Caption: Old photo of me on Orting Trail. I have lost 38 pounds since this was taken a few years ago…

 

Biking  Again

 

Yesterday Lisa & I hit the Orting biking trail for this first time in 2021.

 

It was a glorious 70 degree day and we both did well getting to South Prairie. I’ve been walking for over a month already and have played pickleball four times since my immunizations kicked in, so I was fully ready to take on the trail. Lisa did great, too, but she said it was harder than usual.

 

(Well, yeah, after eight months of winter weather and hunkering down in cramped spaces, it would be, but she’ll rebound real fast, based on yesterday’s outing.)

 

We always ride for pleasure, not speed records, but yesterday we held a steady but semi-leisurely pace because it was so lovely, warm, sunny and bright for the first time this year–absolutely perfect biking weather. We didn’t want our first day outdoors in natural surroundings to end!

 

We noticed one really weird anomaly on the way up and back, though: we spotted at least six wooly bear caterpillars on the cement trail. Wooly bars are fall creatures; they should be in cocoons now on their way to becoming winged creatures, not ambling along in their fall black-and-orangey brown finery!  (Lisa said the birds would be happy to discover “Christmas Candy” this time of year on the trails.)

 

I think climate change is really doing a number on wildlife.  Except for a few birds awing (too few), it was absolutely silent out on the trail except for passing vehicles on both sides of the trail, or chain saws off in the distance.

 

When we stopped to see if we could find any aquatic life where there are usually ducks, pollywogs and dragonflies, we found absolutely nothing. And no frogs leapt into the water upon our arrival, which was unusual.

 

We stood and looked around for a good minute or minute and a half and saw absolutely nothing alive in the water.

 

The water level is high in the creeks and ponds.

 

Every day that Lisa and I aren’t biking, I plan to be playing pickleball or walking (usually playing pickleball, because I much prefer that to walking, but if it’s windy, outdoor pickleball isn’t much fun.)

 

After we got back and Lisa headed for home, I turned the goats loose in the back yard and let them wander and eat grass. I also met our new neighbors over the back fence, Sean (Shawn? Didn’t ask for his spelling) and Julie. They seem like a lovely young couple, and they don’t plan to use the area we fenced off to contain the goats at all. In fact. when they get a fence up around their property, they say we can turn our goats loose to help clean out the blackberries that still remain on their property.

 

(The people who owned the property before had given us permission to graze the goats over there, so they’ve already begun the task and have it nicely cleaned up for about thirty feet beyond our back fence, but there’s still a LOT of blackberry bushes to tackle so I can still sit with them all summer — even before the fence goes in to contain them — and watch them munch.

 

It’s going to be lovely here again today and for the next several days, it looks like, so I’m going to take advantage of every moment and keep walking/riding/playing off the fat I’ve accumulated so that when my panniculectomy surgery happens in August all the excess skin can come off and put me at a lovely lower baseline weight.

 

(My doctor estimates that I have at least 14 pounds of excess skin hanging off me, so the surgery will streamline my middle and abdomen a bunch. I’m  soooo looking forward to that, so I have a real desire to lose as much more weight as I can before then so that when the skin comes off, I’ll be at a weight and girth that will look great on me.)

 

This is the time of year when the hanging skin really begins to impact me negatively, too. The rise in temperature causes the folds of my skin to get weepy and potentially stinky rashes, so I have to work overtime to keep clean, powdered and dry so the skin breakdowns don’t get out of control…  I know… TMI…but for those of you who have the same condition, you know what a PITA it is. I’m soooo looking forward to eliminating that challenge forever in August!