Monday, October 24, 2016

Evanston: trees and streaks and videos and a healthy life


        We moved into this building ten years ago when it was new.  A tree planted in the small front yard reached only to the first floor.  We are on the third floor and now look out onto its highest branches whose leaves today seemed to change before my eye.  Yellow.  Brown.  Gone.  Not all, but many and at an increasing rate.  
        It has been a lovely fall day.  Sunny, light wind, temperatures in the low 50sF/10-12C.  Inside I am wearing a t-shirt, Levis, and vestigially going without socks.  When I go outside I quickly realize that I am deluded.  Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in the Southern Hemisphere anymore.
        The photo above is not the tree outside our window, but a Baobob in South Africa.

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        I don’t watch what poses as the national evening news.  I am a Trump-free zone.  I do watch the local news; and the only local news is the World Series, which presumes that the world consists of the United States and Toronto, Canada.  
        Cleveland is a deserving team that has played superbly in the post-season, but they have won the World Series in my lifetime—if just barely—and the Cubs haven’t for 108 years.  As I think I have pointed out before, there are places that have won the World Series that weren’t even places when the Cubs last did.  I think particularly of Arizona and Florida where in 1908 there were respectively only rattlesnakes and gila monsters and mosquitos.  
        Go, Cubs.

        I no longer read the NZ HERALD online.  It has become a silly shadow of a newspaper.  It is not the only one that has debased itself in an effort to survive at all costs.  If you can only survive by relinquishing integrity and honor, perhaps you shouldn’t.
        That has not kept me from knowing that the All Blacks have just set a world record, assuming the world is the eight or so countries that play big-time rugby, by winning their eighteenth test match in a row.  What is particularly impressive is that the streak continues despite the retirement of some of the greatest New Zealand rugby players ever.
        Go, All Blacks.

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         There are now nine short GANNET in the Indian Ocean videos on YouTube.  I appreciate the positive response.  There are more to come.

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        I have often written that life aboard GANNET is naturally healthy.  
        This was true in Opua, where I rowed ashore and walked around and frequently climbed the Opua hill.
        It was true in Darwin where I rowed forever just to reach the shore.
        But returning to land life in Evanston, I have realized that it is not true during a long ocean passage on GANNET, when during one two week period of rough weather I probably only stood up for a total of one hour, or in Durban, where in a marina slip my only significant exercise was a long walk on the dock to reach the yacht club to shower.
        I have resumed wearing my Apple watch, resumed my full workouts three times a week, resumed doing my shoulder physical therapy maintenance exercises twice a week, resumed climbing twenty flights of stairs a day, resumed completing all of the Activity circles on the watch app each day, taking only the weekends off.  
        The realization that life aboard GANNET has its limitations came when all of the exercises here hurt.
        They don’t much anymore.