Category: health & fitness

why I can’t live in the Maritimes … or Italy

On By Rick McIn anti-smoking, health & fitness, hiking, travel1 Comment

Much as I like Halifax, living in the Maritimes is a non-starter for me. (Sorry Anne.)

smoker-and-childWhy?

Too many smokers.

It’s disgusting.

As I toured Nova Scotia, one Tim Hortons to the next, I had to push my way through nicotine addicts lurking at each entrance. Yeesh.

Why can’t those Maritimers go work their short-term Summer jobs as mandated by pogie?

I fled the second hand smoke for Italy.

Doh!

Italy is even WORSE. (Remind me not to travel to Cuba.)

And why am I even in Italy? I’m one of the few people you know who doesn’t want to travel in Italy. It’s the last place I wanted to go … last except for the land of the cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

My Mom reminded me of my only other trip to Italy, over 30yrs ago. I wrote her this on a postcard:

… “Italy is Great…too bad it is run by Italians” …

Italian men back in 1976 were totally irritating.

Happily I can report they’ve improved over the past few decades.

In fact, it seems the young Italian men have collectively opted into a 1980s George Michael look-alike contest. Pretty funny. I don’t speak Italian, but I’d estimate at least 6 million young men, so far, have voluntarily joined into this amusing competition.

george-michael

It’s great to see that those (formerly) arrogant pricks are now able to laugh at themselves.

The detested Italian machismo seems to be fading.

Of course I’m in Italy for hiking. It was a complete surprise to me. One minute I was searching the internet for cheap flights to Iceland. The next I’d bought a $100 ticket Gatwick to Venice.

Here I am in Bolzano, no guidebook. It’s like the blind leading … myself.

Fortunately 6 of my 10 words of Italian from the distant past have returned to me.

Oh, … I should add that there are only 2 good smokers in the World. And one of them is trying to quit.

first Adventure Race Week photos

On By Rick McIn cycling, health & fitness, kayaking, photos1 Comment

Just started to upload my best photos of our big Adventure Race Week event in Idaho.

ARW-shirt

see more on flickr

Good FUN so far. Not much sleep.

I was a “leader” for a kid’s Adventure Race, Saturday. My team was the youngest. We finished LAST after 4.5hrs.

Though my little guys made it around the very difficult course safely, they both fell off their bikes on the last couple of hundred metres to the finish line.

Oops.

coming down to Idaho with me?

On By Rick McIn cycling, health & fitness, kayaking, sport - amateurLeave a comment

My big AR event is right around the corner – Adventure Sports Week . Contact me if you can come down with me.

May 24, 2009

For Immediate Release…

Danelle Ballangee is scheduled to compete in the “Crux and the Crucible” at Adventure Sports Week 2009!

Adventure Sports Week is a 10 day long festival of 24 outdoor races, contests, clinics and social events taking place at Farragut State Park, 30 miles north of Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho, June 5—14, 2009.

One of the racing world’s greatest stars and most inspirational stories is coming to compete at Adventure Sports Week in Coeur d’ Alene, June 12—14.

Danelle Ballangee is perhaps the World’s most decorated female Adventure Racer, having won Primal Quest, the Raid, the Adventure Racing World Championships, as well as dozens of other equally impressive competitions. She has also been named “US Athlete of the Year” an unprecedented six times in four different sports.

Despite her impressive resume, it was an unlikely slip that has Danelle—Nellie—to national prominence.

In December of 2006, while on a routine training run with her dog Taz, she slipped on some black ice and fell nearly 60 feet down the cliffs at Hurrah Pass, Utah, near Moab, breaking her pelvis completely in half, and leaving her bleeding internally and unable to walk. She managed to crawl over a quarter of a mile to a puddle where she could drink, and she spent over 50 hours in sub- freezing temperatures as her dog tried to keep her warm. On the third day, Taz left her, eventually making his way to the trailhead, where he was seen by the search and rescue team, who followed him back to Danelle.

After major surgery, where she received a titanium plate to hold her pelvis together, she was in a wheelchair for several months, and doctors speculated she would be unable to walk for as long as a year.

As a tribute to her strength and tenacity, Danelle competed in a solo 12 hour adven- ture race less than 6 months after her fall, finishing as top female.

Danelle will be competing at ASW representing Project Athena— http://www.projectathena.org – whose mission is to help women with breast cancer and other medical traumatic setbacks live their athletic and adventurous dreams by providing coaching, equipment, travel, entry fees and encouragement.

She will also be teaching part of the Adventure Racing Clinic, along with other super- stars such as Mike Kloser, captain of Team Nike, and AR World Champion.

danelle

source – Mind Over Mountain

National Bike to Work Day

On By Rick McIn cycling, health & fitness1 Comment

Thursday, MAY 14th, 2009 is National Bike to Work Day.

I normally bike about an hour to work. But Tuesday and Thursday I ride the big, public limo.

Perhaps I need move to Freiburg, Germany:

… Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park — large garages at the edge of the development, where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.

As a result, 70 percent of Vauban’s families do not own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move here. …

bikes-no-cars

read more – NY Times – In German Suburb, Life Goes On Without Cars

Canadian health system DOOMED

On By Rick McIn economics, government, health & fitness1 Comment

News reporter Don Braid took his wife to the emergency room in Calgary, Canada.

It was bloody AWFUL.

Click through to read the horror story – Welcome to Hospital Hell: 14 hours in the emergency ward

CAL1014-mkHospital4

Dr. Brian Mason’s comments:

Ten days ago, Don Braid, local columnist for The Calgary Herald, blogged about the abysmal care that his wife received at the emergency.

It’s something we all know about, it’s something we all wring our hands about, and it was nice to see it written about. Sparked a bit of an outroar, but nothing will happen.

Our politician’s pretend all is good, except that we need to cut back on health care. What a difference from the States. We just returned from San Francisco, where we observed bus ads for local emergency departments that guaranteed patients would be seen within a half hour after arrival. It was shocking not just to compare that half hour guarantee with Don Braid’s wife’s nine hours of intense pain before seeing a doctor but even more basically to imagine a health care system where you are seen as an opportunity (to make money, to be sure) instead of a burden.

So we are lied to already, and now we are lied to again, this time with English beaches standing in for Alberta beaches. I want to be here when Albertans get sick of the lies.

Certainly private Health Care is the only model that stands a chance, long term. But it isn’t working yet in the USA. Once Obama gets through with reforms it will be further muddled.

The Canadian model is too expensive as well as inefficient and impersonal.

My advice … DON’T GET SICK. In either the USA or Canada.

For the record, when I dislocated my finger last Fall, my emergency care in Calgary was very good.

Swine Flu internet panic

On By Rick McIn health & fitnessLeave a comment

I’m not sure how dangerous this outbreak will be. Is it another SARS?

Or a real pandemic?

swineflumap
Track Swine Flu on Google Maps

Different this time is the internet panic spreading like wildfire using technologies like Twitter.

I’m a COFFEE ACHIEVER

On By Rick McIn food, health & fitnessLeave a comment

The National Coffee Association in 1984 PROVED the benefits of my favourite addiction.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Study: Coffee Addiction Validated by Improved Sports Performance

… Caffeine, it turns out, actually works. And it is legal, one of the few performance enhancers that is not banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency. …

Exercise physiologists have studied caffeine’s effects in nearly every iteration: Does it help sprinters? Marathon runners? Cyclists? Rowers? Swimmers? Athletes whose sports involve stopping and starting like tennis players? The answers are yes and yes and yes and yes.

Starting as long ago as 1978, researchers have been publishing caffeine studies. And in study after study, they concluded that caffeine actually does improve performance. In fact, some experts, like Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky of McMaster University in Canada, are just incredulous that anyone could even ask if caffeine has a performance effect. …

NY Times – It’s Time to Make a Coffee Run

what are you doing in June?

On By Rick McIn cycling, health & fitness, kayaking, product endorsements2 Comments

I’ll be Adventure Racing and part of the organizing committee at Adventure Week 2009 in Idaho.

adventureweek2009


Our official website – AdventureWeek2009.com

Let me know if you want to join in the fun.

life-changing invention – adaptive glasses

On By Rick McIn good news, health & fitnessLeave a comment

About half the people in the world need corrective lenses.

Yet when you travel in the developing world, very few people wear glasses or contact lenses. They can’t afford them.

Taxi drivers, bus drivers work “blind”. It’s terrifying!

Josh Silver, a retired physics professor at Oxford University, has developed what he calls “adaptive glasses”. His specs are made of “tough plastic with with silicone liquid in the lenses. When purchased, each lense will have a syringe attached to it, and the wearer will be able to adjust the amount of liquid in the lenses — which essentially changes the prescription — without the need for an optician.”

About 30,000 pairs of his glasses have been distributed in trials in Africa. They work.

Michael Lewis
Zulu man wearing adaptive glasses. Photograph: Michael Lewis

They plan to sell these at $1 each.

… Silver calls his flash of insight a “tremendous glimpse of the obvious” – namely that opticians weren’t necessary to provide glasses. This is a crucial factor in the developing world where trained specialists are desperately in demand: in Britain there is one optometrist for every 4,500 people, in sub-Saharan Africa the ratio is 1:1,000,000.

The implications of bringing glasses within the reach of poor communities are enormous, says the scientist. Literacy rates improve hugely, fishermen are able to mend their nets, women to weave clothing. During an early field trial, funded by the British government, in Ghana, Silver met a man called Henry Adjei-Mensah, whose sight had deteriorated with age, as all human sight does, and who had been forced to retire as a tailor because he could no longer see to thread the needle of his sewing machine. “So he retires. He was about 35. He could have worked for at least another 20 years. We put these specs on him, and he smiled, and threaded his needle, and sped up with this sewing machine. He can work now. He can see.” …

Guardian – Inventor’s 2020 vision: to help 1bn of the world’s poorest see better

official website – Adaptive Eyewear

(via Engadget)