Testing My Tacks, Making Travel Plans

Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland. Since much of my news these days relates to trying to age gracefully, this series might be called The Geezer Gazette.]

8/9/25

 

Aloha All!

 

This week I got back to physical activities that have been restricted during my recovery from surgery.  On Sunday I did a complete workout at the gym, though with very light weight settings on the machines.  My routine makes use of about a dozen of these self-torture devices, each of which targets a different set of muscles.  I also usually use a pair of free weights to do a quick shoulder muscle exercise.  I didn't hear or feel any tummy tacks popping loose, but by Tuesday my muscles were really  sore and stiff.  Obviously they objected to getting back to work after a nice lazy 6-week vacation.  I also resumed my usual gardening and house maintenance chores, like catch-up pruning, pushing our trash bin to the top of our driveway for weekly collection, using my heavy backpack blower to clean dust and debris from our walkways, lanais and pool area, and hauling my garden sprayer around with a couple of loads of weed-killer.  I also did some outdoor repainting of one of our lanai railings. Another test came on Thursday, when  Karen and I played golf.  I whacked my way through a full (for us) round and had some pretty decent shots, winding up with three bogies.  There has been less rain on the course during the last week, so the drier grass helped the ball roll farther. Thankfully the extra distance cut down the number of fairway shots, each of which required a full swing and really tested those tacks.  They seemed to hold ok, but by the end I was really pooped and glad to get home for my afternoon dip in the pool followed by a rather deep "nap."  After all of this week's effort and resulting soreness, my conclusion is that it is easy to let a geezer-body get out of shape and very difficult to get it back in.....

 

With all our health uncertainties we haven't made many travel plans.  We have our Mississippi river boat trip coming up in October, but other than that we haven't made any commitments.  This is unusual for us -- normally by this time we have a good idea of the trips we want to make next year and even have made some preliminary arrangements.  Besides the health issues which make exotic travel

Seattle

daunting right now, even relatively easy foreign travel doesn't seem attractive at the moment, due to international political conflicts, local attitudes toward tourists, weather extremes,  and our country's self-imposed pariah status. Nevertheless, our wanderlust has gotten the better of us and we've decided to take a quick 2-week trip to the Pacific Northwest at the end of this month.  We're going to focus on Seattle, the Cascade Mountains, and perhaps zip down to Portland to visit a couple of friends who live there.  We've been to Seattle before, but it was a long time ago and a very brief visit.  Our current plan is to spend several nights in Seattle, then rent a car and drive the Cascade Loop, a circular route that is supposed to be very picturesque.  We will do this leisurely, with multi-night stops in a couple of places along the way.  If the weather cooperates it should be just what the travel-doc ordered.

 

Episode 30 of Kilauea's eruption came and went this week.  It was another bubbler rather than one with high fountains like the one we saw.  Driving all the way down to see it would have been rather disappointing, and we are glad we timed our visit as well as we did.  The fountaining may return, but for now the show is relatively subdued.  The various monitoring devices indicate another episode of some kind is coming, we'll just have to wait to see what it produces.

 

Ok, that's it for now.  Off to market and beach breakfast.  Be well and be good -- we could use more of both qualities in the world right now.  Carpe Vitam.