Part 1: San Francisco Festive Season Outing

When the American Geophysical Union is in town, it's a good excuse to go up to San Francisco for supper and look for cute geologists.

There's a cute one!

Oooo, I'll take him with a side of fries!

Quick Hooping Update

I did my 21'st hooping session yesterday. It's going really well. I have been hooping between 30-45 minutes six days a week, and I chart my progress each time on Excel. I use the time to walk over and write down my success count, to catch my breath before starting up again.

Yesterdays average spins/attempt was just over 80! My recovery skills are building and well and my next goal is to learn to go side to side.

Keep the chickens

wild and free!

One of my neighbors chickens has decided to leave the flock and spend her free time in my yard. This would not be unusual in places where other people live but in the surburban San Francisco Bay Area we rarely see chickens outside of the zoo or the egg carton.

My neighbor, though a determined vegetarian, was starting to consider the stew pot for this badly behaved foul. She offered her to me for my fricassee!

Friends don't eat friends!

We have struck a deal that Miss MegRose (yes her little boy had named her after me long before she developed her wandering proclivities) can continue her wanderings unless she becomes irritating. So far she has only dug up two cyclamen and they are easily replaced. Also chicken manure is a nice addition to my clay soil. We'll see how things go when we get to fly season in the summer.

Hooping: Whee! Up to 44 high successes

Big increase in ability to recover hoop and keep it going today. Up from 24 of those yesterday to 44 today. And yesterday was a big improvement over the past attempts. Also one of my high success rates was 215! Also two other successes of over 100. Yeah, yeah, yeah! OK I need to stop with the personal bragging and meditate on the sins of the world, or something more serious.

Meg Rose HOOPS: I'm getting there!!!

I've been logging all hooping activity since I last posted the day before Thanksgiving. I'm not going to put up my whole log here (who would read that?) but have included just a sample for the last few days, because I'm so pleased at my improvement by my 11'th session.

And maybe it will give some hope to somebody starting out, because perhaps it's as gosh durned hard for them to learn as it has been for me.I'm definitely learning to recover the hoop when it starts to move down from my waist. Also learning to straighten my torso more when I get up to about 20 or 30 range. Which feels good and seems like it both helps the hooping and my posture work.

11'th hooping session TODAY 30 minutes (at least) 3 sets of double arm hooping 24 instances of HIGH SUCCESS hooping (more than 10) an average of 41.75 twirls/high success - helped along by once doing 130 and another time 170! (plus several other high counts)

10'th hooping session YESTERDAY - a very good day - 30 minutes (at least) 2 sets double arm hooping 17 HIGH SUCCESS an average of 25.24 twirls/high success

I'll be Hooping for Thanksgiving

I've been learning to hoop for the last week. Holy Moses is it hard! Today I celebrated my seventh session! At this point in my hooping career, the exercise consists mostly of an attempt, the movement of the hoop somewhere in the vicinity of my waist and then, after 5-8 twirls of the hoop the descent of that hoop onto the ground. I lean over, pick it up, catch my breath and repeat the process. (I got my purple and green waist and arm hoop set from Canyon Hoops http://www.canyonhoops.com/)

However I've had several high-count attempts now.I tracked my high successes today. A high success attempt is when I manage to keep the waist hoop going more than 10 times before it drops. Here are my high successes for tonight.

15 , 15, 30, 28, 21 (arm hoop recess) 12, 27, 22 39, 14

I bet there are people that would learn this skill a lot faster than I am. Over the past week, I had to really work on believing (remember that saintly little engine that could?) that I would manage to keep the hoop up. The first session or two I worked at it for about 10 minutes before stopping all sweaty and wiped out. My goal was to be able to work on hooping for 30 minutes by Thanksgiving. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and today I did work at it for 30 minutes!!!

I can now, mostly, identify when I'm doing it right and getting the desired 'pump' feeling. Over the last two days I've decide that the next important challenge is to learn to recover the hoop. I know that a few times I have managed to recover it and continue. It seems that I have recovered by some variation on a squat (which I saw in the hooping book I checked out of the library) involving more of a forward thrust. It seems though, that sometimes the hoop isn't in the place I need it to be to do this. Sometimes it just seems like it's going to slowly to catch. Also sometimes I think I manage to recover by speeding up my pumping motion but sometimes it seems that I'm not managing to touch the hoop enough despite increasing my speed.

One day this week I managed to keep the hoop rotating for a count of 84. I never came close to that since then! I start out by hooping with a small arm hoop on each arm (one at a time for now) for a few minutes (2 different orientations on each arm). Then I switch to the waist and hoop until I need a break. I then do my arms again with the other 2 arm orientations. After that I go back to hooping at the waist.

My next goal is to get better at recovering.

I'm happy I found a low-impact aerobic exercise I enjoy. I particularly like the feeling after you're done and cooling off, without the knee stress I used to get running. I really felt the results of this activity in the muscles of my back for the first several days but they have pretty much stopped complaining. I now just feel rather aware of them during the day.

I'm not going to stop being a walker, by the way. I still enjoy walking my errands and currently walk 4-5 miles a day.

Goin' down the road feelin' bad

What is the name of that Grateful Dead song?

CA grape vines in their fall wardrobe

I love the sights on the drive down CA 101 between the San Francisco Bay Area and San Luis Obispo, but I sure do dislike sitting in the car and worse yet being the driver, as I was this weekend. We've got those little communications devices like they had on Star Trek, how come we can't beam ourselves places yet? It would sure save on gas prices too.

I headed down to see my sweet daughter at Cal Poly but on the way back I drove along Las Pilitas Road to buy CA native plants from Penny at the Las Pilitas Nursery . I'd been meaning to get there on a Saturday for awhile. It's the only day of the week they are open to the public. Which makes it that much more intriguing!

If we could beam ourselves wherever we wanted, I'm afraid that Las Pilitas would be ruined. You know why it's so good. It takes a while to get there and it's off the beaten path.

Along the road I stopped to see the old Railroad bridge.

This California Buckwheat was also growing along the roadway. My last native plant class was in 1976 but Penny confirmed for me that yes, this is Flat-Top Buckwheat

Eriogonum fasciculatum foliolosum

A flock of wild turkeys raced across the road. I think they are the wild variety. We have them up here too. I recognize them because they look exactly like the ones on the whiskey bottle. Unfortunately by the time I got the camera out they had zippity-do-dahed out into the meadow. They are no fools, these birds, despite what you hear.