Yesterday I wrote Equal parts misery and glory: today’s ride from New York to Princeton. Today: puffy white clouds and blue skies. It started chilly and foggy but warmed up to make yesterday’s ride worth it, like when the home team is down and scores to come-from-behind and win in the final moments. Still lots of plastic packaging that nobody seemed to care about. Today we rode about 55 miles,[…] Keep reading →

The skies opened up on us about halfway through today’s fundraising bike ride from New York to Princeton, helping create a bike path from Maine to Florida. The normally best part of the ride, along old canals that are now lush and verdant, was thirty miles through mud in near-bone-chilling cold. I can’t say I was miserable since once I was out, I’d prefer riding in that cold mud to[…] Keep reading →

What does unwanted body fat have to do with pollution? At my father’s eightieth birthday last year, I saw friend and coworkers of his I hadn’t seen since childhood. The first thing one of them said to me was that he remembered me as chubby. By today’s American standards, I may not have been, but I remember from my childhood my older stepbrother grabbing my nipples and the fat underneath[…] Keep reading →

Podcast guest Dr. Michael Greger, M.D. FACLM did a video on doof, which he calls ultraprocessed food, junk food, or ultraprocessed junk food. He’s a multiple time number one bestselling author and host of Nutritionfacts.org. Experience shows me that using the word food confuses people into thinking it’s food when it isn’t. Just because something fills your belly when you’re hungry doesn’t mean it’s food. Heroin would make the hunger[…] Keep reading →

Yesterday I ran outdoors for the first time this spring. Two days before I lifted weights and was still feeling tired, plus I’m fifty years old, so I took it easy and ran at a comfortable, even slow pace. Now I’m so sore that tossing and turning in bed wakes me up. [EDIT, the next morning: Note that I’m not complaining in this post. I’m just observing. If anything, I[…] Keep reading →

People used to walk across the country. I recently read that before cities, people used to travel more, and that cities led people to travel less, thousands of years ago (source: The Dawn of Everything, which I’m in the middle of and love so far). In fairness, because of cities’ diversity, people in cities may have experienced more diversity in people without traveling far, but walking, riding horses, and sailing[…] Keep reading →

I stumbled across some CDC statistics on American averages: Men:Height in inches: 69.0Weight in pounds: 199.8Waist circumference in inches: 40.5 Women:Height in inches: 63.5Weight in pounds: 170.8Waist circumference in inches: 38.7 I was born with three genetic conditions on weight. One is that if I eat more calories than I use or excrete, I put on weight immediately, mostly fat if I don’t do muscle-building exercise. Another is that I[…] Keep reading →