The Days, They Fly By

On Bike-riding and Wallowing Lately

It’s been unusually quiet around here, and that’s because I’ve been yapping nonstop about vegetarianism on Life, Love, and Food.  I like the chance to talk about meatless eating in more depth than I usually do; it’s given me the opportunity to talk about the issue of vegetarian wedding food, my seminal texts for vegetarian cooking, and I even have the pleasure of hosting a few guest bloggers, such as the smart and spunky Chrissy.  I enjoy writing projects, and perhaps this particular one has been skittering around in my head for a while now.  For a dedicated vegetarian and long-time food blogger (four years!  Holy moly!), it took me a long time to put some effort into articulating my thoughts and feelings about vegetarianism.  And the project isn’t over yet: I’m in my third of four weeks of Veg Bootcamp, so there are more posts to be written!  More food to be cooked!  More meals to be eaten!  More dishes to be washed!  (Or, more accurately, more dishes to be ignored in the sink!)

Juggling two blogs is not easy, and it’s not my forte.  I like writing two blogs, as I think they allow me to talk about different topics.  I love taking photos for this blog, and I love the excuse to walk around my neighborhood with my eyes peeled for photographic opportunities.  But right now, between Veg Bootcamp and my hectic work schedule, I’m a little overwhelmed.  Fitness-wise, I feel like I’m between projects, having finished the half-marathon in March and my yoga project in May.  I want to start summer running, as I’m feeling really inspired by the examples set by Chrissy and Kate.

For now, I’m riding my bike to campus and around town 3-5 times a week, and I’m going for walks in the evening, when the sun has begun to set and the heat lets up a little bit.  When I’m not working, I’m wallowing a bit in lazier pastimes, such as reading or watching Law and Order: SVU.  I’ll get back to running, I hope, and to blogging here more regularly, but for now, I’m taking it easy.  I’ll still be posting more or less every day on my food blog until June 11 or thereabouts, but things around here will be quiet for a few more days.  I hope you don’t mind the quiet.  Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back here later this month, I promise.

40!

Yoga Update (5/16-5/22/11)

Picture me doing a happy dance: I’m done with my 40 Days of Yoga!  Cha cha cha!  The project officially started on March 18, and I did my final yoga session on May 22, so it took me about two months to practice yoga 40 times in the context of this project.  I’m really quite relieved that it’s done, not because I hate yoga, but because I grew tired of feeling like I must do yoga because I made it into something more structured and public than it usually is for me.

Yoga has always been a way for me to unwind, physically, mentally, and emotionally.  This project taught me that in order for yoga to feel restorative, I need to let it fit into the nooks and crannies of my life.  Otherwise, it feels like another item on my to-do list, and that takes away from its more pleasurable qualities.  This was a valuable lesson for me and one that I will keep in mind in the future as I consider how I spend my fitness time.

I want to say more about the non-life-changing quality of this project, but I need to let my thoughts germinate a little more.  So I’ll come back to this topic after I have a chance to hash things out in writing.

Here’s how I spent my final week of the 40 Days of Yoga Project.  Apparently, I like yoga best when done in pajamas:

Monday (5/16): I take today off completely, as I am exhausted from all my weekend biking.

Tuesday (5/17): Hmm.  I don’t do yoga today either, and I don’t remember why.  Most likely it was the siren’s call of the kitchen, luring me with its drawers and cabinets stuffed with food.

Wednesday (5/18): I return to yoga in the form of a pajama-clad session before bed.

Thursday (5/19): After a long hiatus, I finally go running again (hurray!), and I do yoga immediately after my run.  I love post-run yoga—it’s always so refreshing and relaxing to slow down and stretch after a good run.

Friday (5/20): Tonight I do a wonderfully long pajama yoga session.  I’m not quite in the mood to do a yogadownload.com class, but I am in the mood for some yoga because I biked around quite a bit today and my legs feel tight.  I need some yoga to unwind those hardworking muscles!

Saturday (5/21): No yoga today, mostly because I’m feeling lethargic and a little overworked.  Instead, I spend part of the afternoon on my couch, reading and relaxing after a morning spent running errands and experiments.

Sunday (5/22): My final day of yoga as part of the project!  I do another long session of pajama yoga because again, the bike has tightened up my legs, and I want to unwind and relax before bed.  Oh, bed…surely if I could do more than the reclining yoga postures in bed, I would do my whole yoga session in bed. 

So that’s that!  40 Days of Yoga finished in well over 40 days.  Normally I fancy myself as able to meet deadlines, but it turns out that I don’t like to put the words “yoga” and “deadline” in the same sentence.  In tandem, they form such a paradox that my head starts to implode.  Thanks for reading while I downward-dog and wheel-pose my way toward a calmer, quieter mind.  I’ll be back with my final thoughts on this project…hopefully sooner rather than later.  Until then, namaste!

Om?

Hi, folks.  This is Rose-Anne’s yoga mat, and she’s dispatched me over here to tell you that she’s busy tonight watching Grey’s Anatomy and eating brownies.  It’s part of her yoga practice, she says, but I have my doubts.  Anyways, she says she’ll be back tomorrow, but in the meantime, she sends a pretty picture for you to see.  That’s what this blog is about: yoga, running, biking, and pretty pictures.

 

Whoosh!  Aren’t those clouds cool?

See you on the mat, dear readers!

Burritos and Bikes, with a Few Thoughts on Community

Friday’s “Ride Your Bike to Chipotle and Get a Free Burrito Day.”  Sponsored by Chipotle (5/20/11)

Despite the terrible humidity on Friday, I braved the afternoon heat to ride my bike over to Chipotle for a free burrito.  I was not brave enough to face the lunch crowd, and I wasn’t sure if I’d be done with my morning lab stuff in time to get lunch at Chipotle.  Instead, I went over around 2 PM to pick up a burrito to eat for my afternoon snack or for dinner later that day.

The restaurant wasn’t crowded when I arrived, and I saw that they had posted an announcement for their Free Burrito Day on Friday.  Sadly, though, my burrito-maker told me that they did not get a lot of bike traffic for their Free Burrito Day.  I wondered if it was simply a lack of promotion—I only knew about the event because someone had contacted me by e-mail to see if I’d be willing to spread the word via my blog(s).  And I felt kinda guilty too—maybe I should have posted something on my food blog?  I only shared the information on this blog because it seemed like a better fit.

It warms my bike-loving heart whenever I see people bike-commuting around College Station.  Even if Chipotle’s turnout wasn’t huge, I’m happy to see a restaurant in town declaring itself pro-bike by offering something delicious to bike commuters.  College Station is a car-heavy town, and it can be tough to be an environmentalist in a place that seems to care so little about green issues.  The state of Texas is notoriously lackadaisical when it comes to green living; the state’s long history of oil production has saturated the attitudes of its people.  But I remain committed to my belief in low-carbon footprints, and to me, using your own two legs to get around town is one of the best ways to stay fit and live green.  I feel a sense of solidarity when I see other people on bikes because it takes numbers to raise awareness and to make a community a bike-friendly one.  I’d like to think that bike love in College Station is only going to increase as gas prices continue to fluctuate and people realize all the terrific advantages that bike-riding offers them…even in Texas.

PS  I should mention that Chipotle didn’t sponsor me personally to write this post.  They gave me a free burrito for riding my bike to the restaurant on Friday, but there was no additional incentive to write this post or to advertise their Free Burrito Day.  I just happen to like Chipotle a lot!

Despite the Silence

Lately: Frequent Bike Commuting and Thursday’s Short Run (5/14–5/19/11)

Happy Friday, lovely readers!  I know it’s been quiet around here lately.  It’s because I’m writing quite frequently for my food blog from now through June 11 for Veg Bootcamp.  I’m still cycling around town as usual, and I’m trying to finish my 40 Days of Yoga, but I hope you’ll pardon me if my posts here on Feels Like Flying are a little less frequent than usual.

This week feels like it was long and busy, so I am grateful to be writing to you from Friday night, with a weekend ahead of me during which I plan to catch my breath and try to slow down.  I’ll be biking into work as usual, but still, I have this hope for a weekend that feels lazy and luxurious nonetheless.  Last weekend, I biked to work on Saturday and Sunday, then took a bike break on Monday.  I biked again on Tuesday or Wednesday—I actually can’t remember which day it was!  I must be getting old.  And on Thursday, I desperately needed a run, so I seized the moment and went for a short 10-minute run on a different out-and-back running route.  It was…interesting.  There were no sidewalks, and I’m afraid there were just too many cars for my taste.  My favorite running loop remains unchallenged in its superiority.  I like it because it’s perfect for 30-minute runs, and it’s a quite and peaceful neighborhood.

I biked to work again today, and it was ridiculously humid.  I was dripping with sweat when I got to work—same thing when I rode home.  On the return trip, however, fat splashes of rain started falling from the sky.  Just a few, enough to leave their wet fingerprints on my dress.  We desperately need more rain, and yet it feels like the sky is holding onto the moisture, like some greedy sponge.  For now, I see occasional threads of lightning lacing the night sky, but the ground remains dry.  I am waiting for rain. 

Public Service Announcement

Are you hungry?  In College Station?  Yeah, me too.  Let’s ride our bikes to Chipotle on Friday for this:

Thank goodness for Friday!  And for Bike-to-Work Week.  Did you ride to work this morning?  I did.  But if you didn’t, you’ve still got two more days this week to join the fun this week.

Pedal on, friends!

Back in the Saddle

Yoga Update (5/9-5/15/11)

Matt loves to use ranching metaphors, even though he corrals words more often than hooved creatures, and I have to say, it’s kind of addictive.  I may have been raised in the Midwest and get a little nervous if a horse starts moving faster than a slow saunter, but still, the American dream of moving West, of working with my hands and making a living off the land runs deep in my psyche.  I’m sure that my choice of reading, a book about rural Utah, a land that was settled by ranchers and Mormons (among others), is influencing me, but still, I find the ranching metaphors charming.

So: back in the saddle I am!  And by saddle, I mean yoga mat.  And by yoga mat, I mean no disrespect to any real ranchers out there.  I’m just having fun with words.

I’m getting really, really close to the end of this project, which started on March 18, almost two months ago.  During the course of the project, I’ve learned a thing or two about myself, namely that doing more yoga is not going to make me feel more balanced.  However, sitting in front of the pool while sipping something cool and reading a book can help restore an otherwise awful day.  Yoga does improve my sleep quality, and that reason alone is good enough for me.

As these last few days of the project wind down, I wanted to finish up strong, so I did more yoga than last week, and I chose to do some formal classes, not just my DIY pajama yoga before bed.

Here’s my yoga week, in anally-retentive list form:

Monday (5/9): I do some pajama yoga before bed.  It was a super-busy weekend with tons of biking, and my legs are aching for some stretching, so this yoga feels terrific.

Tuesday (5/10): Tonight I fire up Morning Flow #1 on the ole laptop and enjoy backbending my way to a peaceful mind.

Wednesday (5/11): I don’t do yoga tonight.  I did ride the bike to and from work, but for some reason, I’m not in the mood for yoga.  Instead, I cook dinner and enjoy the sounds of our much-needed rainfall outside.

Thursday (5/12): Tonight I do another class, Gentle Hatha #1, which I realize is sort of the opposite of Morning Flow.  Where Morning Flow focuses on doing tons of backbends (and wheel pose!), Gentle Hatha #1 focuses on doing lots of forward bends.  After doing both classes in one week, I’m feeling very physically balanced!  Now, if only I didn’t have a habitual hunch, I’d have perfect posture.

Friday (5/13): Ooh, spooky!  Friday the 13th.  I play it safe by doing more pajama yoga.  Luckily, despite my klutziness, I manage to not injure myself.  Whew!

Saturday (5/14): The weekend bike commutes resume, and today I am feeling too lazy to do any yoga.  I seem to be fighting an infection, and today I wouldn’t have even gone into work except that I’ve got experiments going NOW that need my attention.  So I nudge myself to work, but otherwise I try to take it easy.

Sunday (5/15): Knowing how much better my sleep is after I do yoga, I do some pajama yoga before bed, trying to mentally ease myself into the work week.  The weekend has flown by, and I’m a little sad that Monday looms so close already.  This is what happens when you work every day of the week, dear reader: your already short weekend feels even shorter.  Oh well.  At least things are going well at work, science-wise.

* * *

Just four more days of my yoga project!  I’m so excited I could lay down in savasana right now.  Ahhh….have a groovy week, kind readers!