Just a short post to recommend a blog post from a blogger whom I follow, Old Man Gravel. Bob writes about his bicycle adventures in Iowa, his home state. We share interests and topics, and I eagerly await his posts each week. If you like his posts, please subscribe. His post this morning, Navigating the Road Ahead, is a nice follow-up to our post of this past weekend. It’s a useful roadmap for continuing to live our lives during this unsettling time; but doing so sensibly. Bob is avoiding the media, as his view is, it’s more noise than news. I’m not sure I fully agree, as it is important…

I have struggled to find an appropriate topic for this week’s post. All of my fun ideas about Senior Ripper adventures seem trivial and self-indulgent, in light of what is happening in the world, in our country and in our community. Our Senior Ripper generation has lived through a lot. The Viet Nam War, the moon landing, the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK, 9/11, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the great recession, just to name a few. And now Covid 19. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced. We were in New York City during 9/11, and that’s the closest I can come up with for what we are going…

Just a quick post to celebrate the fact that I’m BACK ON SKIS!!!! I have had a smile on my face since Monday morning, when my PT gave me the green light to go for it. After a weekend in Palm Desert, where I played 18 holes of golf, pain free, and climbed a small mountain, also without pain, I had a feeling I had made significant progress from my injury (see Senior Ripper…Ripped), but I was surprised the “all-clear” came so soon. Mind you, I am confined to greens and blue groomers, but hey, I’ll take what I can get! And I’ve got many weeks left to try to…

Let me qualify that title by saying I’ve only been to one spin class…ever. My conclusion after that one experience was that it may not be the right activity for me. For the few of you who aren’t familiar with the term, spinning is a form of indoor cycling, on a specially designed stationary bike, typically in a group class with an instructor who faces the class and offers encouragement (badgering?), often accompanied by loud, pulsating music, and sometimes visuals projected on a screen. The term “spinning” is actually a trademarked term, the rights to which are owned by a company called Mad Dogg Athletics that tried to enforce its…