We can’t stay away

Lake Michigan is a magnet.  I swear, when we’re in Milwaukee we can’t stay away from the lakefront. It’s Monday.  Start of our second week in Milwaukee, and life is good.  The Canada Geese are beginning to stage for their trip South. The lawn at Veterans Park is showing their presence.

Then again, the temps were cool this morning but that didn’t deter the fisher-persons.  Our harbor always has a flock of boats out trying their good fortune, and others fishing right off the breakwater, and the pilings installed to make this parklands.  When the DNR “planted” Cohos in the lake (years and years ago) they did the poor fishermen — and I mean that literally — they gave some thought to the fact that not all fishermen could afford boats — so they planted the fish right along the shore and to this day — who knows how many generations of salmon later — there’s still really good fishing right off the shoreline.

Tomorrow we’ll pack up for a short (we hope) visit to Burlington and the Burlington Superstore.  Time for our appointment to check out the steps and the backup camera.  In preparation for the visit I went hunting for paperwork for our extended service contract.  Uh ohhhh…. Nowhere to be found. What the heck did I do with it?

I checked all the normal places and when I still had not found it I decided to put in a call to Guaranty RV — where we bought our coach.  I dug out my card for Bill Schrieber “The paperwork guy” and quite true to his name, after explaining hat I needed I had a copy of our contract in hand (via email) in about 2 minutes.  This guy is amazing; and what’s more, he is typical of every contact we have had with the dealership.  They really are one of the top 50 RV dealerships in the country. I’m sure they rank way higher than 50, but just know I’d refer anyone needing an RV or RV service to them (Junction City, OR).

We’re still chillin’. And getting reacquainted with town.  I’m struck more pointedly by the impact of our time away from large communities.  Little things I find myself chafed by.  I’m eager to move on, and yet I’m glad to be near family.  Always an unpleasant sensation wanting to be both here and gone.

Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll be here again tomorrow to chat. Why not stop and see what’s happenin’?

Wheels and more Wheels

We know the temps are coming down this week, but Sunday dawned a beautiful day! And a colorful day. About 8 a.m. bikes started arriving at the State Fair Park and before we knew it there were several thousand of them. All gathering for a “Slow Ride” (not a race) by way of encouragement to the owner of a chain of bicycle stores around town. Wheel & Sprocket has been around as long as I can remember and the owner has just been diagnosed with advanced liver cancer; the ride has been hastily put together to show public support for a pillar of the community.

On a different train of thought we got our and wandered among some of our old haunts. Among them Lake Park in Milwaukee.

Peg had to pet the lion.  We got a kick out of the golfer who was more interested in his cellphone than in his putting, and of course there were numerous Pokemon pursuers — a phenomenon we had not seen before — unreal!

We mosey’d on up to Whitefish Bay — one of the metropolitan communities — where we watched high school kids painting school spirit slogans on local merchant windows (sanctioned of course) and the typical Sunday morning stroll by residents along the main street of this little town in a big community.  Lovely.  Homey.

We finished up our day of wandering by stopping at Cermak Fresh Market — the newest kid on the grocery store block in this area.  They have an exceptional produce department, extensive meat department featuring cuts that are far more typical of hispanic leanings than Milwaukee has seen for a long while, and probably the widest selection of ethnic foods of all sorts (Asian, Eastern European, European, South American).  It’s good to be back home!

The plan is still to take it easy a few more days.

Thanks for stopping by, I’ll be here again tomorrow to chat if you want. 🙂

 

 

Fall Color Report for 9/28

Just to bring you up to date.  Here is this week’s Wisconsin Fall Color Report!

Fidgeting is Good Medicine

This may not be a RV’er specific problem but I think that this
reprint of a recent NY Times piece about Fidgeting is
worth taking into consideration if you are an RV’er
who spends hours behind the wheel, or a retiree
who likes to travel by car — and spends
lots of time sitting under
the steering wheel.

From the New York Times, By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

Are you a fidgeter?

From now on, you can ignore the frequent requests you undoubtedly receive to just sit still. A new study finds that fidgeting — the toe-tapping, foot-wagging and other body movements that annoy your co-workers — is in fact good for your health.

Sitting is one of the scourges of modern life. We sit during meetings, automobile and airplane trips, while completing lengthy work assignments and while binge-watching “Stranger Things.” Studies of movement patterns indicate that most of us spend between eight and 10 hours each day seated. During that time, our bodies and, in particular, our legs barely move.

The health consequences of this muscular immobility are well documented and include: an increased risk for weight gain, as well as diabetes, since unused muscles in the legs do not pull sugar from the blood, leading to a dangerous rise in blood sugar. 

But the most immediate impact of oversitting is on our vasculature. Studies show that uninterrupted sitting causes an abrupt and significant decline in blood flow to the legs. This is problematic since, when blood flow drops, friction along the vessel walls also declines. The cells that line these walls, which can sense changes in the friction, begin to pump out proteins that contribute over time to hardening and narrowing of the arteries. This may make biological sense, because arteries don’t need to be as flexible when there isn’t much blood in them, but when the blood flow increases, the blood vessel remains stiff, increasing blood pressure and raising the risk for atherosclerosis. We can combat that situation easily by standing up and moving, causing leg muscles to contract and blood flow to remain steady.

“But there are many situations in which people cannot just stand up,” such as during long meetings or car trips, said Jaume Padilla, an assistant professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri in Columbia, who led the new study.  So Dr. Padilla and his colleagues began to consider other, relatively unobtrusive and practical ways that someone might combat the decline in blood flow associated with sitting.

For the new study, which was published in July in The American Journal of Physiology Heart and Circulatory Physiology, they hit upon fidgeting. Dr. Padilla and his colleagues thought it was conceivable that lower-body fidgeting might also result in enough muscular activity to elevate blood flow to the legs. 

To test that possibility, they recruited 11 healthy college students and, using ultrasound and a blood pressure cuff, first measured the level of normal blood flow through one of the main arteries in their legs and determined how well that artery responded to changes in blood pressure — a marker of arterial health.

Then they asked each subject to sit for three hours in front of a desk. The volunteers could study, work on their computers, talk on the phone or otherwise amuse themselves but, for those three hours, were not allowed to rise.

Most importantly, they asked the volunteers to keep one leg perfectly still, the foot flat against the floor and unmoving. With the other leg, the volunteers were told to fidget — tapping their heels against the ground for one minute and then staying still for four minutes. (A clock chimed to let them know when to start or stop fidgeting.) Over the course of the three hours, the researchers monitored the blood flow in the volunteers’ leg arteries.

The blood flow in the unmoving leg declined precipitously, but it rose in the fidgeting leg, compared both to baseline levels and to the unmoving leg. More striking, at the end of the three hours, when the researchers again tested the ability of the volunteers’ arteries to respond to changes in blood pressure, the vessel in the unmoving leg no longer worked as well as it had during baseline testing, which suggests it was already not as healthy as it had been. But the artery in the volunteers’ fidgeting leg responded as well as or better than it had at baseline to changes in blood pressure.

“To be honest, we were surprised by the magnitude of the difference” between the two legs, Dr. Padilla said.  “We had expected that fidgeting might attenuate” the reduction in blood flow and any subsequent acute changes in vessel health, he said, but the differences in terms of blood flow and subsequent arterial function were much more significant than they had anticipated. “The muscular contractions associated with fidgeting are really quite small,” he said, “but it appears that they are sufficient” to combat some of the unhealthy consequences of sitting.

Of course, the study was small, short term and involved only healthy young people. It also did not retest the volunteers’ vascular function after they had risen and begun to move around normally. Dr. Padilla said he thought it was likely that any undesirable consequences from this single session of not moving would soon disappear. But repeated bouts of muscular stillness could over time cause such impacts to become permanent, he said.

So if you can’t rise and walk around during your next lengthy meeting, he said, tap your toes. Bob your feet. Keep your legs in motion somehow, no matter how slight. And if your spouse or aisle mate should frown in annoyance, point out that science now says that fidgeting is good medicine.

Next time you’re moving from place to place in your RV — think about the benefits of fidgeting!  Maybe punch in your cruise control and do a little dance with your feet! I do.  Have done for ears — even before I read this article. 🙂

Thanks for stopping.  I’ll be here again tomorrow; how about you?

La La Land

Yes, indeed!  We are off duty, not working, gig-less…. My brain has ‘left the building’ along with Elvis.  Holy Moley! I’m a walking, talking, zombie!

My thought bubbles are empty.

The routine has gone, and seemingly so has my ability to function.  Although, I’m still getting emails with the Highland Ridge Daily Arrivals Report. (They’ll cancel the emails eventually I’m sure.)

Today is Friday.  Within the hour we head off to our last appointment (with G.P.).  Or at least we think it will be our last appointment this trip.  I already saw my blood-work results (I love email notifications of test results) and the areas of concern are pretty much as they have been in the past.  That means we might be ok as we are, or maybe not, it’s always an iffy thing.

Yesterday rained off and on all day.  The day before did too.  We’ve been in the 80’s since arriving and while we had beautiful sun for our arrival, we haven’t seen much of it since.  All summer long we were hearing that Milwaukee was having a semi-drought — or at least not all that much rain — well, we’ve arrived and so has the rain.  We’re already over the average for the month of September so our presence has done some good.  😉😜🤔

I had some plans for our stay here but I’ve not even consulted my list.  My body has made it clear that it intends to chill, and I’m listening to it.  We have been getting our walks; and or course talking to doctors and nurses but not much else.

Kathryn stopped by yesterday, and we’ll see them for dinner tonight. It sounds like the wedding plans for Melanie are ‘coming along’ — which means in Kathryn-speak that she would like them to be further along but it is what it is. 😊  I understand the feeling, but we feel strangely distant from this wedding.  Grandkids really are that different!  And then there is the fact that Melanie is planning a bigger wedding by far than either Peg & I had, or that Kathryn had — so the magnitudes of scale are new territory to us.  Still;  Melanie’s happy with where she is in the plans and that’s what matters. April 29 will arrive before we know it and for a change you’ll hear about Gramps trying to decide what to wear — as all of my suits and sport coats went out in our estate sale.  And how often does this RV’er wear a sport coat? I’ve gotten on for 5 years without one. 😜 But, she’s our only Grandkid so I’ll do the right thing.

We have another wedding to go to this month; that one’s on a Star Wars theme — so I have no idea what to wear to that one.  Where do you go to rent a Storm Trooper costume in size XX Tall?  Should be fun to see, but I’m wondering what we’ve gotten ourselves into?

We are still a little tentative on our route from Milwaukee to Los Fresnos. I reserved sites for the last three stops, but the overnights earlier on the route are up in the air. Because of our lan to stop at Elkhart  (to get a firm price from Bradd & Hall for the new flooring — we won’t make up our mind whether we’re actually going through with this until we have a reliable price) we aren’t sure how far we’ll get those first couple days. We’ll make that stop on Oct 20, and stay overnight on their lot (with a 30 amp hookup). Not knowing how long we might spend there (1 hour or 6 hours) we’ll play our Southward travel by ear until we get to Hot Springs AR. We should be able to find walkin sites without too much problem at that time of year.

For the moment a few days of R & R sound like as much excitement as I want!  Thanks for stopping and I’ll be here again tomorrow to chat.  Why not stop by?

 

De-Stressed over Stress Test

It was a fairly long day but labs, stress test, and first round of doctor’s visits are over and done.  The stress test went about as I expected — though I have to say that since my last one (quite a few years ago) the process is different. And, I guess the visit went as well as I could have hoped.  There are conditions that require ongoing monitoring — and I have a couple of them.  That is what life is going to be from here on in.  Pure and Simple.

On the positive side, I’m still able to do what I want, I’m not restricted from activities I love but whether or not that changes is, in part, up to me.  Continuing my weight loss will help, and ongoing dietary restraint, will help keep me active.

We have dates for our return visit and more tests next spring.  Now we know what to plan on and that’s a good thing.

With a lot of water falling out of the sky during the day we didn’t get out for a walk but we did take a short drive to Burlington — the location of the closest full service RV dealer.  After a nice chat we have an appointment for next week to troubleshoot our steps and backup camera. Thus far, everything is falling into place for our stay.   Peggy has a test tomorrow, we visit our GP on Friday and find out the results of our bloodwork (always an interesting moment as it’s the way you find out what your body’s been doing behind your back!  Blood test results always remind me of raising children…) and barring unforeseen problems we’ll be done with doctors for this visit.

That will give us a couple weeks to decompress, to snoop around, to enjoy a few meals out (we HAVE to try the new iteration of Crawdaddies — a local favorite that closed a couple yeras ago and recently reopened in a better location), and perhaps look at a few local RV parks (not that there are any that qualify as “nearby” Milwaukee).

If we get our repair issues resolved and just relax a little I’ll be content with the results of this stay.  We get time with our daughter, we’ll stock up on supplies for the winter, and we’re comfortable here. Good, good, and good.  🙂

Thanks for stopping by, I’ll be here tomorrow if you want to chat.

How to spend our first day of relaxation?

Do you relax instantaneously?  I don’t know about you but it takes me a few days to unwind when I’ve been doing things that aren’t me in the first place. So, it’s not surprising that Tuesday should be a little bit strange.  We were both fatigued on Monday night, and we both awoke way early.  Peggy was lucky enough to fall back asleep for a while but I was up before the birds puttering around, waiting for the rest of the world to wake up.

This is something I’ve done most of my life;  I’ve never been able to hang out in bed, and I’m not one to just lay in bed — so I get up.  I read, I work on the computer, I research routes, whatever is going on in our life at the moment.

Tuesday… Well, my body thinks it’s still supposed to be getting ready to do the Daily Arrivals Report, and it doesn’t want to relax….

Our early rising meant we had time for an early walk.  Knowing that I was going to have to do a stress test this week, I have been working all summer long on getting into better shape.  The campground at Highland Ridge is a good place because even though it’s a small campground, and I was really out of shape, there are no LEVEL roads/sections of road — it’s all gradually up or gradually down and we tried to get in our daily exercise.  That’s something I don’t want to change.

Strangely enough we didn’t see much dew when we were up there.  So, I was all the happier on our walk to stop and look at the dewy plants along the way.

I solved the problem… Ta Da! with a nap!  Followed by a trip to a decent barber.  You may not remember my trip, way back last May, to a new barbershop in River Falls. That was when I wanted to get a crewcut and ended up with something else —

I knew I wouldn’t come out looking like Brad Pitt, but this is what I was going for way back then.

I’m not even sure what kind of hair cut I received, but I’ve been growing my hair out all summer long to get enough length on it to fix the strange lengths from that cut job.

Today I went back to my old hair cutter;  she took her time and the final product was one I’m happy with.  After the cut we headed off to the lakefront.

The Lake Michigan lakefront has always been our favorite place in Milwaukee.  When we were looking for our last house we got as close to the high priced lakeshore as we could but it was a house we always knew we’d never retire in — just too big to maintain as we age.  Still, we spend a lot of time there — walking, meeting people, talking and thinking.

I chuckled when we went to Johnni V’s for a quick lite bite.  They have new signs on their doors.  The “Use Other Door” signs struck me as a typical Milwaukee way of looking at life:

Thanks for stopping by today, and let’s meet again tomorrow.

 

 

It rains wherever we go 🙃

Relocating

Monday morning and we were up with the sun (That being about 6:50 at the moment).  By 8:00 we were ready to leave.  We pulled into West Allis at the State Fair RV Park about 2:15 — not bad for almost 300 miles towing.

It was a beautiful day for a drive.  Light winds for most of the day — from our back, pushing us along the road towards our destination.  Light traffic for most of the trip — until we reached Madison — the traffic is always miserable (by Wisconsin standards) around Madison so that was nothing new.

By the time we set up for the month, and got dinner on the table the forecasted rain arrived and we had a nice dousing.  Funny how storms just a couple hundred miles away can be so different.  Here we get wind, which we saw little of in Spring Valley.  Here we can see the lightning coming — in the forest we were so circled in by trees that you don’t see much of anything.

I joke about it always raining where ever we go, but it really does seem that rain follows us wherever we go!

Construction

Since our departure from Milwaukee in April the nearest exit to the RV park has been reopened.  The construction nearby hasn’t gone away — they’ll be working hear another year reconstructing the Interstate — but at least it’s easier to get to this destination.  In the next few days we’ll find out the hard way what other exits are close; I’m sure there will be a few!

Chilling

Tuesday is a rest day — intended that way — before our spate of doctor’s visits and tests.  We’re both emotionally tired out and other than getting in a couple walks on Tuesday I intend doing not much of anything at all.

Clearly, Peggy’s getting a head start!  And that’s the way retirement should be.  Work hard if you want to, goof off if you want to, take it easy when you want to.  With the downpour outside there wasn’t anyway we were going anywhere, or doing anything… so feet up on the hassock and kick back.

Take Aways

How quickly we forget!  It’s a general statement but now that we are out of the forest it’s apropos.  Once you leave a place you realize how many little things you had gotten accustomed to — without realizing.

When we pulled onto the lot here at Wisconsin State Fair RV Park we forgot how light and bright it can be in our coach. Our host site  was in a little carved out corner of the woods and we could only see 20′ or 30′ in any direction.  The trees were tall — 50′ to 60′ — so we didn’t have much of a view to the sky, and for that matter the sun didn’t have much access to us — or to our solar panels.  When we settled in the lounge seems so bright compared to what we had gradually become accustomed.

And it was 84º here — the forest floor was always about 10º cooler than Spring Valley — being in the shade — we didn’t get to enjoy the heat of the sun on our skin.  We had heat, but it wasn’t the feeling of solar rays warming one’s epidermis! — it was just… well… heat!

I had been given INSTRUCTIONS by “she who must be obeyed” to drain our fresh water when we left Highland Ridge.  (In case you don’t remember the reference, it’s from Rumpole  of the Bailey a british sitcom from … well … let’s just say “days gone by.”)

The water there isn’t bad, but it’s not “Milwaukee water.”  And so I did (what else can one do when she who must be obeyed issues a dictum?) Seriously though, there IS a huge difference in water quality as one travels about the country and becoming accustomed to one water doesn’t mean that when you have a chance to drink something better that you don’t jump at the chance.

While I’m thinking about it I should make mention of water filters…

I routinely use two filters on our water supply.

standard cameo water filter

The Camco high flow filter goes first, right out of the water spigot. Then there is a secondary filter that we use only for drinking water.  I like the Everpure / Pentair system.  In fact I had the other filters that came with the coach removed so that we could switch over to these because to my taste the final product is so much better (I’m sure opinions vary — it’s just my opinion.  Anyway… what I wanted to mention is the change frequency.  The Camco’s I change about every 4-6 months.  They say they are good for “a season” but I pay attention to the quality of the water coming out of the faucet and if there are more impurities coming out of a well, I change it out at 4 months.  If we’re working off of a metro water water supply I go longer.  This is a charcoal (in part) filter, so it’s important to run water through the filter before hooking to your water system each time you hook to a new water source.  The Everpure / Pentair filters can last a year in normal “drinking water only” use and I try to stick close to that.  However, this year I wanted to wait until we left Highland Ridge (which is a private well system) because I knew the filter takes a lot of stuff out of the water.  As a result the filter had gotten so plugged that the flow was severely reduced.  I’m not going to do that again!  I shocked myself when I saw how much faster it flows with a new filter.  It’s amazing how “Normal” can change over time; over the life of a filter;  one gradually becoming plugged and needing replacement.

Well, there you have another day of Life Unscripted.  Thanks for stopping, and why not check in again tomorrow and see what’s up.  I’ll be here!