I’ll be Visiting the Blog More Often

A long time has been passing between my times of either logging in or even so much as glancing at this blog. Today I saw a serious downside to checking it so seldom: It had been hacked.

Somehow a spammer or spammers had learned how to make and post comments to this blog without my approval, after I had removed the link for them to even submit comments.

As a result there were nearly 300 undesirable and offensive comments posted, all of which were advertisements for offensive things.

They have all been trashed and I will make a note to check this blog much more frequently and to consult with the person who built this site, about other actions to take.

If you have seen any of those offensive comments, I apologize for my inactivity here, which allowed them to go unnoticed by me.

If you wish to contact me, you may use this email address, which is a disposable one and which will be changed to a different one in a future post, if this one is misused: [email protected]

On a different, more important topic, which I’d rather write about: Do you know what the vine usually symbolizes, in the Old Testament of the Bible? If you said “yes,” then you might know that it refers to Israel.

On that topic: Are you aware that Jesus, in the New Testament, declared that he, himself is the vine? See John chapter 15 for that. Jesus is the vine now; Jesus is Israel. Those who believe in Jesus are the branches, as Jesus said.

The Kingdom of God is not of this world. It begins and ends with Jesus, who is the vine who gives life to all who believe in him and those who believe in him are the branches.

Worth thinking about, especially in light regarding what’s happening in the world these days.

Like A Tumbleweed

This is a tumbleweed. On July 19th, I had a fall and tumbled a little bit while running. Tumbleweeds are just fine with the tumbling, so I will leave it to them and try to avoid any such experience again.

The video in the most recent previous post shows some video of the trail on which I was running when I took a tumble. I will try to take another video of that trail, during the next run, in wide screen mode and will start that video just before the area where the July 19th tumble happened.

Immediately after the fall, I got back up, asked God something to the effect, “I asked you to help me so that I would not fall again while running! Why did you let me fall?!” Instantly, immediately, I got the answer and looked at my left hand, which was very bloody, like it had a little fountain running from something on the side opposite the palm, in the wrist area. I was reminded, that I had been wondering if the Eliquis (an anti-coagulant) I’d recently resumed taking was working. Yep… it was working. The blood was flowing with no inclination to coagulate like normal.

The above shows the back of my left hand. The tiny bandage is covering the very tiny “speck” of a place where the skin had been scratched during the fall, which I saw was bleeding profusely, after I asked God, “Why?”

Next I looked at my right hand… This is the scratch on the back of my right hand. It was bleeding profusely also and the blood on both of them was mixed with desert soil so they looked muddy and each had a flow of red blood.

I resumed running, another half mile or so until reaching the point at which I always stop running and walk the rest of the way home. My left and right knees were bloody and sort of lumpy looking, with a covering of what looked like bloody mud sticking to each of them.

After getting home, I took a shower and then tried a transparent bandage on the left knee. Transparent bandages work well and let the wound “breathe” without letting water into the wound. But there was still too much bleeding, so it had to be removed and a different sort of bandage was applied, with a compression wrap.

The above is what the left knee and leg looked like after taking a shower, rinsing off all the mud and blood and then applying a transparent bandage. It wouldn’t stop bleeding, because of Eliquis, the elegant anti-coagulant. It really does a job of interfering with letting blood coagulate normally.

I went to see my doctor, the second day after the fall. She re-dressed everything and then looked at the swollen, scratched place on my head. She told me I need to have my head examined.

Though I told her I felt okay, she said that with an anti-coagulant like Eliquis, there is a possibility of internal bleeding, so she insisted I have my head examined, but not necessarily by a psychiatrist. For now, all she ordered is a CT Scan, which will be done tomorrow.

It is now a few minutes after 3 PM, the weather is dry, perfect for running, with a temperature of 97℉ so it’s time to get ready and maybe take another video on the way back, for the next blog post.

Jesus is Lord.

Long Story Short

This blog website has been up for many years but quite neglected recently. It’s one of those things (a website) for which a person should take action to use it or do something to lose it. So this is an effort at doing something to use it.

The main reason for lack of activity posting to this blog has been problems of the heart. Atrial fibrillation, a couple heart attacks, atrial tachycardia, almost blacking out a couple of times….stuff like that.

A couple of heart surgeries happened and now one result is that I’ve switched regular aerobic physical activities from indoor rowing and the other Concept 2 ergs, to simple daily running. For the time being, at least. It’s sort of a take-one-day at a time thing.

So I’m done doing Zwift rides and sharing their screen recordings…mainly because I decided to save money by canceling the Zwift subscription. Still have the Concept 2 BikeErg though but, as stated in the first paragraph, the daily aerobic activity has been limited to outdoor running. If it rains, I don’t run. But it doesn’t rain much here in the ongoing drought.

If the temperature is too cold, which it seldom is…I may avoid outdoor running. But there is no temperature too high for outdoor running, because my runs are usually somewhere around 30 minutes.

https://youtu.be/uk5M7FCS5JQ

The above link should display a video of part of the trail on which I usually run.

That’s enough writing for now. It has been so long since I’ve posted here, that I’m going to let this be a sort of test to see if it is readable.

The comment/contact link access has been removed because there was just too much spam sent to it, no matter how “bot-proof” my dear website builder made it. But here’s an email address at which you can write to me. It is a disposable address, so if it starts to get too much spam, it will be deactivated. It is [email protected] and if you send actual email to it, specify how you would like for me to respond to you, if you would like any response. The two options are 1. to post your question and my response in a subsequent post here or 2. to reply to you directly via email (though if I do that, I’m pretty sure I’ll have to respond from a different, non-disposable email address, so we’d have to establish an understanding about that in advance.

Jesus is Lord.

We Are Spirits

Heard this song whose lyrics follow, among the music in a random play list recently, while using the erg:

“Spirits In the Material World”

Song by The Police

Oh!

There is no political solution
To our troubled evolution
Have no faith in constitution
There is no bloody revolution

We are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world

Our so-called leaders speak
With words, they try to jail ya
They subjugate the meek
But it’s the rhetoric of failure

We are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world

Where does the answer lie?
Living from day to day
If it’s something we can’t buy
There must be another way

We are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world

Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world

Songwriters: Gordon Matthew Sumner. For non-commercial use only.

The reason I’m sharing it is simply because I was surprised to hear that true statement (the “we are spirits” part) in a pop song by a band that (as far as I know) had no reputation for writing songs that were spiritual or protest songs or otherwise particularly meaningful.

It is true that we are spirits. Though it is easy for a person to think of himself or herself as a physical being composed entirely of atoms and molecules… we only “inhabit” our physical bodies and we depart from those physical bodies when death happens. Dying is a word for the separation of a person’s spirit from that person’s body. The body remains behind, at death, and the spirit goes elsewhere.

So… Thanks to Gordon Matthew Sumner, for a few words of “food for thought” in an otherwise not-worthy-of-fame song.

For anyone who sincerely wants to comment on this or any other post, you can reach me through the email system of the concept2.com logbook if you yourself also have a logbook account.

Cheddar Gorge on Zwift

When I saw the name, “Cheddar Gorge,” for today’s Zwift ride, I immediately thought of cheddar cheese.

Besides the indoor bike ride, there was about 30 minutes each done on a SkiErg and a rowing machine.

For anyone who wants to ride their own indoor bike while watching the screen recording of what I saw on Zwift today, the video is at this link: Cheddar Gorge on Zwift.

Champs Elysees via Zwift

This photo was supposedly taken on the Champs Elysees in Paris.

Today’s workout was after 2 days of rest. It consisted of about 5K each, at an easy pace, on SkiErg and RowErg plus some riding on Zwift. Part of the riding on Zwift was called Champs Elysees and this link is to a screen recording of it.

Because the first Zwift ride was so brief, I did a second easy ride on Zwift using the Paris Letuce Express route which you can access in this link: Letuce Express

Happy and healthy workout activities to you.