need to be more specific about what I do during my free time hours? I find that I feel guilty if I don't "do" something productive but I feel tired sometimes if I do. Also, I think running has been taking over, but it's something I like to do, so it's not like I am giving up things I like to do when I am running. I am just doing less of the OTHER things I like to do, I guess. Which is okay. I just feel like I want to curl up all day and read once in a while.

The other thing is the TV. I have been putting it on for background noise during "free time" and then I end up watching it instead of doing other things. I need to either get over feeling guilty about it or stop doing it. "Poop or get out of the ocean", as a lady at work is fond of saying. Don't ask me what that even means.

What does your typical day look like? Do you find that you have enough free time in a day? If so, how do you do it!?