Daily Walking (Dec 15, 2021) :-)

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 15, 2021:


I have diabetes and chose a job that gave me hours of physical activity
every working day to take care of the exercise part of the treatment. In
April of 2020 a judge in Dallas ordered lock down and I had to stay home
from then on. Soon I decided to make up for the lost physical activity
by walking. News of fatalities at work from Covid has prevented me from
going back to work.

Although I am open to discussions about these subjects, I don't
necessarily need input from others and am treating these notes as
equivalents to blogs.

So I'd like to say a bit about my amazing daily walk. It is simple, like
many simple things in life that are wonderful. Gets me closer to nature
even in this godforsaken metroplex. The feel of life I get before and
after it are different for me :) It gives me what a zillion people have
forgotten about themselves.

There are birds. Much fewer of them unfortunately compared to last year.
I don't know why. There are insects I have to avoid stepping on, giving
me neck ache by all the time looking down in front of me for a few miles
of the way. There are of course plants and squirrels and rabbits and
baby snakes and also strange evidence of larger predators. Their
droppings indicate they could hunt rabbits.

Three are creeks all over Dallas, thanks to the mighty Trinity River,
the mother of it all. Adjacent to these creeks and along them, nature is
kept preserved. Even houses built on the sides of these creeks respect
it and don't mess with it. They don't want to damage it. There might
even be laws in effect against occupying such spaces. The way these
areas around creeks are, often doesn't let human step in them. They're
too tightly packed with shrubs and full of horny plants that literally
stop you from moving forward even when you have layers of clothing on
and push yourself in. You get stopped! :) Ask those who had to take a
dump in an emergency. They come out of them bruised, literally bruised
with bloody scratches and cuts on them. Only animals and birds and
critters and snake or rabbit or squirrels can move in them.

A few parts along the track on which I walk pass along these creeks
depending on which route I take. If I take a certain route, about 2
hours of my walk will fall along these creeks. The rest on cement
surfaces surrounded by grassy area that sometimes aren't that far from
the same creeks again. But always, no matter what route I take, about a
mile of it falls on grassy areas. Walking on those stretches is a
different type of experience in many ways. It is not the same as walking
same distance on concrete or through the bushes. Very different indeed.

I see others doing these walks too. So far I have identified a Chink, a
thin sexy Black old woman (older than me), and three very tall and very
old Cro-Magnon Americans who are hanging to their lives only as a result
of those walks. One Hispanic short dude also. That's it. These are the
regulars, we know each other because we do it much more often than
others. Rain or shine, cold or hot, windy or still, and totally
independent of what's on TV. Totally independent of Dallas or Texas or
USA or the planet Earth.

There are others who appear once in a while or once in a long while.
They aren't there to get the benefit that we regulars are getting from
it. They're probably doing it as entertainment, not therapy. Just to
reduce their unusual stress or something. We do it for other reasons.

And of course there are families who come en masse, with lots of kids
and dogs and infants on carriages, etc. They always move very slowly and
for short distances only. They're just having an outing.

There are idiots also. Those who run and those who ride bicycles
thinking they are exercising. I don't believe in running as a form of
exertion that benefits body, cause I think it is not what our bodies are
formed to do often. Same with riding bicycles or going to gyms. You
might as well practice boxing. And the faster these bicycle riders move
forward the more they think they are exercising, which I think is
idiotic :-)

We regulars _only_ walk! At home I don't know what they do but I do
Pilates at home. Long distances. We see each other either at the
beginning of the way or somewhere in the middle or around the end where
we turn back. We have discovered what it means to us. Even young ones.
The Chink and the Hispanic dude (I'm trying not to refer to him as the
Beaner) are young. Somehow, this soon in life, they have discovered it!
You might think why they're not at work. I think they both have
businesses that are run for them by others. The Chink is often checking
with his phone. The Hispanic doesn't even do that.

I don't even take an active working phone with me. Early on when one day
I got close to call Uber to take me home for the rest of the walk back I
never took my working phone with me after that. I do carry an inactive
phone for 911 calls (and occasional pictures and vids I take). All
non-working non-active phones in Dallas area are capable of placing 911
calls (expensive call though! I think it costs you something like 10 or
15 bucks a minute). Fortunately I have not been forced to do that yet.

Ok, need to go to walk! :-)

--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

[Clutterfreak]

Mar 4, 2022:

Friday. Hot day. Before the walk drove to my FFL and got my used .22lr
revolver that I won in auction 10 days back. I intended to carry that
one today in my walk to see how it goes.

As soon as I came home changed to short pants and t-shirt and went
walking after some 9 days of staying home concentrating on increasing
pilates duration as well as frequency.

The result I got hasn't been conclusive. I still don't know if I can
just manage with doing pilates at home and let go of walking everyday.
It gets very boring when you walk long distances and you're not
foraging. That vital aspect of pre-agricultural period in human life is
missing today in what I've been doing for almost two years.

Moreover, before plant cultivation began, I don't think humans did
pilates for their physical and mental needs :) So whatever I do at home
in the form of exercise and exerting some of my energy (at least burning
the sugar in cells) should not totally replace walking.

My father did his pilates twice a day, and went mountain climbing over
the weekends until the last week of his life, at the age of 94. But I'm
not my father. I need more incentive to do that all the time.

Soon after I began my walk today I noticed that my increased level of
pilates had indeed not taken full care of my needs. I felt functionality
of my cardiovascular system had declined. At one point I almost began
panting and had to reduce my speed.

So I have to either keep walking everyday or go back to my warehouse job
to get the same effect. Problem is that the quality of air at that job
is not good (it is inside a huge multi-story industrial plant) and I
need to find a healthier job.

But I haven't given up on my experiments of staying home and get all my
physical activity needs from pilates or something better than that.

Saw the Chink and surprisingly the tall giant who walks funny.

Saw three anhingas at one pond and another two swimming ones at another
pond a few miles away.

[Clutterfreak]

Mar 29, 2022

After stopping daily walks for 25 days and getting all I could from
exercising at home I thought I'd try walking again today to see how my
cardiovascular system is doing.

I didn't get to panting like last time, yet I didn't feel fit like I was
in walking days either. So even though I have improved upon type of
exercise I get at home (a new much more comprehensive and scientific
exercise book), something is still missing.

There's something about walking a few hours in good air outside that I
haven't been able to clone at home. It is not the oxygen, I'm very
particular about air quality inside home. If anything, I think air
quality in my home is better than outside.

This is what I'm talking about! There's something about walking for
human that goes beyond the sum of its parts. I think the translation of
that Persian word is "synergy." Walking is a synergy. Not that easy to
clone it at home or even at work by just bringing the parts of it together.

When I was working a physically (and occasionally mentally) demanding
job, I'd come home from it wanting only to rest and eat and see a movie
or something before hitting the sack. But from a long walk, I come home
and my mind is ready to create along just about any of the projects I've
made available for myself.

It might be as simple as constantly being in a different place. The
visual input of finding yourself at different places. Or moving _away_
or _towards_. I still don't know what it is that makes the actual
difference.

It was cloudy and cooler today. Trees have germinated and some are
flowering white and pink. Immediately upon starting the walk I noticed
several large Black Swallowtail butterflies. They are almost all black
except for the elongated tail region which has a shiny different color
to it.

I don't remember seeing them last year, so these might be species with
life cycles of more than one year in length. Amazing life forms! They
can be an egg, a caterpillar, a pupa comfortably waiting inside a
beautiful cocoon, and then of course coming out as butterflies again
flying into air :-) Human life is shit compared to theirs. They buy or
sell "gas" to nobody. They pay or receive taxes from nobody. They don't
pay or receive rent. How fucked up and stupid human is compared to these
butterflies.

It was a windy day but these butterflies were strong and fast.

Saw the Chink and the Beaner, again wearing same shoes, walking in the
same funny manners. The Beaner gives me a thumb up when passing.

There were large gun-like sounds but it was no shooting range. Lot's of
fracking has begun not that far from the track. Gas and oil companies
are having a ball.