Skip to main content

Endless repetition or endless variety?

The climate in the Bay Area has been described by some as boring, and lacking seasons. My initial response to that is a bit more forceful, but really it depends on your level of granularity when looking around you. This last week we've been treated with an intense taste of coming spring, and while the general pattern of how the day plays out is the same from day to day, it's really not the same day to day, not really at all.

This past weekend was a long weekend, and a few days before it arrived, the forecast included the 'R' word, but come Friday the forecast was pretty nice. Afternoons were clear, with a hint of being warmer than it had been for months. By Monday, a holiday for most of us, the pattern for the week emerged. Overnight the skies were largely clear, but just before dawn, fog would roll in off the bay and creep it's way up into the Berkeley and Oakland hills. By late morning, clear skies fought back and forced the fog back to the coastline and through the afternoon the air would warm up nicely.

I took advantage of this pattern by planning a ride with my son and a friend of mine out to Stinson Beach from The City, meeting our respective families for lunch, a little time walking the beach, and then my friend and I rode home, taking a very indirect way back to The City. Tuesday was a day of simple commuting straight to and from work, but Wednesday and Thursday, I took the long way. Each day the night sky would be clear as I went out to get the paper, and during the time it took to complete (or goof up) the sudoku puzzle, the fog would arrive. I'd leave the house just before the sun came up, riding into and out of fog banks. As I climbed up Spruce, I'd clear the fog. Today it took a bit more climbing and the edge of the fog was not nearly as distinct. Yesterday I left the fog behind early on the ride. Both days, I'd ride back into the fog as I came racing down Claremont.

I've been trying to get a grip on the food I consume, and the reasons I consume so much of it, and after whittling down my vices one by one (long way to go still overall), I've managed to cut out a number of really bad food habits. I've managed to replace those with practices I hope will become habits, one of which relies on seasonal food. Around the produce markets near here, it is Satsuma orange time. Boy howdy, I just love those things. They are so easy to peel and so very tasty, and in my mind they are like candy. I crave them and can pop one after the other down the old pie hole. In too short a time though, they will be out of season. Right now, I'm folding this little fruit into as many emerging habits as I can. I've taken to keeping a few of these handy on my desk at work so I can eat them in the morning after my ride into work, and in the evening I take a walk after dinner at a brisk pace, and often end up at the local Natural Grocery store and pick up a few more.

As spring arrives, the source for my all time favorite treat will work it's way north. Right now, the strawberries are coming from near San Diego, but there are a great number of way more local strawberry farms and they will show up regularly at the farmer's markets and grocery stores. I'll find them well into the summer and touching into fall at the markets. Wish me luck as I try to keep to that habit and not retreat backward toward the $.25 sodas in the kitchen at work.

Comments

Joe B said…
I just had a nice chocolate croissant after my morning commute. I live by the motto that you can never eat too much, you can only exercise too little. Okay, that and avoid those doctor visits where they check your cholesterol.
rob hawks said…
Confession time. One vice I haven't kicked, but for which I've found a somewhat convincing justification is a chocolate chip cookie from Semifreddies. The justification is that I only get them on my way to work when I've taken the long way, and therefore climbed 2000' on a 16 mile commute.
Anonymous said…
You have really great taste on catch article titles, even when you are not interested in this topic you push to read it
Dr Codfish said…
It's timely. Here comes the sun and I (like many) am not entirely thrilled with what it is illuminating.

I've been on my own version of "The Incredible Shrinking Randonneur" for the last few months and it is starting to have some measureable effect (I'm down 16 pounds this morning!)

Standard rules seem not to work for me:
1. I need to feel hungry, and to embrace that gnawing, uncomfortable sense of withdrawal not as a signal to eat, but as the sensation of loosing weight.

2. I need to stop eating before I am full. Because by the time I arrive at the sensation of fullness, I've eaten waaay too much. So my new mantra: Quit while you are still 'hungry for more'.

3. I'm gravitating teward a plant based menu. Michael Pollans idea: "If it came from a plant, eat it: If it was made in a plant, don't".

Yr Pal, Dr C

Popular posts from this blog

2007 PBP, Part 1: Arrival and departure

On the Sunday before the start of the 2007 Paris-Brest-Paris (PBP) Randonnee, a large number of Northern California riders gathered after the mandatory, but this year much abbreviated, bike inspection. We sat at a cafe, indoors alas, and tried to ignore the falling rain outside. My friend Reid made a waggish remark about the experience we were about to have. He said that doing Paris-Brest-Paris in the rain could be quite easily simulated at home by standing in a cold shower in bicycling clothing while ripping up $100 bills. I thought about this remark and in the the long, dark hours of the first night's ride through the French countryside, and with the rain beginning to pelt us once more, I came to the conclusion that the analogy was inadequate. What was missing in the comment was that it failed to include any mention of first having to stand in line to get into the cold shower. Having now commented on the inadequacies of the analogy (and pausing briefly to state that I completed

Cycling mileage spreadsheet (using google docs)

Several years back I was looking for a good way to keep track of my annual cycling mileage and a little Googling resulted in finding this website and it's link to a downloadabe Excel spreadsheet for keeping track of cycling mileage. Mark Pankin, who created that Excel doc annually updates the document and makes it available to the public. I think the document is great and I've used it for several years. One issue I did have with it though was gaining access to the document remotely. I kept it on my computer at home but sometimes I wanted to update it when I was not at home or just pull data from it, again when I wasn't at home. I had had some email exchanges with Mark to ask about certain features of his document and this led to a discussion about porting the document over to Google Docs. Mark was not a Google Docs user but he didn't mind at all if I created a document using his Excel spreadsheet as a model. While there is some ability to import and export Excel format

Where is Rob?

 Every four years, the Audax Club Parisien (ACP) will hold their Paris-Brest-Paris (or PBP) Randonneur event. There has been an amateur version of PBP since 1931. However, PBP has existed in some form since 1891, though back then it was a race, held about every 10 years until 1931 with a gap for the war, and then for the last time as a race in 1951. The take-away though is that PBP is no longer a race, there is no first and last place and the only metric to assess riders really is one of pass/fail. You either finish in the time limit, or you don't. Currently, PBP offers three start groups: 80 hours, 90 hours and 84 hours, in order of start. Each group will broken up into start waves with somewhere north of 200 (250?) riders in each wave. Under the direction of the ACP, Randonneurs USA (RUSA) sanctions qualifying events for PBP of 200, 300, 400 and 600km, each with a time limit. RUSA administers regions through out the US and there are five of those in Northern California, one in C