Skiing #2

 Next week is going to be all snowed out in the mountains, so I had to get up there this week despite that I was just coming out of a 3-day PEM sickness. This time I stuck to the plan of the 3x8 sessions of even mix of green and blue runs. I was getting tired at the end though and the memory of PEM was still fresh. So I cut it short at the end and only did 6 runs.

Still, I had a terrible leg cramp last night.  I screamed for about 30 sec and probably woke up  everybody in the neighborhood. My calf was sore when I woke up and I'm limping. Other than that, I'm feeling fine this morning. But I'm not going to go to walk or anything.  I don't want to trigger another PEM of 3 days; I'll have to give my body enough to recover before walking or biking. Meanwhile I have enough chores. I'll have to shop grocery and do the laundry this weekend. That should be enough exercises.

Update after 3 days:

I made sure that I don't walk for a few days till I full recover, and post-skiing recovery went by fine. This time, the post-exercise fatigue came the next day though. The last time it was 2 days after. 

It was the same thing last season.  After the first skiing, the post-exercise fatigue didn't happen till after 4 days and then the delay gradually dropped in subsequent skiing. The dopamine spike from Novelty Effect must be fading as the season wears on and it definitely is not as strong this year, just as I predicted. Will it go to zero?  I'm betting that it won't. There is something about snow covered white hills that will always stir some excitement and I may be able to continue to ski 3x8 runs on green and blue slopes and not get PEM. As long as I rein in my penchant to overdo and go up steep hills, that is.

Back at Soda Springs

Aging is brutal. Everyday you wake up, there is one more wrinkle on your face and you are one day closer to death. My memory is getting worse too. Not that it was any good before, but now I can't remember any word in the crossword puzzle that I did the night before unless I make an effort to memorize. It's all downhill.

But then, there are senior discounts and they make everything seem alright again. Take Soda Springs season pass, for example. After the disastrous 5-months long PEM struggle from skiing too much last season, I wasn't planning to buy a season pass this year. I was going to make do with day tickets when they become cheap and ski just a few days like I did in 2018-19 season. But Soda Springs had season tickets for seniors only for $59 and I wasn't the one to pass up that kind of bargain.

How I perk up at the sight of white snowbank. It's the same story: Annoying fatigue and ache all over while driving up, and then they melt away as I walked up the bank to get to the ticket window. Novelty Effect must be still there.

I skied harder than I planned. What else is new, right? But the slopes of Soda Springs are short, so the damage was minimal. The black run was only about 200 meters long, only a fraction of Sugar Bowl's Disney or Lincoln, and I went up there only once. Nonetheless, I totally crapped out on Saturday, two days after skiing. Then I totally bounced back on Sunday, so it wasn't a PEM; it was a normal fatigue from the first day of the season. 

2 days after that, however, I crashed. I went for a walk while charging the car near Land Park. It was a Spring-like day in the 70s and I walked a little further up the park than I intended, for total of 1.5 miles. The next day I keeled over and PEM lasted for 3 days. So, it appears that the skiing weakened me and walking while weakened put me over the top. 

Dunno yet how the season will go. Last season resulted in a PEM struggle of 5 months because either 1) I skied on black runs in the second half of the season, or 2) the Novelty Effect dissipated after a month and I continued to ski without the lift from it. I'll refrain from going on the black runs this season and see how it goes. If I again suffer from PEM in the Spring, then I'll blame it on the fading Novelty Effect. If I manage to avoid, then it must've been skiing the black runs that caused the long PEM last season.

Squat, Still a Killer Exercise

 Last week, I remembered I haven't done any biking this winter. It got cold very quickly in November after being in the 90s throughout October and then I forgot about biking. So I figured I should get back on the saddle. 

I found the bike tires all flat in the garage even though I put the sealant only a few months before. Bummer. The sealant still hasn't congealed and the latex liquid spewed out when I was done pumping the air on the rear wheel and pulled the clamp off the valve. And then, the front wheel wouldn't take the air in at all. Something apparently was blocking the valve. I took out the valve stem, cleaned it back in and pumped. Still didn't work, so I repeated the process a few times before finally giving up after a 10 minutes of squatting and working on it. I'll have to get a new valve and see if that fixes the problem.

The next day I got knocked out. And the day after was even worse. I was feeling so bad, I actually was groaning and moaning.  It wasn't even squat exercise; I was squatting down most of time though I had to stand up a few times to work the pump. It still was a killer exercise. 

Speed Still Kills

Santana Row changed a lot. It opened the door when I was still in Santa Clara in 2003 and I used to frequent the bookstore at the end of the Row. It is gone now and I can't remember if it was a Borders or a Barns and Noble. The yellow granite sand parking lot behind it is gone too and it is now paved with asphalt. All around it, condos sprouted up. The Row itself is still lined with the same upscale shops and restaurants.

On the way back home from my nephew's wedding, I stopped there to plug the car in. While waiting, I figure I'd walk around the Row and soak up the nostalgia. It's been 15 years since I've been there, after all. But I was wearing a pair of dress shoes and pacing at 90 steps/min in them was rather clumsy uncomfortable. It wasn't going to be a long walk anyway, so I walked at a natural speed.

 How nice it was to walk at a regular pace. I keep remembering the paraplegic that I saw on TV once, all teared up when he was able to stand up, with the aid of a robotic chair for the first time in years. Walking at a normal speed is like that: it's as if you are liberated from the prison that you are locked up in for decades. It feels that good to walk free like a normal person.

That was on 11/21. For 5 days  afterwards I struggled. It was similar to the struggle after the flu shot in October. The speed limit is still in effect apparently and the price for infraction is as severe as ever.

Car Wash

I bought a water hose from Amazon last December when I was feeling recovered. My car was all dirtied up from the winter driving in the mountains and I figured I'd wash it myself rather than taking to the carwash every time. Then I suffered the longest PEM ever after skiing too much, and washing the car became a distant dream. The car remained unwashed for over a year and it was all filthy.

Now I needed to have it cleaned before driving to San Jose for my nephew's wedding. On que, it rained last Tuesday, so I left the car out for a free carwash overnight.  In the morning it was all wet and I realized it would get covered with watermarks and dust spots all over if I didn't wipe it dry. I took a rag and wiped it down the best I could. It took a good 30 minutes and completely wiped me out. I spent the rest of the day in horizontal position, tired but happy and satisfied. The PEM sickness I was expecting the next day didn't materialize however. I'll have to chalk it up to the Novelty Effect.

How I used to enjoy washing cars. There is nothing quite like the sense of accomplishment you get from the shiny car after all the hard work. The last time I washed car was in the underground garage of the condo in Santa Clara, probably around 2006, I think. That was about a year after I brought home the BMW from Germany. I got ambitious and gave it a full monty treatment of shampoo, clay bar, polish and wax. It was an all day process and a hard work even back then, and I was in my best shape then. This time, the 30 minute work of just wiping down the car required about the same amount of time for the recovery.

I'll have to do this more often. Carwash is so fun, the novelty effect may persist. 

Blacking Out After Walk

After simmering October, the weather decisively turned wintry last week. The temperature, in the 50s daytime, plunges to low 30s at night. We didn't have heat so we we've been bundling up in coats. I couldn't let the utility service to come out and light up the furnace for us because we are self quarantining for my nephews wedding in 2 weeks. I managed to light it up myself today, so we'll have heat this evening. I hope it doesn't blow up. It's an old furnace that I'm not familiar with.

I was busy doing errands for a few days last week to gear up for the quarantine.  I wasn't able to take walk for 5 days as result. I finally managed 2 km yesterday afternoon. In the evening, I was dizzy and sluggish. It was as if I was blacking out just like after the 12 mile bike ride.

I already wrote about shrinking exercise tolerance after staying indoor for a month in August. Now it seems the walk tolerance shrink faster than I thought: it only took 5 days of hiatus this time. So, I can say more definitely now that my walk tolerance shrinks if you don't walk.

To be precise, it is the walk tolerance, not necessarily the general exercise tolerance, that shrinks after not walking for a while. I don't know if the tolerance to all exercise shrinks. I don't have problem doing household chores, so it may well be just the tolerance to walk that shrinks. 

Notice that I'm now careful to speak of "tolerance" and not "ability". CFS patients, at least the ones at the moderate/mild end of the spectrum, are capable of exercise; it's just that they get sick afterward. In other words, their bodies don't tolerate exercise too well even if they are able to exercise.  It's like you can eat, but you'd puke if you do when your stomach does not tolerate food.

Clean Stove Top, Finally

 

Isn't that sparkly? I finally got around cleaning the grimy stove top. I gathered the supplies long time ago, but I haven't been able to gather the courage to tackle the task itself. Switching from 2 day cycle of activities to 3day cycle finally left me with enough energy to get it done. I had to split the work into two parts though, and I'm yet to clean the back splash panel and the front of the stove. Still, it was hard enough a work and I slept like a baby last night. And I was fatigued all over when I woke up. The scrubbing motion not only works your arms, but your legs also have to do quite a bit of work to counter-balance the upper body motion. And it's the use of large leg muscles that is more likely to cause problem for CFS patients.

Here is how I did it:

1. Prep the surface: spray the vinegar and Dawn solution, and then wipe away
2. Clean the greasy film with Soft Scrub
3. Make paste with baking soda and hydrogen peroxide. Plaster it on the burnt and baked-in surface
4. Wait 15 minutes and scrub the surface with the paste