Why I Joined the Ultimate Blog Challenge!

Today marks a new start for me in relation to my blog and adding a small amount of daily discipline into my life. I signed up for the UBC Ultimate Blog Challenge for the month of April. To succeed yesterday I decided that I would ask you to help me, bet you are happy you have an important role in my life! I ask that you hold me accountable for the next 30 days to create a daily blog entry. Given the times we are in, my promise to you is to use your minutes reading my blog as minutes that entertain you. I will share some part of my life, thoughts and experiences over the next 30 days, I am pretty sure some of them will make you chuckle or at minimum scratch your head. In turn, you let me know you are following my antics by posting feedback. That is all I need to keep me going, I hope!

Commitment to a daily practice hasn't been easy for me. You would think with a near 40-year career in project management doing something every day would be a no brainer... NOT TRUE, especially in retirement or semi-retirement is more accurate. After working in the corporate world for my whole life, I have come to love my time and my near total capability to define how I do or do not spend it. It has been interesting to learn that I will choose fun over function pretty much every time. Who knew? Therein lies the rub. When choices come to play cards or write daily, fish in the back yard or paint daily, play cards online or journal daily, play with my 2 pups or clean house... I think you can see where I am going with this! You got it; fun wins pretty much every time!

Today my dear next-door neighbor asked if I wanted to, at a socially acceptable distance, ride bikes with her. So to really understand how monumental my decision to participate was, you have to know that my only bicycle is a Street strider, stand up elliptical machine, that has been in my garage or living room as a stationary exercise bike for more than 6 years. It has easily been 3 or more years since I stepped foot on it. It actually is a beautiful thing, bright, sleek shiny and totally looks new, that should tell you something right there. Anyway, I agreed it was time to put the foot to the pedal and see what would happen. 
I rolled my Street strider out of the garage, in all of its shiny glory, my friend made comments on how pretty and shiny it is. So true, so lovely and it looks so easy standing there. I am here to tell you, it isn't easy, in fact I wasn't even sure I could make it move at all. My embarrassment factor was quickly ratcheting up to monumental levels! It was about this time I realized that the floppy sandals I was wearing were a recipe for disaster, so back in the house for tennis shoes. Returning to the bike, I am thinking and telling my friend that I am not in the best of shape. I have lost over 70 pounds over the last few years, big pat on the back, but I don't exercise daily. I know I should, I have that talk with myself every day. Funny that too doesn't seem to work for me either. Another ding on my ability to establish repeatable daily practices.

My friends' husband filled the tires with air, of course they were flat as pancakes, what would me think they would be sitting there all ready for me! Then I walked the bike up a small hill to the street in front of our houses. The moment of truth had arrived. Trumpets please! At least I thought there should be trumpets for such a monumental occasion. I pointed the bike to face downhill, my friend was already down the hill riding along, I stepped on, nearly going down in the process. I think I pedaled twice and nearly crashed. I decided going downhill was not a good idea.  

I turned the bike around and went uphill, that seemed to work, after I managed to petal out of the yard across the street just when their garage door was opening. I finally found some balance and made it a little way from home. I was ready to stop at that point, but my pride wouldn't let me. If I had been alone, I would have walked that bike back to the garage never to be seen out again! It does help to have friends, so as she rode up and by me, I stepped back on and continued to ride, ride into yards, stop and correct and then continue. This went on for a quarter mile, full mile, 100 miles I am not sure and then I am ashamed to say I was ready to go home. While we were riding, we had several cars and a couple walking go by twice, all of them moving faster than I was!  Oh, do I really need to have exercise every day? We turned around and made our way home. Will I do this again tomorrow? We will see, I did leave the Street strider out of the garage.