Jean is still in Boynton Beach helping Robert live his life, but says she’ll be back tomorrow. Time will tell. It was supposed to be Thursday, then Sunday, now Monday. Rocky’s had a break for a couple of weeks and now Robert will after tomorrow. I’ll take my turn having Jean tell me what to do and when to do it, but I plan to come back to Michigan on the 20th for Pennock’s February board meeting (2/25) and a Joint Conference Committee meeting (2/21). We haven’t talked about whether Jean will come back with me or not.

Interesting run today. I ran in some older, but low mileage, Asics Gel Foundation III shoes. I forgot to use Vaseline on my arches and luckily had no blisters. On the down side, I intended to run 7 or 8 miles at an easy pace, but I ran 6 miles at an easy pace and ran out of gas. I don’t know whether it was mental or physical. I don’t have any gels down here and didn’t have any sports drink either, just water. I think my muscle glycogen was depleted and there was nothing to replenish it. My Bayshore Marathon training starts on February 7th so I hope I get it figured out soon.

I went to the book store yesterday and bought “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Total Nutrition” by Joy Bauer. On the way out of the mall, I stopped at Best Buy and got a Yoga DVD, “Yoga for Strength” with Rodney Yi. If I can convince myself to follow the nutrition guide closely and do the Yoga DVD two or three times a week, I won’t have to starve myself to lose weight and my old geezer joints will start limbering up. I don’t think there’s much in the book I haven’t read before at one time or another, but I just have to make a commitment to stay with it.

As a side note, I wasn’t paying attention when I was looking for the book store and stepped into one that I know said book store on the front. As I looked around, there were no books, lots of magazines, and the DVDs had people, mostly women, in various positions, but I’m sure they weren’t doing Yoga. When I saw that they had booth rentals “by the minute”, I knew I was in the wrong place. As I left I saw the sign “ADULT Book Store”. Lesson learned (Pay Attention).

Bruce and Ruth Gee were down here (Spring Hill) for a week so they invited me to lunch on Friday. They had a house built in a development called “Pristine Place”. I got a tour of the house (beautiful layout and nicely decorated) and we walked around the neighborhood. It was a little chilly (low to mid 60s) so we didn’t go canoeing like we planned.

My Terry Liberator bike seat came yesterday and I had it on the bike within an hour. It’s about the same length as the Alias 130 seat that came with the bike, but a little thicker. I measured distances as closely as I could and tried to set the new seat in the same position. My first ride (probably today) will tell the story.

A couple of years ago I started writing about my life as a “mediocre athlete”. I titled the piece “I Am Not The Greatest”, a take off on Muhammad Ali’s statement. The first writing was what Anne Lamott, the author of “Bird By Bird” calls a “sh*&%y first draft”. I tried to rewrite parts of it last year, but my memory problems made me forget what I had just read two minutes before, so I scrapped the project. This year I brought the word files with me and am rewriting, chapter by chapter. My plan is to get it where I want it, word protect it, and file it away. Then I can go on to other things. The “Monk” in me won’t let things stay undone. If I ever write anything I think is readable, I’ll pass it on.

Time to go. The warm weather beckons me.

Just (Missing My Friends) Jack

 We’ve been down here a little over a week so there’s not much news. I promise not to whine about the wind while I was out running today, or the fact that the temperature had dipped to 47 on that same run. I’ve heard about the snow and wind in Michigan and I’m glad I didn’t have to run in that (did anyone run today?).

Jean and I joined the YMCA in Springhill for two months and she promptly left town to stay with Robert for a few days in Boynton Beach, just South of West Palm Beach and North of Miami. After we joined the YMCA last year in Venice, we went to Michigan and she never came back. I don’t know if she’s trying to spend her inheritance early on these faimly memberships or wants to whittle the divorce settlement to an even number.

For you runners out there, I’m still having blister issues. My “during the week” runs are in the 4 mile range and I never have any problems. The Sunday runs are from 6 to 8 miles and the blisters start forming on my arch around 5 miles. This morning I had blisters on both feet (to date it has only been the right foot). I’ve used three different brand/style shoes and have problems with all three. I guess it’s time to try vaseline. By the way, the shoes and socks are the same I have used for the past year and, yes, I do wash the socks.

I’ve had a couple of things happen the last couple of weeks and I don’t know whether I should be offended, people are try to tell me something for my own good, or I’m just imagining things. First of all, I told you all last week about the problems with my bike seat. I decided to get a Terry Liberator since that’s what I use on the Trek and it’s comfortable (I won’t get into the mechanics of how we plant 3/4 of our body weight on a bike seat on a few square inches of a tender part of our body and it is “comfortable”).

Anyway, I went to a bike shop in Springhill which is 6 or 7 miles North of Hudson, where we’re staying. I walked into the shop and it appeared to be geared toward Florida riders (draw your own conclusions). There were a few bike seats on the wall near the front of the store so I wound my way through the bikes and looked at them. None of them were what I wanted.The owner of the store was in the back, reached up to a bike seat on a shelf wrapped in plastic, unwrapped it and said “I’ll bet this is what you’re looking for”. It was one of those seats that looks like a John Deere tractor seat. It’s wider than it is long and accomodates big butts. I said no and walked out of the store.

That same day I got an e-mail from Florida Realty Centers with an attachment. That’s where brother Bob works and I assumed he had sent me a picture of some real estate I may be interested in. Instead it was a series of pictures, taken from behind, of a young woman who must have weighed 300 pounds with the caption, “Does this thong make my butt look big?” (shades of last year’s thong pictures of Bill Bradley and me).

Then this morning, just as I opened my e-mail program to write this, I received a message. It took forever to dowload so I knew it had an attachment which happened to be a song. It was titled, “I just don’t look good naked anymore”. I did listen to it but I won’t repeat the lyrics. I won’t say who sent it but his initials are ERNIE STRONG. We do take a trip together to the U.P. each August to a one room cabin, so I know he’s seen me naked.

So are they trying to tell me something or am I ust being too sensitive? Two of the encounters may have been a coincidence, but three? I think not. I know I gained 12 pounds after Ironman Wisconsin, but I’ve been trying to lose that and have a good start. Once Mom left for Michigan I took the homemade chocolate candies over to brother Bob’s so he could take them to work (I can’t stand the temptation).

Since I’m so close to fresh seafood, I’m trying to include more of it in my diet. Yesterday I went to the shrimp docks and bought 2 pounds of shrimp fresh off the boat and a 1/2 pound of Grouper. That was too much for me so I enlisted Bob and his friend, Debra, to help me eat it. The shrimp was boiled for 1 minute in salted water, then rinsed in cold water to stop the cooking process. I took two thirds of them and sauteed them quickly in olive oil, butter and sprinkled them lightly with cajun seasoning. I sauteed the grouper in the same olive oil and butter, and sprinkled it lightly with lemon pepper seasoning. We washed it down with a glass of wine. That sounds healthy, doesn’t it? O.K. Next time I should skip the olive oil, butter and the wine. But we all should enjoy life every once in a while, shouldn’t we?

Until next week,

Just (Chilly But Not Complaining) Jack

 Here we are in the sunny South and the e-mails start again. If you don’t want to be on the mailing list any more click here . Nothing happened? OK, try clicking here . Nothing happened again? I don’t know anything about computers, but brother Bob tells me that clicking those spots will probably redirect all my daily junk e-mails for cialis, viagra, and growing special parts of your body 3 inches to your e-mail. Sorry!

We had a good trip down after the first morning. When we left it was raining really hard and then we got into fog in northern Indiana. Luckily we weren’t involved in any pile-ups like happened in Lansing. We stopped for the night in Dalton, Georgia. We wanted to stay in a Fairfield Inn next to the Cracker Barrel restaurant so we could just walk over, but when they saw our car packed to the hilt with two bicycles and other outdoor paraphernalia (is that spelled right), they told us they were sold out. As we left I heard them whispering something about Ma and Pa Kettle (too old for most of you to understand).

I had worn a long-sleeved t-shirt and levis the second day and it was hot in the car. The temp was in the low 80s. We stopped at a Perkins restaurant and half the old guys (yes, older than me) had jackets on. When I get to that point, I’ll know I’m realy old. It was around 2:30 so I wasn’t sure whether all the older people were there for a late lunch or were there for the “early bird” dinner.

We must have dragged the cold weather down with us. The day after we got here it rained all day and turned colder. The wind has been blowing around 15 mph ever since.

Took the new bike out for a ride on Saturday. It was an easy 20 mile out and back. I averaged 21+ mph on the way South and around 14- mph on the way back. My butt got sore from the new seat at mile 9. By mile 13 I was standing every 3 or 4 minutes. When we got back, picture Jean standing over me with one foot on my right butt cheek pulling that seat out of my @%#&. On second thought, don’t picture it. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

Better sign off. We’re headed off to Clermont to look around and ride the new and improved bike route. An one want to do the Great Floridian this year?

Ta Ta as always,

Just (Warmer But Not Hot) Jack