Ted's life rocks!
7/6/09:I got to swim today for the first time since the end of March or early April. I knew I had a sore shoulder but there was no additional pain. I cruised through 10 laps like I didn't take any time off at all. My sports chiropractor doctor has been awesome so I do my best to listen to his instructions. I also got a 5.5 mile run in this morning. I am so happy to be healing after what seems like an eternity of injured body parts. I may have a September "Esacape from the rock" triathlon in me after all. Michael went out running with me yesterday and today. We also did some cycling yesterday but we had to cut the ride short due to mechanical issues on my bike.

I love my little honeychan very much and I really miss her a lot since she has been gone but it has been nice to spend time with Michael these past few weeks. He seems to be a lot more pleasant when it is just us but that also seems to run true for all of three of them. For that matter, it seems to hold true for life in general. I can bring out the worst in people but I seem to better at bringing out the good side of people. I would like to ask one of the people who I managed to bring out the worst side of but I am a bit shy to ask. I wonder why I don't ask people what I did wrong, it is not like I am bashful or hold back often. Maybe I prefer to focus on the good things in life.

I am slowly working my back to getting into shape. I am still under weight but I have to admit, being under weight is a lot of fun. I get to have a doctor admonish me regularly for not eating enough. I am told to eat ice cream, eggs and other good stuff. It is a shame that he does not tell me to eat bacon or french fries.

I can see that September triathlon coming. It will take some work but I think I can do it. My little honeychan and Teddy will be back to watch me swim from Alcatraz. Maybe, we can do a half marathon this fall too.

Ted has been busy!
6/28/09:A lot has happened since my last update. My Honeychan went to Japan for the summer. It is nice to still be happy with someone after 25 years. I miss her already. My camera class has been keeping me very busy. I always carry my camera and take a lot of pictures. I took some pictures of my students and printed them out for their graduation. I was so happy to see that everyone liked my pictures. All of my hard work paid off. ESL class photo album. The Gallery album is a prepackaged program for Linux. I got it to work but it takes a lot of manual intervention to get the pictures posted. My ESL class graduated last week. My post on ESL can be found here:ESL thoughts They did so well on the graduation ceremony, I was happy all the next day.

I am back to working out on a limited scale. My weight has finally stabilized. My sports chiropractor is awesome. He has me consuming thousands of calories a day. Two 1,000 calorie shakes per day, bananas, eggs and nuts. I don't usually drink the second shake because that is a whey protien shake and I don't like whey shakes. What is really cool about all of this is the fact that I am able to accept the bad and just be happy with the progress going forward. I don't know where or how I picked up the ability to accept things but I am glad I did. At the moment, Ted has some serious inner peace going on.

Great week for Ted
6/5/09:I am still healing from my injuries but I am coping just fine. I sometimes wish they would just heal and my life could just go back to normal but I realize this is normal. I am going to get injured and it is up to me to make sure it does not happen again. It is also up to me to heal properly. Back to my great week. It started out with plenty of sleep and an early jump for Monday morning. I did the P90X core plus the P90 abs. I slammed a ton (~1,000 calories) of protien shake for energy and calories then went to work. My beautiful honeychan made me a great lunch in all of those Japanese style small servings.
I was set on going to yoga, for Mondy night, but I forgot my mat and I do not like covering the loaners with sweat so I went home to spend time with my honeychan (honeychans are nice, everyone should have one). I started my camera class on Tuesday and I had a lot of fun. I learned so much about DSLR fundamentals.

I had to move my English class to Wednesday to accommodate my camera class. The students were so happy to see me, my love quota was filled up instantly There is some serious instant gratification by walking into a room of 26 people and they are all happy to see you.
I like to get close to 8 hours sleep per night but Thursday night only gave me 6. I was dragging a bit after my morning workout. The calorie boost did not help. I went to lunch with a couple of young people from work today. They were a bit reserved as work lunches are new to them but they were so pleasant to spend time with, my day was made. If you guys read this, high res pictures are coming soon the photo page. I came home to a nice fish dinner and a lovely family. After dinner we danced to dancehall reggae for a little while. Don't stretch your imagination on a middle aged white guy and middle aged Japanese lady dancing to reggae. We had fun anyway.

Distressing moment today.
5/29/09: There was a nice choppy high tide today. While driving home today, I saw a lot of waves at the beach. I don't usually get down but for some odd reason, looking at the choppy water really got to me. My injuries are bothersome but I don't seem to rest enough for them to heal. Hopefully the longing I felt from looking at the beautiful choppy sea will help me rest for another week or two. I love swimming in really choppy water. I keep telling myself to rest but I don't seem to listen. I am just too hard headed for my own good. I will ice my leg and rest for the rest of the night.

Holiday Weekend
5/25/09: Nice long weekend in Alameda. For those of you waiting for the pond care instructions, they are coming soon. The filter has been built but I keep getting distracted by all of the fun things I can do with my new camera (Canon Rebel XS, DSLR) and other things. One distraction, is all of my little injuries that just won't heal. I presume swimming is out for the summer. If I get lucky, I may be able to do the September Alcatraz swim. My shoulder is pretty messed up and it would be best if I can get it to heal using physical therapy. I got carried away with rehabbing my torn calf muscle and injured it again. I have done no biking, running or yoga for almost two weeks now. I was going stir crazy so Michael borrowed some work out routine called P90X for me to try. It is mostly low impact and a good workout. It is such a good workout that I will be surprised if I do not order my own copy within the next two weeks. It is fun to see that I should be totally down from working out and still managed to find something to keep me occupied. Another distraction from my pond post is playing around with all of the pictures I took with new camera. It is really hard to organize all of those photos. I have a habit of saving a large majority of my pictures because they are fun to look at later on. I have plenty of storage so there really is no need to discard them. I can lose hours just wondering how I can improve a photo. This post has no real point other than to say I had a great holiday weekend. It is a lot of fun and very relaxing to spend time with the family with no real purpose. Usually we have something planned that requires planning, execution and stress.

Finally running again
5/1/09: I love being alive! Life throws all types of ups and downs at us. It is up to us to take them in stride and not stay down. I have had some stress at work lately but I seem to have come out of it no worse for the wear. I guess stress is just a part of life that we have to deal with. My yoga instructor is always talking about balance between our yin and our yang. I really have no idea what she is talking about but balance makes sense. I even managed to relax for the first time last night. It is funny to think that I can be so happy and I relax so little. I guess relaxing is not one of the things that makes me happy.

I got out for a run today! My doctor gave me clearance to run today. I could not believe it. It was raining hard but I went out running anyway. So much for the relaxing I learned yesterday. I went out running in the rain and smiled the whole time I was running. I practiced what I learned about awareness and that just added to my joy. I could smell the flowers in the rain. I few steps later I could smell the dirt that was settling in for the summer release its aroma with the rain. I could feel my feet, knees and legs. The time off from running did me very good indeed. Now that I can run again, I will stick with the yoga because all of this yin and yang is cool. I have been on a roll these past few years. I hope all continues to stay this well. I have some regrets but I have a lot more smiles from the things I did right than frowns from the things I did wrong. All thing considered, it is good to be Ted from Alameda.

Back to the bay swim
March 28, 09: As I was driving down Van Ness on my way to the water park, I was thinking how good it is to be me. My body is a bit beaten up but over all, I get to do a lot of things that most people don't even think of doing. These bay swims that I bore people with are one of the many things I do and appreciate the fact that I can do them.

Today was a beautiful day. I woke up to sunshine and a gentle breeze. That is not a common thing for the bay area. I knew the water was going to be cold today so I packed up a pot of coffee to go. I got lucky today. The sun must have warmed up the water along the coast. It was around 50-53 degrees along the shore line. I could feel the drop in temperature as I got out into the current. There was no doubt about the 49 degree forecast. The swim was excellent. I used my leg a little bit (the whole swim). My post swim was great. I sprayed some Pam cooking oil on my wetsuit to help take it off. That worked very well. I have a new and improved wetsuit but I favor the old beat up one for some odd reason. The cold water does not seem to be affecting me like it did in January. I am very glad of that.

March 21, 09: I got back into the bay today after my injury. My trip started out with my concerned little honeychan making me coffee so I could get warm after the swim. What a great way to start the day. There was no traffic for my commute to the swimming park and there were a lot of swimmers around. I went through hell the last time I got out for a swim so I was mentally prepared for the cold this time. It is strange swimming in the bay without kicking. I got out past the sea wall and got nervous because the water is really deep out there. A totally irrational thought but I swam back to the shore anyway. I had to get away from the 30 feet deep water back to the safety of the 15 feet deep water. Sometimes, my brain just does odd things. When I got back to the shoreline, there were a lot of new swimmers to go around so that put my mind back to normal. Of course, I just had to pass all of the new swimmers without kicking. I did notice that I have been getting lazy while bay swimming. I have been cruising through the 2 mile swims without putting much effort into the workout. I will have to work on my effort level.

When I finished my swim, I had to stand on the shoreline and pant for a short time while I was waiting for the world to stop spinning. The delay allowed my wetsuit time to dry. Old wetsuits are hard to remove. Old, dry wetsuits are extremely hard to remove. I figured out how to get the thing off by the time I got to my injured leg. I was a bit cold but not miserable at all. I love swimming in the tourist area because I am never lonely. People always stop to talk. The little conversations always keep me in good spirits. I stopped for pizza on the way home with very little pain in my hands or feet. I will be healthy in no time.

Injury (Moved from Latest News)
March 18, 09: I was out for a jog two weeks ago and tore my calf muscle while running across the street. I was a little less than a mile away from work when it happened. I was out jogging in the rain, totally enjoying life just being happy that I was in such good shape when I went down with my calf muscle. It took me about an hour to limp back to work worried about the damage I caused to myself this time. Kaiser, my insurance care provider network place, took good care of me. They saw me quickly and gave me lots of drugs. I took a day off work and slept under the influence of muscle relaxers or relaxants. I should have been depressed because I was going to be set back so far in my training but I wasn't. I was really happy to be loved. Life throws a lot of surprises at me, it is up to me to appreciate them. I take it for granted that I am loved at home, I am happy to find that other people really care. It is curious to see how little the injury bothers me because so many people care.

It is still base training before the real training begins. I have a great base going right now so a few months off won't hurt that much. I am back in the pool and lifting weights on the machines now so I am not suffering much. Even the people at the gym missed me! Life is good when you can have a little injury and still be happy with the way things are working out. I wonder if people seem to love me because I seem to love them. Philosophy is to much for me, I will just say "yes" and be oblivious to anyone else's perception.

January Bay Swim
I got a jump on last years swim record. Today is January 10, 2009 and I got my first swim of the year in today. The outside air temperature was 60-65 and the water temperature was 51 degrees. As I have told everyone, Aquatic Park is in a huge tourist area. The tourists are always around no matter what time of year it is. Today was no different. A couple of tourist came to watch me squeeze into my wetsuit and talk about the water. I was joking around at how spandex has nothing on a wetsuit when it comes to pointing out a few extra pounds. These two were fun, they walked me to the water where I began my swim. I gave them a play by play of how cold the water was starting with the feet. They were amazed at how much pain us cold water swimmers actually went through to get started. Before I took off into the distance, I told them about how all of the pain they witnessed me go through was nothing compared to what I was going to feel when my head started to adapt to the water.

Todays swim was, by far, my worst bay swim ever. The tide was higher than I have ever experienced. The sun was out and the weather was beautiful. I was miserable. It took about 15 minutes and 1/4 mile of swimming before I became numb. I went out of the swim park into the bay and got nervous and turned around. On the way back to the shoreline swim lane I ran into a bay seal. The seal left me alone. I left him alone. After about a 1.5 mile swim I stopped. My feet were so cold, they hurt. I finished my swim 1 mile short of my goal and a miserable frozen popsicle. My feet hurt so badly, it hurt to walk. When I rinsed my feet, I could not feel them. My hands were so numb, I got stuck in my wetsuit. I was thinking about asking a tourist to help get the thing off but I would not be able to bear the humiliation.

As I walked back to my car, cold humble and miserable, the tourist kept stopping and talking to me. They helped to improve my spirits. After my spirits were lifted, some lady hit on me while I was walking. I have no intention of trading my honey chan in a new model but it is nice when you get hit on with bright red skin wearing a speedo. When I got to the car, I quickly jumped into some sweats, grabbed some coffee and stood in the sun. My feet were in too much pain for me to drive for about an hour. I drove over to Escape From New York Pizza on Polk street and my feet were still hurting. My feet stopped hurting by the time I got my pizza. When my feet stopped hurting, I realized my hands were not working properly. I had to drive home with two hands. My hands are still not working properly, 7 hours after I stopped swimming. I wonder if I will swim in the bay next week. I may or may not swim next week but if I do, I will run afterwards. I still feel like a quiter for not running after my swim.
Bay Swim
It is late June 2008 and I just got my first bay swim of the year completed. I love swimming in the bay! My day was made by 11:00 am, after I got out of the water.

The first swim of the year is a strange thing. The water was cold. My cap is not right. The sleeves on my wet suit need to be adjusted. The legs need adjusting. I should not have lifted weights yesterday. The list just goes on and on. It is amazing how many ways the brain tells you to quit. I did not quit. I went straight out of the comforting confines of aquatic park to the bay. The park is a nice calm cove with few boats and some people around. The bay is choppy, fast, imposing and fun. I was the lone swimmer in the choppy bay. It seems there were few experienced swimmers out today. The groups of swimmers stayed close to the shore the whole time I was out.

The National Park Service maintains the parks along the San Francisco water front. They used to do a fine job. Today the area was filthy. There was so much trash flowing from the waste bins that it was blowing into the water. I noticed the park service still uses the prime real estate along the water front but they don't maintain it any more. The two restrooms at the park are closed and the trash is embarrassing. Tourist come from all over the world to see the views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. I don't think they expect to stand in trash up to their ankles to experience the view.

Sunday in the City!

Today is Sunday November 11, 2007. Teddy and I took a trip to the water front to visit the book store and get some lunch and had a perfect day. We found some good books for Teddy. He is reading the two Warriors of the wild series' right now. We followed our book store visit with a trip to Boudins bakery and lunch shop. We both had clam chowder in a bread bowl. Boston has better chowder but San Francisco has bread bowls to make up for it. We ate outside in a perfect setting. It was about 70 degrees f or 20 degrees c for you canadians, and very sunny. Nice weather like that is very rare in San Fran. Summers get a lot of fog and winters get rain. It is always mild but rarely excellent.

Yosemite
Yosemite National Forest is one of the good things coming from the Federal Government.
The whole park is designed to maximize preservation and access. It is a very difficult maintain the balance but they are doing the best they can. They have hybred buses on the valley floor to carry tourist around to the most popular destinations. It is a great idea. It frees the roads from traffic and there are no parking issues at the trail heads. The trail heads look much better without gigantic parking lots leading up to the trails.
No Yosemite page yet but the photos can be found here

Cherry Blossom Festival

The Cherry Blossom Festival is one of many events held every weekend but it is my favorite. I love to see the unmatched elagance that should be slow and regal followed by a group of taiko drums with limitless energy. The taiko drums are so much fun to watch. Here is a link to the SF taiko page with a youtube link. It is not as good as being there but you get the idea.

American River Trail

The American River Trail located in Sacramento, California and surrounding communities is one of my favorite training grounds. The trail has 28 marked miles, most of whichare marked at half mile intervals. There is plenty of room for runnersand cyclist thanks to the dirt running lanes on both sides of the trail. The weather in Sacramento is nice year round but it gets really hot in the afternoon during the summer months. You need to get out in the morning.

This particular spot is called "Lake Natomas" located in Folsom, California. There are trails on both sides of the lake herecreating a nice 13 mile loop for marathon training and other assortedpurposes. There are 4 water stops on this loop with two of them veryclose together. The American river trail is approximately 30miles long. It runs on one or both sides of the river and lakes for the entire length.

Alameda, California Alameda is an excellent place to live and exercise. We have a nice 7.5 mile long loop that is good for biking and running. About 60%of the loop is a paved running/bike trail. There is also a 4 mile shortloop around the golf course and along the bay that is very good.

Barn The barn is a picture from Lake Tahoe. I really like the way the colors match the lake and surrounding area.

Fall in Alameda Fall in Alameda is a wonderful time of year. Last Sunday, I went out for a jog along the waterfront with Teddy riding along his bike. It was about 55-60 degrees out on a crystal clear morning with a low tide. Low tide is a bit odd in Alameda because the mud flats are not as pretty to look at but there is a lot more wild life to see. When we crossed the foot bridge, we witnessed a duck fishing for breakfast. It is quite a site watching a duck chase after fish in the morning.