Well, there’s a break in my weekly fitness accountability updates.

Perhaps I should just call this one Fatfy.

Six weeks off between posts.  I blame The Silver Fox, but only recreationally.  Overall, I’m in charge of me, but here’s the story…you may enjoy it.

It all started with The Fox taking one of his ever more present weekend trips away.  While also having cataloged the rest of his upcoming weekend getaways.

It might have been our Friday coffee before his family vacation in Bend, OR where he, his ex-wife and son from south of Portland and his Seattle son and his family all rendezvoused in this Oregon high desert brewer’s delight of a town.

Perhaps it was the weekend after, where he went north to Seattle to dog sit while his Seattle son’s family went to the in-laws for a visit.

Or the weekend when he popped down to the coast to work on the beach house renovation his ex-wife – the perfectly lovely Sallory – and he were embarking on.

Definitely not this past holiday weekend when he went down to yurt erection party at the beach house.

At one point during his laundry list of upcoming weekends away with his family and/or Sallory, I exclaimed, “You guys are retired! Why can’t you go away in the middle of the week?!?”  A thought that caught him a little off guard, I could tell he was briefly considering the worker bee ritual of maximizing one’s weekends that no longer strictly applied to him.  Ultimately, he set that aside to declare that he couldn’t do that for the yurt building party because the other folks helping still worked.

But he left me an 18 pack of Mac and Cheese from his pre-Bend provisioning Costco trip, so there’s that.  It’s great when your best friend knows you so well that a box of Kraft soothes all manner of sins.

Also, I’m quite simple.  Not basic, since my tastes tend to run either rather high brow or – as in this case, obvs – low brow in the extreme versus basic…which is just common.

I’m gonna have to think about the amount of justifying that my admission of love for the comfort of Kraft Mac and Cheese just required.  But, Myrtle likes it too!  Or the box, at any rate.

So why is my absence from blogging about – or even actually participating in – my fitness journey as I approach my 50th somehow The Fox’s fault…even if only for my amusement?  He’s one of those…motivated people.  It’s so disturbing to my natural state of procrastination.  On my Fridays off, he likes to get our coffee and chat about the week and then make for the gym, which is basically kitty corner from the coffee shop we hang out in.  Well, he hangs out there.  I am a squatter, since my caffeine tastes run to Nossa Familia down the block, but his coffee shop has better seating.  Still, the gym is right in the middle of the two, so he’s right on that we should go to the gym while we are in the area.

However, it’s not my style.  I’ve always been a post-work gym goer.  As I’ve gotten older, my energy level has…leveled off.  The result is that after ten or more hours at work, I’m just as likely to fall asleep on MAX as I am to have the energy to break out of my couch’s orbit once I get home.

Ergo, gym-going has been relegated to my days off.

While this yearlong journey is intended partially to help me find new habits that I can adopt to move forward with into the back third of my life, I have not fully explored too many things that felt like a sustainable routine.

For one of these weeks away of his, I decided that I would have coffee with The Fox and then go home, do some chores and then go to the gym afterward instead of the somewhat established routine of wake up, coffee, gym…it’s such a breakneck pace for what is essentially my Saturday morning.

Looking back, that was the last time I even planned to go to the gym over this six week hiatus.

I was busy.

Eighteen is a lot of boxes of Mac and Cheese.

Plus, I was working.

A lot.

A couple of six day weeks.

Averaging about 7.5 miles of speed-walking around PDX during those hectic workdays…it’s not like I wasn’t getting some exercise in.

So, I forgave myself my weakness and indulged my inclination to potato myself on my couch.

After a few weeks of seriously sedentary days off, I started thinking that it was getting to be bike riding weather in Portland.  Another week of not pulling that trigger and I began experiencing lower back pain.

A side effect of my sofa slouch.

Good news for the Needle Man.

Bad news for my future fit fifty year old self.

But!

You’ll be glad to know that as of last weekend, I have returned to my reluctant cyclist self.  My first ride was a shorty.  A ride that I hear others talk about as an achievement and roll my eyes – a simple 10 miler.

Uphill.

See?  That right there was an error in judgement on my part.

I was looking for a scenic ride on a sunny Portland day.  Thinking, “Hey, it’s just five miles away…” and completely forgetting that it was five miles uphill.  Crazy, windy, two-lane roads through a part of Portland’s semi-exclusive west-side hills.  It took me an hour to make the ride up.  the view I had on my beautiful city once I got there was worth it.

You can’t see the floaters in my field of vision in the pictures, but you can still see Mount St Helens and – what I think is – Mount Adams in the distance.

The ride home was – obviously – much easier.  But harrowing as I rode my brakes most of the way downhill into town.

In rush hour traffic on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend.

Yeah, this was a super well thought out excursion.

On the decidedly plus side:  endorphins.

On the decidedly not-plus side:  my ass feels like hamburger from my saddle rash.

But, I’m not going to let that stop me.

I.

Am.

Back.