Fitness

In yesterday's post I talked about how I've been a cyclist for most of my life and how I used it as a form of commuting and for general fitness. Well since I've been in Canada I've not cycled, a fact of which I'm not proud, but then again I've kept fit without the bike for the most part.

As I live downtown with Kata in London, Ontario, we for the most part can walk wherever we need to go. Kata's work is about 15 minutes slow walk from here, the nearest supermarket is another 5 further. The nearest mall is about 15 in the opposite direction from her work and the nearest Starbucks is about 10 minutes away. This is a benefit of living in a well served downtown area.

For the occasions when we need to travel further out of the city center, there's the LT Bus system (London Transit), cabs (not that expensive compared to the UK) or friends' cars when we can wrangle a lift (our friends are sweet but we don't take advantage of them). Sometimes we'll hire a car for the times when we need to travel really long distances, its not that pricey ($40 to $60 per day) and it works out cheaper than the train (super expensive) or the greyhound (not really in price terms but greatly in convenience terms). Visiting Kata's parents in Strathroy, her brother in Kingston, her uncle and our friends in Ottawa would all be impossible or extremely expensive without a car. Its an extra expense but it works out on the odd occasion we need it.

So back to fitness, despite not having a bike (or at least a working bike) I manage to keep fit. I walk our dog twice a day, about 30 mins in the morning and 10 mins at night, I walk to meet Kata for lunch and then to get her home from work at the end of her day. I walk to the grocery store and carry the groceries home rather than take a cab as many people would do. On top of that I take the stairs in our building (unless I'm carrying heavy bags). Every little helps.

A while ago I bought a set of Perfect Pushup handles and I've used them almost every other day for months and its worked pretty well, my chest, arms and abs are stronger than they were before and it gives me an extra something to do to keep myself in check physically.

I really need to get my bike sorted out, I bought a second hand Miele 10 speed road bike back in November, but it needs some work, tyres and tubes replaced, some other minor stuff to take care of too. I've been remiss and I really should get it sorted, it'll soon be the wrong weather to ride round here, winter with a road bike is not the best mix.

Its one thing I miss from the UK, round the year cycling is pretty easy there, what with the weather being pretty moderate most of the year round, apart from the gale force winds. Scotland has 3 seasons, cold wet season, warm wet season and wind season. Wind has always been my most hated weather condition for riding, but round here it'll be the cold. So I guess I'll get my bike fixed up asap and get some riding in before its too late for this year.

Fitness is important, its become harder through the generations for people to stay fit. The modern lifestyle, with the advent of machinery and technology people have become more sedentary. Add to this the increase in processed foods, high in sugar, carbohydrate and fat and you have a disaster waiting to happen. It has happened in the last 50 years, not that I'm telling you anything you don't already know, however its not as simple as eating too much.

Your life is ruled by genetics, but in recent years they are discovering epigenetic effects that take effect many years after the fact. For example, if your grandmother went through a time of famine, that can lead her children to be born with a propensity to obesity, not just that, her grandchildren have an increased chance to be obese. Its interesting to think who you are may be due to the living conditions of your grand parents, not just your genetics.

None of this is an excuse though, in general if you eat a healthy balanced diet, low in processed sugars and fats and take regular moderate exercise, no matter your body shape, you will be pretty damn healthy.

The first post (a trip to Spageddy Eddy's)

So here's my first blog post...

Yeah I know this is an old (old in real world terms I guess) medium by now, but until now I've never really cared to blog. Why? Lazy maybe, thinking I have a lack of specific stuff (great word huh) to write about, or just consideration that I'd burn out pretty quickly if I did blog and it would all have been a waste of time, which I might still do, but whatever, here goes possibly nothing :)

Another lovely day in London Ontario and my fiancee Kata got off work early (a call center where they send employees home early if its a slow day in the world of roadside assistance). We had decided to take a walk to one of our local coffee shops, either the Starbucks on Richmond and Central, or the Coffee Culture on Richmond (there are only 2 in downtown London and the other is on Dundas). Kata asked if I'd had lunch yet, which I hadn't, so she suggested we go for lunch at one of London's many restaurants, which I agreed to, since I was pretty hungry at the time (I had a bowl of cereal for breakfast some 5 hours earlier). Now for those of you who don't know me, which will hopefully be most of you (being super positive here), I'm a vegetarian and have been for 18 years so far (I'm 35) which can limit your food choices somewhat, especially when you're in a country which loves the grill/bbq so much... (1)

This might bug people but since this is how my mind works it'll be how I blog. So this is how I'll do things. When I come to a tangent I'll make it quite clear and when I tangent, like this and the tangent I meant to go on, I'll start it with three periods ... and then a number in brackets eg (0). There's one right up there at the end of the previous paragraph, you most likely saw it and wondered what it was for, or didn't. The tangent paragraph will have the number in front of it and I'll put them at the end of the blog post (but not this time obviously as I need to explain the idea at least once) so that you can either ignore the whole thing, or follow me on my tangents and get a bit more insight to my mind. So time to continue from where I left off

...especially when you're in a country which loves the grill/bbq so much... (1) however in London and I presume much of the rest of Canada (although I've not been out of the province of Ontario yet) there's at least a small selection of foods which a vegetarian can eat at most eateries and I don't mean just fries. For example Kelsey's, one of Canada's many bar and grills, offers all of their burger menu, which is more than 4 different burgers, with a vegetarian option and these are damn good veggie burgers I have to say. Harvey's (I'll call it the Canadian McDonalds, although its a babillion times better (for babillion see the Keith and the Girl podcast)) also offers a vegetarian burger, again a really good burger. Burgers aren't the only thing of course, there's lots of salad in Canadian menus and many of them have no meat/fish added, but I almost tangent... so we were discussing where to have lunch. We'd been talking about visiting Spageddy Eddy's for a while but we weren't sure if they had a lunch service, so I checked google on my phone (W800i on Rogers) and they were open. A decision (which we're both pretty poor at making) had been made (the other choice was our favourite Indian restaurant the Curry Garden on Richmond by King).

Entering Eddy's is an intersting journey, its located off Richmond down a small alley that's opposite Carling and is located in the basement of the building. When you walk in it looks like someone has been hoarding old junk and never thought to dump it with the likes of old bottles, lamps, a bicycle, signs and much more. The menus are made from laminated record sleeves and the pop is served in Mason jars, the large is a 32oz (908ml) jar (we had iced tea which tasted like home made). We both decided on a lunch portion of pasta, Kata had veggie sauce (a standard neopolitan) with added mushrooms on spaghetti and I went for the Maza maza with linguine, which is the veggie sauce mixed with alfredo sauce to make a blush sauce. We also decided to split a garlic bread with cheese. We barely waited 5 minutes before the food arrived and we tucked in. The garlic bread was a loaf of italian bread split in half and smothered in garlic olive oil (i believe) then covered in cheese (tasted like mozzerella and cheddar) and baked to perfection, crunchy and soft, gooey and garlicy. The pasta was nicely cooked, a little past al dente, but not too soft and the sauces were delicious. I finished my bowl without trouble (i'm a good food guzzler) but Kata was unable to finish hers so we took the rest home to have later (will add pasta to the sauce and presto, another meal). The meal came to just under $30, pretty decent for what we got, then we headed off home avoiding Victoria park as much as possible (so as to avoid the smell of Ribfest).

(1) Those of you who aren't Canadian might not realise just how much the Candian people love their grills/bbqs. Like most countries, in the summer the ritual of burning meat on a naked flame/hot coals is an incredibly regular thing, most days when there's sunshine and the day ends in y, but more realistically weekends. In London though I've seen more grills on patios/balconies/back and front yards in the last 10 months than I'd seen in my whole life in the UK, on sale in stores included. More than that there's umpteen steak houses/bar and grills in the city for those of the populace who find it hard to go without professionally burned meat on a regular basis. What sets the Canadians apart (and probably Alaskans) is that there is very little that will stop a Canadian from using their grill. If its raining, that's what the hood is for, if its snowing, same. I've seriously seen a person grilling in -15C weather with snow thick on the ground, still determined to be outside burning his meat on the grill. I have to admire that level of determination.