Product Review- suunto T1

Product Review, Suunto T1 heart rate monitor/watch

FinallyI found a time piece that is simple, and performs all the tasks I require. The suunto T1 is a sexy little watch that measures your heart rate, kcals consumed, and records your time in motion. I never thought I would want to bother with all the trappings of a heart monitor...Big clumsy watch, chest strap, and all for what? My ususal running philosophy consists of shoes and a trail...(Interlude..my amazing RidgeBack has rousted herself from the depths of doggie sleep to pluck, i shit you not, a FLY, out of the air and into her gullet!..After chewing for an unprecedented amount of time, she resumes recumbant position without moving a paw..) I cannot tell you how much fun it is, though, to be able to look down and see that my heart is beating 173 beats per minute while I am sucking wind up some hateful hill...Fun Fun Fun. As far as setting the watch up, I am a fan of Suunto's easy-to-read-and-understand written directions. I have used their dive computers for about 10 years and appreciate their instinctive directions.
The display has large characters that are easy to read while running, the chest strap is small so there is no chaffing. It is no bigger than my running bra strap, and my boobs don't get in the way. The watch can be set up for three HR zones, so you know when you need to step it up, and when you are in your best energy burning zone, or when your heart is about to burst.
The rewards of my running have included seeing some incredible sunrises and sunsets, interesting critters, a sense of accomplishment and peacefulness. Now I get the instant gratification of knowing that I have run off the pint of Ben and Jerry's that I ate the night before.

Good Old Friends

In my early twenties, before I even knew that I didn't have everything all figured out, I used to hang out with some great people. One of those i have kept in touch with, the others sort of drifted away on the breezes of their own lives. A few days ago I was wandering around on the internet. One thing googled to another, and suddenly I saw my own name, and right next to it one of my very best friends. I immediately clicked on it. That click brought me to a myspace page of an old and beloved friend.
During one summer the four of us would get together after whatever job it was that we had been working at. I think at one point all of us were employed at a cookie shop, and also at a newpaper where we pasted-up print onto poster to make it into the paper. ( Thats almost alliteration!) What fun days those were with our whole lives in front of us, so many diifferent possibilities and options. We hung out every night. We always had something good to drink or smoke. We would go out onto the roof of a little attic apartment and watch the stars and talk and laugh. We would listen to music too. We would spend hours and hours making up cassettes with all our favorite songs. Carefully placed, almost so that they told a story by their position and what they were about and who sang them.
My life is so different now. Things and circumstances have changed. I've had some really hard days, and some really happy ones too. Some things are just the same though. I still have a dull ache that comes from wanting to do more and be more. I want to be so much better then I am. I want to be the best parts of when I was younger and also the best parts of who I am now. I find myself stumbling through some days, dazed by lassitude and routine. Other days I'm blown away by my good fortune and possiblities. Such is the struggle of most Americans I imagine. Humans who are safe and have enough to eat, and places to work and come home to.
What a great thing to just stumble across someone who you know, and who you spent a lot of time with. How fun to go over the lost years and see where we have wound up!

Wondering Out Loud

This is a beautiful little heart shaped pool in a slot canyon in Zion. The water was clear and fresh.......and COLD!..We regretted the wetsuits left behind, it would have been lovely to submerge oneself in that icy clarity. Water has been something I love being in. I wish I could breath it...Even though scuba can almost get you there, it is only a poor substitute.

Not The Blogger I hoped To Be

At the beginning, I thought that I would get on here a few times a week to post an essay or two about, you know, stuff. Well, now I'm averaging once a month....Good thing is I have no audience but myself,,,hee hee. Anyway, I'm surfing around on the internet when I come across a website, a myspace that has my name, and Heathers and Bill Stutte's. I knew it had to be someone I knew turns out it was mike ryzek, way back from my high school days. Crazy.. The biggest thing that caught my eye was his age, 36. How did we get this old? I don't even know if I remember the girl I was back then. There has been alot of life lived since then. wow

We went to the Paria Canyon/ Buckskin Gulch area for a backpack trip. We originally expected to go down the narrows of Buckskin Gulch but cold weather and high water levels encourage us to change our plans. Instead we decided to hike along the rim of the Paria canyon with hopes of better weather the next day, and a route down the trail that would allow us to down climb to the river, and then travel back up it. In our packs were three days worth of food, titanium cook gear, a small white gas stove, a Bibler two- man tent, cold weather gear, and a ceramic water filter.
We spent our first day in the bliss of the spring desert. Even in the wet, cold, weather there is something special about the high desert plains. The sage and juniper mix with wet sand stone and fresh red earth to create alchemy. Our hike starts at 0830 and lasts till 1800, or so. We experience every kind of weather imaginable, except warm sunny skies. Rain, high winds, grapple, hail, snow, we get it all. Our concerns about a fresh water source evaporate as the slick rock collects water and runs it down the crevices and nooks an crannies, creating a world of small water falls.
Finally, we find a good bivy spot, the rain stops. We are all wet, cold, and hungry. Our whisper light stove ignites and soon a warm cup of chicken soup is thrust into my shivering hands with a brisk order to drink it all. My husband has ordered me to the tent, not just to change to dry clothes, but to keep our tent from flying over the cliffs down into the river. The world seems a better place with hot, satisfying food and good companionship. Our conversation is lively, ranging from the scariness of our president, to an interesting book that our friends have listening to on an audio book. The darkness sneaks over the canyon walls, and finally in the silence of the night, we shuffle off to bed.
My husband is a skinny guy, at six feet tall he weighs about 160 pounds. He has a high resting metabolic rate, and lucky for me that means he is like a furnace burning in our tent. I sleep warm and awake rested. Our breakfast consists of instant cereal and hot tea with powdered milk and sugar. Amazing how good it tastes even though we have a limited amount of water and the cereal is sticky. We had been planning on springs that feed into the Paria river for a water supply. The river itself is way to silty for our filter, but small springs along the way feed into the river. Our decision to stay high on the rim has compromised our trip. Aside from a few slim puddles, there is no water.
We spend the day looking for a route to down climb to the river. About noon, while snacking on cheese and buttery Ritz crackers, we admit defeat. The weather is still marginal, so we make a decision to hike back. We follow the trail we made on our hike in. Sometime during the night a mountain lion has sniffed out our trail and followed along in our footsteps. For some reason the fact that we are not alone at the top of the food chain gives me some satisfaction. We scramble up on the red slick rock that crumbles beneath out shoes like those wafer cookies. Finally we find a down route and scramble to the river at last. Off come our hot, sandy, sweaty shoes and the cool river soothes our feet.
There is such a different view at the bottom of all that sandstone and slickrock. The river tumbles along as it has for years and years. The wind still blows, kicking up dust devils that whirl around the canyon walls and whip through our hair and clothes. The high afternoon sun is finally warm and the last few hours of our hike are idyllic. When we reach our camping site we fire up the stove and make couscous with veggies and indulge in a homebrewed beer. We sleep well that night in the back of truck with expedition weight bags and cushy therma rests.
I carefully calculated our caloric needs and planned meals around those numbers. My careful plans go awry in the first few hours. The snacks I had planned just don’t sound good. Lunch seems to complicated to prepare. We find that the easy, eatable things are what appeals to us. Rich and fatty cheese and buttery Ritz crackers are what we crave. In the end, we both consume the calories that were recommended for our activities. For Allen 5000 Kcals are required, for myself about 4500 Kcal. That seems like an awful lot compared to what we normally eat. During the hike, we tended to graze on granola and chocolate, and saved our big meal for the end of the day when we could sit down and relax.
Even thought the weather is chilly we still drink quite a bit of water. After a fortuitous gully washer we were able to replenish our water bottles and fill pots for supper’s cooking needs. We manage to filter about 7 litres of rain water. We each drink a litre while waiting for supper to cook. Our meal takes about 1and a half litres. After supper we filter two more litres for over night. There is nothing that tastes as good as cold rainwater to drink in the middle of the night! Next morning, two more litres are squeezed from our supply. After tea and instant cereal, there is about a litre left. We clean our trusty ceramic filter, and manage to squeeze another litre to last us for the day. As a group, we decide that because of the lack of water and the continuation of marginal weather we need to head out of the back country.
Although our trip did not go as planned, it was enjoyable and safe. Having adequate nutrition gave us the energy to hike miles and to explore the wonderful desert country. Knowledge about caloric needs is helpful, but honestly, being in the back country is not a science. You need to be prepared and you need to have experience and knowledge in order to be safe. However, every little detail can’t be planned out. Flexibility is necessary and that is one of the things that makes being outside so much fun.

Learning Something New Every Day

I learned a new word yesterday. Asswaged... Really, it's a word. It has to do with metal working, means to reduce or something like that. When you're trying to stick one piece of metal to another that is what happens, it's asswaged. I wish I knew more about metallurgy. I took a class in metal working one hot summer when I lived in a little town in Western Colorado. I was, let's see, must have been about 27. yup, that's right, hard to believe. Anyway the teacher was so ho ought! His arms were sculpture. I wound up making a funny looking dragonfly. I still have it, it's all rusted now. The drawing of that bug was so much better then the metalness of it could ever be. But I loved the violence of beating that piece of metal into what I wanted it to be...Well alright, I loved watching the metallurgist work the piece of metal into what I wanted.Can I just interject here and say that memories are quite vivid after two lemonade drinks with good vodka on a hot evening.....
Back to asswaged...Iearned this word from a fellow nurse at work. During a lull, computer games are sometimes played on the unit. The BookWorm Is a favorite. So, this guy knew alot of words I didn't. And, I'm not bragging, but I know alot of words,( do I know how to spell them?...Not necessarily). I was pleased to find out that a fellow nurse was so well rounded. I hate to say it, but in Utah, a nurse has almost, a certain stereotype, because nursing is an approved type of work for the little woman. Along with teaching and being a housewife. That sounds so snotty when it's outside my head. I don't mean it that way....(Do I?). Anyway, nursing has seen a new day. There are BOYZ on the unit. I believe there was a NASA study that highlighted that a group with both men and women in it showed the most effective group dynamics. http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/hqlibrary/ppm/ppm17.htm
I truly believe that to be true,truly. ( Sorry I can't find the proper spelling for this word.) I wonder if they ever included a group with gay men or women in it..?
The Hubba Is due back tomorrow, evening. I'm glad, I miss him. First few days he is gone, when on some trip or another, I find the aloneness BLISS. But being alone reminds me of how much I love to be with him. Is that paradoxical?

Time Is Brief

6.26.07
Today is my Mom’s Birthday. She would have been 61 today. Three summers ago she died from colon cancer. She was diagnosed on April 15 and she was gone by July 10. Three short months and she aged about 100 years. My mom had never looked her years, but in the last month of her life age caught up to her two-fold. My heart didn’t even have time to break while she was sick. Things just went too fast to process.
The summer before my Mom had married a lovely man who loved her and treated her so well. They were so much alike even though there was a 12-year difference in their ages. Finally it seemed as if everything in her life had fallen in to place. But, no, no it hadn’t. Beginning in April after her surgery, I made frequent trips from the city I lived in to the little mountain town that she had made her home with her man. I remember when I arrived at her house after a five-hour drive. She answered the door and I almost didn’t recognize her. She had cut off all her hair in anticipation of the chemotherapy alopecia. The shades were drawn, and she was wearing dark old clothes, with sleeves even though it was hot outside. She cried and she said that she was a sick old woman with cancer. As the disease progressed I would so often hear her say things like that. That she would never be beautiful again, who would love her now? In spite of this, I don’t know if she ever really realized how sick she was. The day before she died she talked to me about what she wanted to do with the window blinds in her bedroom. In the end I think that is a good thing.
Because I am a Nurse, I have seen plenty of suffering. How is anyone supposed to know what the best plan of action is for someone who is dying? I’ve seen people hold on with every ounce of strength they have. Their family members enduring unreasonable amounts of pain and torture because family can’t let of the one they love. Now, on the other side of that bitter coin, I sometimes feel as if I would give my right arm to have one more day with my Mom. Instead, I worked with a wonderful hospice nurse to make sure that she no pain, and that she was comfortable to the very end. Here is where my quandary begins. Did I shorten her life? Could things have been different for her? What would it have been like if she had lived another month, or two? What if I had agreed to a feeding tube, or to another, more aggressive surgery, that would have left her with a colostomy, but would have left her alive? How long can someone tolerate unrelenting nausea? Is it worth it to put up with it if it gives you another month, another week? I don’t know, I just don’t know.
Sometimes I wish I had been way more aggressive with life prolonging care. Other days, after particularly brutal shifts at work I’m glad that she went as she did. Without pain, surrounded by her people and her animars. Oh but I miss her, every day I do.
When things started to go bad, Mom’s husband Matt called me and told me that he was worried. I flew out to a little town on the western slope of Colorado that had previously been my happy home while I was going to school. Matt met me at the airport and we drove in uncomfortable silence in his beat up pick up truck, the 150 miles to my Mom. When I arrived, Mom was glad to see me, but kept saying that she was fine; I didn’t need to take the trouble. Through that long night she kept having periods of apnea, but kept on breathing. At one point during the night she woke up and was very lucid. She said that she had finished her long sleep, and that she was awake now. Matt came out of the bedroom and we made some crushed ice (her favorite thing), and just sat around chatting, at 2 am in the morning. Mom went to sleep again, but the next morning woke up for her crushed ice. The hot summer day moseyed on. I went for a run with Matt’s sister Louisa. I told Mom where we were going, she told me to be careful. We got home about 1400 (two pm). About 1600 (four pm), Matt went out to the store to get more provisions, i.e.: tequila and lime for margaritas. Right before he left, Matt told Mom where he was going, and that he would be right back… He left, and my Mom took a big breath, and then one more, and then she didn’t, anymore.

Gotta Be Good-Lookin'

6.25.07

If Tom Petty burst onto the music scene today, he just wouldn't make it. Neither would Donald Fagan of Steely Dan, or Christine McVie. These artists, incredible as they are musically, are not so good looking. In Donald Fagan’s case, WoW…. I was flipping channels on the tube and I came across a seventies music infomercial which highlighted Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, and Tom Petty. Also included, David Bowie, Rod Stewart and Linda Rhonstadt. Maybe it was just, ‘The look of the time’, But these people looked ugly, scary ugly. I was alive in the late seventies, I don’t remember people looking so ugly back then.
The other thing, Can you name one musician in this modern day that is not picture perfect? Who is out there that is ugly? What if we are missing out on all kinds of great music because everyone has to be beautiful?

Aging Well

06.22.07

My legs are a mess. I have various bruises and scrapes from different events that took place over the past week. Down the spine of my left shin is an interesting formation of scrapes created from my razor as it skittered down my leg. The right leg is festooned with a colourful bruise, well earned from the kick of an old lady. This little dear was a 77 year old who had become dehydrated from confusion, and, well, old age… Any way, I made her angry and she let me know it! Back to the left knee is an eggplant coloured bruise, about the size and shape of oh, say, a small tomato, at the knee. This one obtained from trying to artfully, and gracefully, climb over a little roof, on a climb that the Hubba and I went on this weekend. I had one good hand hold, no feet at all. Beta from the Hubba, before he ascended included the sage advice of, “ leaning back, so your feet will stick..”. Ok, So I lean back, on my one pumped arm and reach blindly, hopefully, with hope, trying to find …AnyThing.. to grab on to. Wait, what’s this, hold on, Sweet Hesus!, A little Grippy thing! Just the size for small weak fingers to grab on to. Great! Now I lift my left knee, Thunk, f*ck…Lift again, Thunk,f*ck, f*ck, f*ck… I feel the Hubba taking in the rope nice and ( Yipe), snuggly. I change tactics and bring the right knee waayy up and pull, pull pull, and the I’m up and over.
I can record the years of my life by the bruising on legs. Ten years ago I was trail running a lot. I would bite the onion about once a month. I don’t think it was because I was clumsy, I would just get really tired and quit lifting my feet up as high as they needed to go….ouch. Now my bruising is much more diverse. My life is so much rounder and dimensional then it used to be. As I am entering that magical age where women become invisible, you know, the late thirties early forties, I relish the fact that I still have enough fun in my life that my knees are scabby and my shins are bruised.

First Blog

The Lunabelle is my dog. she is a farty Rhodesian ( Zimbabwean?) Ridgeback. My husband and I saved her from an uncertain future when we adopted her from a family that had just had twins. Now she lives a life of leisure with only the occasional Death March thrown in to build a little dog character. On one Death March last summer, poor Belle cultivated so much character she had to be loaded into an expedition sized pack and carried out. I was worried for months after that I would wake up one morning and find the PETA folkes picketing outside my house. They haven't shown up yet, but I'm still wary...