Dancing, Camping, Cycling, & Hiking on our Public Lands....living in the valley of love and delight
Here we are…..filling our pill boxes for AM and PM for each day of the week.
Remember, when you were younger, when the only medicine you took was maybe Tylenol?
If you look closely you will see that I have a heating pad on my pillow for my back. And my Danny has a heating pad behind his back too.
Since our pill boxes are identical, I had to label them.
Yes, we are growing old together….and loving it!
…..of our cabin!
I have been missing all the adventures that we have in the mountains, so my dear Danny had been planning on taking me up to our cabin this weekend. It we had looked out on our front porch when the security light went on, this is what we would’ve seen…
I had a heart attack two weeks ago. EMTs came, took me to the emergency room, doctors fixed me up, and all of the nurses and other staff were extraordinary.
So we wanted to do a thank you for them.
For the staff at the Banner Baywood Heart Hospital, we purchased a copy of the 45 rpm record by Sonny and Cher The Beat Goes On. Is there any better song?
Here is what we gave them yesterday:
Unfortunately we didn't get a photo, so I've asked Vicky to make two platefuls today so we can take a picture of her cookies. Since we won't be able to take them to the EMTs, I don't know what we'll do with them.
Being the good wife that I am, I baked my Danny the cookies that he asked for. But instead of making two plates of cookies, I made him two cookies on one plate.
.......and then she ate ONE of them! Sheesh.
Sorry, dear, doctor’s orders….
It took us over two years to arrange a visit with Mark and Peggy. This is what happens when two old couples try to get together. There with delays caused by covid, cancer, debilitating back pain, and even a heart attack.
We finally got to see Mark and Peggy. Dan has been friends with them for over 45 years. He and Mark met when they were fresh out of their doctoral programs as brand new professors at Illinois State University. Their friendship continued through their entire careers. Their children were raised together. And Mark and Peggy’s oldest daughter babysat dear little Jules and Emily.
We had a wonderful day—visiting, walking around the ponds, sitting down to dinner, sharing old times, and making new memories together.
Mark and Peggy gave us this coaster. It makes us happy every time we see it. It reminds us of a lovely afternoon spent with good friends.
We danced today. Here is the link to our dance.
Five days after my dear Danny had a heart attack, stopped breathing, and came back to life for me….we held each other close, and danced to our favorite song, “Today”.
Years ago we met at a dance. And we have been dancing together ever since that night we first danced and fell in love.
Last week our life almost ended. Miraculously, my Danny lived. We have been given more days together. So we celebrated this new life by dancing.
It was the first dance of the rest of our life.
Before we went to sleep, I held my Danny tight….life is so tenuous and precious. He whispered, “This was a good day in our life. I love you.”
From the Thornton Wilder play Our Town.
In the third act, which takes place in the cemetery outside of town, the people talk about their lives. I haven't seen it in years and years, but what I remember most was that it was about the importance of "Stop and Look."
It means to not just let days drift by, because they will be over before you know it and before you want them to. Instead, "stop and look" at your daily lives. Let them really hit you. Be grateful. Enjoy them. Live them.
This week I came close to dying. Despite being very fit (for my age--75), eating a heart-healthy diet, not being (too) overweight (especially for my age), having low cholesterol, and having low blood pressure, I had a heart attack.
If Vicky hadn't been there, and acted quickly and decisively, I would have died. Right there. On the spot.
I was using my upper-body exercise machine, and it was waaaay harder than it had ever been. After I use this machine I need to rest for a few minutes because my muscles ache from the exercise, as they should. But on this day not only could I not do anywhere near my usual reps, but my muscles hurt much more than usual (or so I thought at the time....mistakenly).
So I laid down on the bed.
The next thing I knew is that there were six strange men in our bedroom. A blur of activity.
Here is what happened.
After I laid down on the bed, Vicky said it looked like I was having a seizure. I had lost consciousness because my heart had stopped. I looked dead, complete with my tongue hanging out of the side of my mouth.
My....heart......wasn't.....beating.
Vicky immediately began CPR which the doctors told us, later, loosened the blockage enough that some blood was getting through and she could feel that I was breathing again. She called 911. Two big trucks arrived as soon as they could get here, filled with those six strange men.
It's all a blur for me, and only slightly less of a blur for her. It was a blur for me because I wasn't getting oxygen to my brain. The part that isn't a blur for her was, instead, traumatic--seriously traumatic, and always will be. Here she was, not expecting anything like this, just an ordinary morning, when she immediately noticed something was wrong, and without thinking about it for even a moment began administering CPR that both saved my life and saved my heart so that now I can live without a damaged heart and brain.
I remember being told by the EMTs that I had experienced a heart attack. Vicky says I answered questions, but I don't remember that. She says that they asked me my age, and I couldn't remember. But, what I did was try to calculate my age. I said something like "well, let me figure it out, I was born in 1948 and it's 2024...." Sheesh, even though I'm having a heart attack, not even that can stop me from being a boring academic.
Then the six men hoisted me onto a gurney and wheeled me to one of the big trucks. After they shut the door, I was lying there looking at it saying to myself: "A heart attack?"
It seemed like within seconds I was at the hospital emergency room.
And then talk about a blur. People talked to me, and did things to my body. A couple of doctors introduced themselves. I managed to talk to the social worker (I guess) and was concerned that Vicky wouldn't be able to find where I was. So, someone called Vicky for me. Thank you whoever you are for that, as Vicky found me there.
Then I was wheeled to an operating room. A doctor introduced herself to me, and then said they were going to give me something to make me "drowsy." I looked at my elbow and saw someone pushing something into it.
After my operation the doctor who did that operation, called an Angiogram. went to the room where Vicky was waiting, explained what had happened, told her how to get to my room to wait for me, and explained to her that my heart started again because of her CPR breaking through the blockage just enough.
I woke up in a recovery room (I don't remember it), and then they wheeled me into my room at the Baywood Banner Heart Hospital where Vicky was waiting for me. She was getting frantic. Their system was organized in such a way as to make it so she could be there, could see me, and I could see her immediately.
I had a heart operation. The Doctor went through a vein in my wrist with some type of tube and up into my heart to look at it, and found a blocked artery. Completely blocked. She cleaned it out and inserted a stent. A stent is shaped like a straw that keeps the artery open.
Here is something that is a bit unsettling. I never saw this doctor again at the hospital. Still haven't thanked her. We both went out of our ways to thank all of the dozens of other staff who helped me. We hope we will run into her later this week at my appointment with the Cardiologist.
I went from feeling great, using my exercise machine, and planning on a two-hour bike ride in the dark with Vicky to having my heart stop, then re-start, getting moved to a hospital, having heart surgery and being back into my hospital room with her all in less than two hours. We wouldn't even have been done with our bike ride by that time. In fact, if they would have let me, I might have wanted to do that bike ride anyway.
But the sticks in the mud thought I should recover first. Blah blah blah Get well first blah blah blah
We've been home for less than a day now. Have two new buckets of medicines.
.....and is it ever nice. We got to sleep together last night, in the peacefulness of our home. We really needed that. At the hospital Vicky once sneaked into my hospital bed. One nurse knew and simply said, smiling, "She's your wife." But most of the time she slept curled up next to me in a chair, right there once again if I needed her...which I did.
Since we have arrived home, we have done a lot of reflecting on our life together. We both agreed that if something really bad had happened that we would always have known that we let no day or night go to waste.
We often talk about the incredible things we have done and seen together in the past almost 13 years we have been married, and we reviewed these memories after I returned home;
Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine
I'll taste your strawberries I'll drink your sweet wine
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
Ere I forget all the joys that are mine......today.
We have no regrets. We always paid attention to our days, and to what we were grateful for on those days.
On the second night in the hospital, I woke up very early, crawled out of my bed, and quietly took a photo of Vicky sleeping uncomfortably in a chair as close as she could be to me. Told you we were always together. We want to remember this for the rest of our lives.
Stop and Look.
….doesn’t stop us from having a good day in our life.
Yesterday we cycled in 34-degree weather, but this morning in the Valley (Mesa) it’s too cold even for us….28 degrees!
It is beautiful with a clear sky—but cold.
So today we will stay inside, hold each other close, and dance.
We met at a dance thirteen years ago, and every time we dance, it still feels like the first time!
Here is one of our dances where you can see how much fun we have dancing together. It's called the East Coast Swing....also known as the Jitterbug, Swing, American Bandstand Swing. Singer's name is Dusty Springfield. A song from 1963.
Dancing to I only want to be with you
And then we will sit in our smug little home together and look out the sliders and windows that extend the full length of our home. We will see the bright sun shining, the green that extends west for a quarter of a mile, and the ancient eucalyptus trees that frame our view of the world from our home.
And we will be together all day long….what a wonderful day it will be!
We truly love our cabin in Pine, but this is why we are not spending the winter there.
But when the temperatures rise in the Valley, we’ll pack up, head to our dear cabin—and for the next six months live and play together at our cabin in the mountain paradise of Pine, Arizona!
We had a good year in terms of moving and using our bodies.
Everything we do....everything....is together. For that reason alone it's fun.
But we also know that we feel better when we do our physical activities. So, let's get started.
Dancing:
We met at a dance. We both love it.
This year we danced more than we had in any other year, by far. We danced at our home in Leisure World (Mesa), at our cabin in Pine, and out in the desert while camping. We danced 62 times, which is more than once/week. We also created a You-tube channel of our dances, which now number over 300 dances....usually to golden oldies (in other words, to songs that mostly our children have never heard of and our grandchildren go "huh?" to).
But give us Roy Orbison over any current singer any time.
Cycling:
Another major activity for us is cycling. We mostly cycle on e-bikes now, because we can easily "dial-in" how much exercise we can get. We cycled 5033 miles in 2023. The majority of those miles were in Leisure World.
Leisure World's miles were primarily during January-March and October-December. We did 3760 of those miles during that time. All at night. We would get up anywhere from 2:30-3:00 a.m., put on multiple layers of clothes (including heated gloves and heated pads in our shoes), and cycle in the dark on the streets and golf trails. The golf trails require concentration and balance. There's a real learning curve to do these trails safely (for us, and for others)
Vicky has a tracker which shows how much of a workout it is....mainly because we can set the resistance to a level where we have to work hard but below when our knees start to hurt.
Interestingly, it is the safest time to cycle...for us. It's a gated community so we will see only a handful of vehicles every morning. Additionally, we each have 12-15 headlamps. We are quite visible, and the few walkers we see are completely safe. Almost all wave to us or yell good morning.
Our rides in January, February, and March were to support Candice's breaking of the world record for number of consecutive days for running 50K. So to support her, we also ran 50K each day......LIE! But we did cycle 50Ks each day for her. It was ccccccccold! We occasionally made signs before we left on some rides to imitate the signs Candice made marking how far she had to go each day. Here is one of them we made:
We cycled when we were at our cabin in Pine, near the Mogollon Rim. We live there when the weather in the "valley" is too unbearable to be outdoors. That's about 6 months of the year.
Here we are in a small town near Pine called Strawberry:
...and up on the "Rim" (the Mogollon Rim where we spend a lot of our time when we are living in our cabin):
Hiking:
Our hiking has taken a beating because of our various physical ailments. We used to be able to hike 5 miles regularly, and now that has dropped down to about 3.5 miles per hike. 12 years ago we could hike 8-10 miles. But we love it. We hiked 52 times last year, doing 180 miles. (by the way, we define a hike as being in the wilderness and carrying our heavy backpacks). Our goal had been 200 miles, but because we put more time into cycling, hiking took a hit.
We are going to camp more this year, so we should be able to meet this goal.
We walk quite a bit every day, but only count some of the walking. We both have step counters, and they register a lot more distance than we register when we take "official" walks. We walked just under 350 miles last year.
Upper body
Vicky does 100 pushups 3 times/week, and I have an exercise machine called the A-System that I had set as a goal to use 3 times/week. I didn't quite accomplish that, using it 117 times last year. I have some excuses (some good, some not so good). But I am pleased that I have used this machine regularly for over 7 years.
Here is a photo of me with the machine...on the Mogollon Rim:
Here is Vicky in a push-up contest with Sebastian:
Time spent exercising in 2023
One goal we had was to exercise at least 60 minutes on 90% of days. We got close enough: 88%.
We also wanted to average 2 hours/day. We did OK, but had too many days where we couldn't really exercise and too many days when Dan felt so bad from the side effects of his cancer medication that making it out of bed was an accomplishment. We averaged 1.9 hours/day. That's close enough.
2024 Goals
We want to add more variety to our fun time together. We stopped going to the pool in the early mornings because LW had installed a shower that was impossible to use. Apparently we weren't the only one who noticed this, as we see that there is now a normal shower head in the outside changing/shower room.
We also want to do more ping-pong.
We will cut back on our cycling, because we want to have this variety. Our cycling goal will be 3000 miles. We will increase our hiking goal to 200 miles and our walking goal to 400 miles.
In terms of time, we want to stay at 90% of days of exercising 60 minutes a day, have 2/3 of days at 2 hours/day.
Dan wants to meet his goal of using his machine 3 times per week.
We have also bought a pull-up bar, and we want to see if we can increase our "hanging" time on it.
We don't know what to set as a goal beyond that. Dan is also going to practice balance every day (standing on one foot). Vicky will do this with him, but she can stand forever on one foot already.
We want to keep it fun.
And we will continue to dance at least once/week....of course.
