During the surgery to remove my remaining teeth, I was supposed to be knocked out, sedated, whatever. For some reason, I came to my senses right in the middle of the process, and had to endure the agony of teeth being pulled out when they didn't want to be. The good thing about it is that I may have survived the most painful experience I'll ever have. Or maybe not. I always try to look on the sunny side.
At any rate, the pain has pretty much subsided now. Every place a tooth was yanked, there's a socket surrounded by swollen gum tissue that's puffy and tender. The combination of holes and swelling produces an effect that is similar to having my mouth packed with small chunks of foam rubber.
Among things that I took for granted were the number of times I pronounced words by pressing my tongue against my lower teeth. It was just something I never gave much thought to until I couldn't do it any more.
If I had it all to do over again, knowing what I know now, I think I would've taken more steps to prolong the life of my teeth. Hindsight is always 20/20.
Showing posts with label Sweat and Tears. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sweat and Tears. Show all posts
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Practical mathematical applications
The weather made a radical change yesterday, turning cold and rainy --- more like December than March. Today the sun was back, but it was still cold and windy. When I left the house to walk, it was 49 degrees with a wind chill factor of 41 degrees.
The first leg of my walk is 1.4 miles and I had the wind behind me, pushing me along, and was able to trot using roughly the same amount of energy as brisk walking. That was the good part.
When I made the loop to start the 1.6 mile return to home base, I was walking straight into the teeth of those 30 mph wind blasts. I'm not an engineer, but I figure I'm walking in one direction at 3.8 mph, and the wind is blowing in the opposite direction at 30 mph... well, you do the math.
The best analogy I can come up with is that my trip home today was like walking 1.6 miles in a shoulder-deep pool of tapioca pudding. By the time I walked into the house, I felt like I'd been dragging an anti-freeze can full of concrete, like the one my dad used as a boat anchor when I was a lad.
I don't know exactly how it works, but I believe whoever's in charge of life should award bonus points to older men who spend thirty minutes walking into the wind.
PS: When I was a little boy, I dropped that boat anchor on a toad to see what would happen. Maybe atonement requires walking long distances into bitterly cold winds... you think ?
The first leg of my walk is 1.4 miles and I had the wind behind me, pushing me along, and was able to trot using roughly the same amount of energy as brisk walking. That was the good part.
When I made the loop to start the 1.6 mile return to home base, I was walking straight into the teeth of those 30 mph wind blasts. I'm not an engineer, but I figure I'm walking in one direction at 3.8 mph, and the wind is blowing in the opposite direction at 30 mph... well, you do the math.
The best analogy I can come up with is that my trip home today was like walking 1.6 miles in a shoulder-deep pool of tapioca pudding. By the time I walked into the house, I felt like I'd been dragging an anti-freeze can full of concrete, like the one my dad used as a boat anchor when I was a lad.
I don't know exactly how it works, but I believe whoever's in charge of life should award bonus points to older men who spend thirty minutes walking into the wind.
PS: When I was a little boy, I dropped that boat anchor on a toad to see what would happen. Maybe atonement requires walking long distances into bitterly cold winds... you think ?
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Certitude, Part III
There are things in this world that I can't prove scientifically but know in my heart are true. For example, I'm certain that people who are afraid of the world and bitter about their lives are most likely to be both conservative and Republican. I can't prove it, but I'm sure I'm right.
I've recently become certain about something else I can't prove: It's better for your knees to walk wearing running shoes than to run wearing walking shoes.
Last May, I developed an enthusiasm for a routine known as high intensity interval training, which I wrote about at Hot Water Sandwich. It involved alternating short intervals of running with longer cool-down walking intervals. After a few weeks, I began to have pain in my left knee, which wasn't too troublesome as long as I was standing or walking, but was a real problem when I stood up after sitting for longer than ten minutes. The pain when I straightened my left leg and put weight on the knee was enough to make me wince. After a minute or so, the ache would subside. At any rate, as the weather grew warmer, the combination of summer heat and a sore knee led me to give up the running part of my routine.
Last week we got the first noticeable cool weather of autumn, and I realized I'd probably want to start running a little, particularly on chilly days. I decided to invest in my very first pair of running shoes, thinking that might prevent the hurt in my knee (which had diminished significantly after I stopped running this summer). I went to Academy and bought the least expensive running shoes on their shelves.
The first time I laced 'em up and started walking around, it was like bouncing on tiny trampolines. There was literally a spring in my step that I couldn't recall previously experiencing. Hmmm, I thought, maybe I shoulda tried this a long time ago.
In my neighborhood, the city recently opened a pair of trails through the wooded areas, and I enjoy the shade so much that I reconfigured my walking routes to include them. Since I couldn't measure the new routes with my car odometer, I began a series of measurements using stopwatches and pedometers, then calculating the distance based on averages and known quantities.
One of my most commonly-walked routes is 3.10 miles and requires an average of 6138 steps to complete. The first time I walked the route in the new shoes, it only took 5914 steps. WTF ? --- I knew for a fact the trail hadn't gotten shorter. Over the next few days, I started comparing the steps recorded on my pedometers to the averages I had calculated for each route when determining their distances, and in every instance, I was covering the same ground with fewer steps. I pulled out the calculator again and established that my stride had lengthened by roughly 0.6 inches, and the only thing that had changed was the shoes I was wearing. It'll take me more mileage to reach 10,000 steps, but that's a minor drawback to gain a knee that feels like it's only 35 years old again.
I've recently become certain about something else I can't prove: It's better for your knees to walk wearing running shoes than to run wearing walking shoes.
Last May, I developed an enthusiasm for a routine known as high intensity interval training, which I wrote about at Hot Water Sandwich. It involved alternating short intervals of running with longer cool-down walking intervals. After a few weeks, I began to have pain in my left knee, which wasn't too troublesome as long as I was standing or walking, but was a real problem when I stood up after sitting for longer than ten minutes. The pain when I straightened my left leg and put weight on the knee was enough to make me wince. After a minute or so, the ache would subside. At any rate, as the weather grew warmer, the combination of summer heat and a sore knee led me to give up the running part of my routine.
Last week we got the first noticeable cool weather of autumn, and I realized I'd probably want to start running a little, particularly on chilly days. I decided to invest in my very first pair of running shoes, thinking that might prevent the hurt in my knee (which had diminished significantly after I stopped running this summer). I went to Academy and bought the least expensive running shoes on their shelves.
The first time I laced 'em up and started walking around, it was like bouncing on tiny trampolines. There was literally a spring in my step that I couldn't recall previously experiencing. Hmmm, I thought, maybe I shoulda tried this a long time ago.
In my neighborhood, the city recently opened a pair of trails through the wooded areas, and I enjoy the shade so much that I reconfigured my walking routes to include them. Since I couldn't measure the new routes with my car odometer, I began a series of measurements using stopwatches and pedometers, then calculating the distance based on averages and known quantities.
One of my most commonly-walked routes is 3.10 miles and requires an average of 6138 steps to complete. The first time I walked the route in the new shoes, it only took 5914 steps. WTF ? --- I knew for a fact the trail hadn't gotten shorter. Over the next few days, I started comparing the steps recorded on my pedometers to the averages I had calculated for each route when determining their distances, and in every instance, I was covering the same ground with fewer steps. I pulled out the calculator again and established that my stride had lengthened by roughly 0.6 inches, and the only thing that had changed was the shoes I was wearing. It'll take me more mileage to reach 10,000 steps, but that's a minor drawback to gain a knee that feels like it's only 35 years old again.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Splat
For several years, the core of my exercise program has been a three mile walk nearly every day. My goal is to complete three miles in 45 minutes, or as close to that as I can make it. In the summer, the hot weather tends to slow me down; I can still usually complete the route in less than 48 minutes. But in the winter months, mid-November until late February, the weather cools off and I can really move. The colder it gets, the faster I can go.
On the Hot Water blog, I wrote about a recent dream and ended with a remark that it would be cool to ignore the effects of gravity anytime I wanted. Tonight, gravity decided to let me know she was still around and on the job.
I was late starting the walk, nearly 6:00 pm and practically dark outside. Temperature around 56 degrees, not cold but not warm either. Ideal weather for the three miles, in fact.
When the weather's chilly, I walk some but add what we used to call quick time and double time, and if it's cold enough I even throw in some sprints, running as fast as my aging legs will allow. I had just completed about half the route and decided to try a short sprint. It turned out to be shorter than anticipated; I'm not sure what happened but I was running at what for me is full bore and apparently stubbed a toe against the curb. If I'd been walking I wouldn't have noticed it, but at the velocity I was traveling it was enough to get my feet higher than my head in a hurry.
Trust me on this - concrete sidewalks can be unforgiving. I had a three pound weight in each hand, and my chest landed on one of them. It took only an instant to get from vertical to horizontal, but I rolled off the pavement onto the grass and spent a minute or two contemplating the laws of physics in what had become a world of pain mixed with a serious helping of humiliation and embarrassment.
A nice lady in the vacinity heard the sound of my weights hitting the concrete, saw me lying on the grass, and trotted over to see if there'd been any survivors. She offered to run me home in her SUV, and although I could've walked on in, I decided to take her up on the offer.
I got home where there was good lighting and checked the damage. Right hand has five nasty knuckle scrapes and a bloody scrape on the heel. Left hand has a moderate bleeding scape on the wrist, just below the face of my watch. Painful scrapes on right elbow and both knees. The biggest problem is the constant pain in my sternum, roughly the center of the breastbone. Feels like I may have fractured something, but probably it's just the afterglow of coming to a sudden stop. With luck, it'll be no more than a minor nuisance in the morning. Fortunately, I'd been dressed for wind chill, which kept the abrasions to a minimum. But all in all, I'm too damned old for this shit. Those are five seconds in my life I'd like to do over differently.
On the Hot Water blog, I wrote about a recent dream and ended with a remark that it would be cool to ignore the effects of gravity anytime I wanted. Tonight, gravity decided to let me know she was still around and on the job.
I was late starting the walk, nearly 6:00 pm and practically dark outside. Temperature around 56 degrees, not cold but not warm either. Ideal weather for the three miles, in fact.
When the weather's chilly, I walk some but add what we used to call quick time and double time, and if it's cold enough I even throw in some sprints, running as fast as my aging legs will allow. I had just completed about half the route and decided to try a short sprint. It turned out to be shorter than anticipated; I'm not sure what happened but I was running at what for me is full bore and apparently stubbed a toe against the curb. If I'd been walking I wouldn't have noticed it, but at the velocity I was traveling it was enough to get my feet higher than my head in a hurry.
Trust me on this - concrete sidewalks can be unforgiving. I had a three pound weight in each hand, and my chest landed on one of them. It took only an instant to get from vertical to horizontal, but I rolled off the pavement onto the grass and spent a minute or two contemplating the laws of physics in what had become a world of pain mixed with a serious helping of humiliation and embarrassment.
A nice lady in the vacinity heard the sound of my weights hitting the concrete, saw me lying on the grass, and trotted over to see if there'd been any survivors. She offered to run me home in her SUV, and although I could've walked on in, I decided to take her up on the offer.
I got home where there was good lighting and checked the damage. Right hand has five nasty knuckle scrapes and a bloody scrape on the heel. Left hand has a moderate bleeding scape on the wrist, just below the face of my watch. Painful scrapes on right elbow and both knees. The biggest problem is the constant pain in my sternum, roughly the center of the breastbone. Feels like I may have fractured something, but probably it's just the afterglow of coming to a sudden stop. With luck, it'll be no more than a minor nuisance in the morning. Fortunately, I'd been dressed for wind chill, which kept the abrasions to a minimum. But all in all, I'm too damned old for this shit. Those are five seconds in my life I'd like to do over differently.
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Point at them and laugh
Summer walks in Texas
Judging by the amount of water on driveways and sidewalks and in the street, some Texans seem to think you can grow concrete and asphalt using lawn sprinklers.
Six-Word Memoir
Most of my balloons were popped.
