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29 May |
Am I just getting old, or is there more to it? Day to Day Life
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A number of years ago, I was watching a television series with Ernest Borgnine. He was retired, and was playing amateur detective with 2 of his friends. During the episode, he asked somebody if he knew what it was like being old. The guy didn’t know the answer, so Ernest Borgnine gave the following response, which I have a paraphased below, because I don’t remember the exact quote.
There is no difference being old versus being young. The mind is as fresh as ever, it’s just the body doesn’t react in the same way.
That is exactly how I felt yesterday after riding my bike. I know I’ll be 58 years old in less then a month, and I shouldn’t expect to be able to perform as well as I did when I was 38, but that doesn’t keep me from thinking that I can.
I had done a fairly hard 38 mile ride on Thursday in the hills of Whittier, CA, followed by another hard and fast paced 45 mile ride with one of the local bike clubs in the area on Saturday, so maybe I shouldn’t have ridden on Sunday.
Typically I wouldn’t ride, or I would do an easy ride on Sunday, but when the other bike club in the area, that I usually ride with on Sunday, and who usually does an easy ride on Sunday, decided to do Turnbull Canyon, I had a choice to make.
The Turnbull Canyon ride goes through Whitter, CA, and is essentially the same ride I did on Thursday, but adds about 15 miles in distance and about 500 feet of climbing, and it was either do that ride, or ride by myself. Since I was already dressed and out of the house, and I have done two hard workouts in a row in the past without much trouble (I still think I am in pretty good shape), I decided to go with the club.
I just wish I hadn’t.
Almost from the moment I got started, I knew it was a bad decision. I did not feel right. I got dropped within the first mile on the first hill, but did manage to get to the top of the hill before one other rider. Still I was disappointed, and my time was almost a minute slower than my Thursday time, and there was more riding, and climbing ahead. Plus I was tired.
I did manage to complete the entire ride, but resorted to “sitting in” the pack a lot. For those of you not familiar with the term “sitting in”, think of bicycle racing like auto racing. In many cases you will see a race car following another car very closely. The car gets in a slip stream, and is able to maintain the same speed as the car in front, but uses much less energy. You get the same benefit when riding a bike, and I had to do a lot of that on Sunday.
After the ride, I was pooped. I just laid around the house, watching TV, pretty much doing nothing trying to recover. Today, I am happy to report, I am feeling much better, and plan on practicing my golf game this morning. I’d like to play, but we are having a barbecue at our house today, and I have to get ready for that.
I just hope that the tiredness I felt yesterday, was because I am getting older, and the body isn’t responding the way I expect it to, and not because something else is going on. From the way I feel today, I think it is the former. I just have to get used to the fact that I’m not as young as I used to be. It’s just that the mind isn’t telling me that.
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27 May |
TiVo, the next best thing to …………. Off Topic
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If you remember, back on May 12, I wrote, How did we get along before the advent of the internet?. Well as a person who watches a fair amount of television, I started to wonder, how did we ever get along before TiVo?
Last week our DirecTV HD TiVo unit started acting up. It would pixilate often, freeze, and then reboot itself almost every hour. It was extremely annoying, especially as it was occurring during the final episode of 24. We did manage to get through the final episode without too much problem, but soon after that, it froze and died. DirecTV was very accomodating, and sent a new unit out within 2 days, but we were without TiVo for 4 days.
Now, if you read my previous post, you’ll realize that a telephone line is required for the initial set up, which we don’t have. So it was a little hassle getting it hooked back up again. I ended up having to take the unit to a friends house, which on top of the “illegal left hand turn” ticket I received on the way, made this a very trying experience.
But alas I did succeed, and everything is back to normal now. Whew!
Like most things in life, you don’t realize just how much you miss somethin, until you have to do without them for any length of time. And TiVo was one such case. Being able to pause live TV, rewinding because you didn’t understand something, recording one show while watching another, and the ease of retrieving recorded shows, are just a few of the conveniences which made getting the TiVo reconnected, and the resulting ticket, a priority.
So if you watch any TV at all, and don’t have TiVo yet, I suggest you get one. You’ll wonder how you ever survived without it.
There is one caveat though. The TiVo unit is a computer, and subject to all the problems that computers have. So don’t wait too long to watch everything you’ve saved. You could lose lots of stuff, if your TiVo should crash like ours.
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26 May |
We live in a wireless world, right? Off Topic
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Just about everyone has a cellular phone. Internet access is available via wireless wi-fi connections. Many of us travel around communicating with our wireless Blackberry’s and Palm Pilot’s. We even have a wireless device connected to our A/C at home, which allows Southern California Edison to shut the A/C off, in times of high usage, for a reduced rate. Credit card transactions are conducted wirelessly.
There are wireless speakers for your stereo, and you can control most home electronics from just about anywhere wirelessly.
We live in a wireless world. Wires are a thing of the past. Especially the phone line. Right? Well not so fast.
If we live in a wireless world, why does DirecTV require I have a phone line connected to my TiVo box, in order for me to get my TiVo connected? And this from a company that sends TV signals wirelessly to homes.
Even TiVo users, without DirecTV, can hook up wirelessly using a USB adapter to their boxes instead of hooking it to a land line, but DirecTV has disabled the USB ports on the receiver.
I don’t understand it. I don’t like wires. We disconnected our land line telephone service 3 years ago, and went strictly cellular. We get free long distance anywhere in the US, plenty of free minutes for making calls, not to mention the convenience of having a phone anytime, anywhere you need it. Even on the golf course! 
I don’t see the point of a land line any more.
So why do I need a phone line to hook up my TiVo? Someone tell me, please!
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22 May |
California, Why I Love It! Day to Day Life
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As I was driving to work this morning, I was wondering why I even bothered to get up. It had pretty much rained all night, and was still raining as I started on my 78 mile commute to the beautiful metropolis known as Oxnard, CA. (For those of you unfamiliar with southern California, Oxnard borders Ventura on the south, and is about 40 miles south of Santa Barbara.)
It’s not really that beautiful in Oxnard, but that isn’t a problem. The plant where I work is on the very southern end of Oxnard, 1/4 mile from a protected beach. Between us and the beach is agricultural land where lima beans and other similar crops are planted.
My drive takes me along a 50 mile scenic route through Santa Monica, and past the beautiful and rugged coast line of Malibu. The stretch includes the area where Bay Watch was filmed, and another stretch of road popular in automobile commercials.
While todays rain isn’t typical for this time of year, (it is the dry season right now), and we can get some cool weather in the winter, where else in the world can you experience such beautiful scenery, plus what I consider to be near perfect, if not perfect weather.
During the winter, in the early morning, temperatures can drop into the mid 40’s, or lower on rare occasions, but the sun comes up, and it quickly warms into the lower to mid 60’s. We do get a few more clouds, AKA marine layer, in the spring and early summer, but that just makes the days all the more comfortable, for pretty much doing whatever you want, including as in my case, golfing and riding my bike.
Staying fit in California is easy, as there aren’t any good excuses for sitting on the couch. It’s never that cold in the winter, and seldom that hot in the summer.
Now all that I just described is exactly what can cause California to be a miserable place to live, because it seems everyone wants to move here. At times this area can seem unbelievably crowded, especially if you’ve ever been on the freeways during rush hour. Even on weekends, regardless of the time of day, traffic jams are a frequent and common occurrence. Everyone seems to be going somewhere, and they’re going there in their cars.
It’s also expensive to live here. Home prices are among the highest in the country. There just doesn’t seem to be enough supply of homes, at least in the coastal communities, where most people would prefer to live. Electricity costs are among the highest in the country also, and gasoline, with the exception of Hawaii maybe, is the highest in the US. And let’s not forget about taxes, 8.25% sales tax, 9.3% state income tax just to name a few. Even our school system appears to be in shambles, and there is no doubt we are living in the hotbed of the illegal immigration debate.
All the latter factors make me constantly consider leaving CA, and moving elsewhere.
Sometimes I think about moving back to Pittsburgh, but then I remember what the winters were like when I was growing up. Las Vegas comes up occasionally also, but in the summer it can get unbearably hot, and it is also starting to get overcrowded.
It seems I can always come up with a reason to move, but there just so many more reasons not to. But the biggest reason for not moving, and likely the number one reason I will not move is health care. If you’re going to get sick, there is no better place in the world to be, than in California.
Certainly other states have great medical communities, it’s just that California has more. And California seems to have the best schools and training hospitals, and more highly regarded physicians. California is also at the forefront in the research and development of new drugs, as well as advancements in new medical procedures.
California may have its downside, but the benefits far out weigh any of those problems. Like the drive home today. The sun was shining brightly, the sky was a deep blue, and the Pacific Ocean was an unusually deep blue and aqua color
It can be tough sometimes living in paradise