señor taco’s travels

I’ve known for a long time – since say elementary school when I took an allergy pill that was white with little blue dots – that I’ve got allergies. Today I finally had a visit with an allergist to find out a course of action to try and get it under control. I wasn’t terrible in New York, but since moving to California I’ve been pretty miserable on a yearly basis.

This morning I had a scratch test and it came out that I was allergic to pretty much every tree and grass out there. For now I’m going going to use nasal sprays and see how that goes. I’ve got the option to go with allergen immunotherapy shots and I’ll be considering that over the next couple of weeks. I’d be either one shot a week for eight months or two shots a week for four months and then one shot a month for three to five years. After that 90% of people no longer suffer from allergies. That seems like a pretty good deal to me.

I try to donate blood about every 60 days or so. I usually get a call from the Red Cross to remind me and set an appointment. Today at 14.00 I gave my pint (473.2 mL) and while I was donating they noticed I’m a pretty regular donor. Today they asked me if I wanted to see if I have a high enough platelet count to do apheresis donation. It takes longer but you get your plasma and red blood cells pumped back into you. If I qualify I’ll probably try it once to see how it is.

Just two quick notes about inspiration on the weight loss front.

First is the Fat Cyclist, Kenny.  He’s got before and after photos
posted.  It’s inpiring to see what he’s done and all the while helping his wife battle cancer.  He’s an guy like I hope to become and I enjoy reading his posts.

Second is a reality show on ABC, Shaq’s Big Challenge.  The finale was tonight and watching how much the kids in his pilot program changed is amazing.  That Shaq cares enough to push this and take it to the state level to make a change for all children is impressive.  Certainly he’s a better role model than other sports figures being dogged in the news these days.

There an article in the New York Times titled The Bicycling Paradox: Fit Doesn’t Have to Mean Thin. It’s a short article with an interesting conclusion that a person’s size isn’t going to be indicative of their cycling performance. Sure, me and my gut don’t climb as well as if I was 50 lbs. (22.7 kg) lighter, but I can still climb.

“When I first got into cycling, I would see cyclists and say, ‘O.K., that’s not what I perceive a cyclist to be,’ ” said Michael Berry, an exercise physiologist at Wake Forest University. Dr. Berry had been a competitive runner, and he thought good cyclists would look like good runners — rail-thin and young.

But, Dr. Berry added, “I quickly learned that when I was riding with someone with a 36-inch waist, I could be looking at the back of their waist when they rode away from me.”

Hopefully one day I’ll have people staring at my 36-inch (91.4 cm) waist as I pull away from them. I mean, I’m pretty sure I pulled away from people on the ride, but it’ll be nice to be passing people a little more than I do now¹.

Update: As Chris has put it: “Ayup. Clydesdales rule.”

(via drunkcyclist)

1. mostly I just get passed on the hills↩

A few years ago I finally got off of my rather large butt and started working out. It was a combination of gym and bicycling that did it for me. I went from 310 lbs (140.6 kg) to around 230 lbs (104.3 kg). At that point I stopped working as hard. I could still do long bike rides and snowboard and be active, I just wasn’t as concerned about my weight or eating habits. As a result I went back up to 250 lbs (113.4 kg) and I’ve stayed right around there for the last two years or so.

Well, no more. I’m doing a restart on the weight loss component. I have the will power to do it, I’ve done it before. I’ll be keeping updates going on here. Feel free to ask me if you don’t see one for a while.

Last week I saw the doctor again about my dislocated shoulder. He was
very impressed that I’ve recovered so fast. He told me that surgery
won’t be needed unless my shoulder starts popping out in every day
situations.

I also did a second physical therapy session where I got to add
weights to the regimen. I don’t have any issues at this point with my
shoulder other than some occasionally soreness so I’m really happy. I
even rode the bike for the first time since the crash this last
weekend and my shoulder was A-OK.

On Sunday Keith and I decided to go for a longer ride. We left our
house, went through Emeryville to the waterfront and rode up the path
there towards Richmond. The ride was going really well and we had
done a little over sixteen miles so far. We were near where Pixar href="http://monkey.org/sl/9ce4fdc0">used
to be and we were going to ride out to the point and turn around.

While getting on a bike path I mis-judged a corner that was in shadow
and ended up crashing. My front wheel went off the path and dropped
down about four inches and then slammed into the edge of the path that
was right in front of me. The corner was in shadow (this was at
9:30am) and I thought the bed that I rolled into was level with the
bike path. It wasn’t until I was right on it that I saw it was lower,
but by then it was too late.

My wheel hit the edge of the bike path and turned out from under me.
I ended up going over the handle bars and landing on my left shoulder
on the concrete path. I’m not sure what else contacted exactly, but
from the looks of it my right knee did as well (it’s now the most
bruised area of my body). Luckily my head didn’t hit at all.
Apparently my bike shot left and into Keith who was behind me. That
caused him to crash but I was there to break his fall. I vaguely
remember him landing on me, but I was already in so much pain at that
point I didn’t really care.

I was unable to roll myself over and I couldn’t move my left arm
without massive amounts of additional pain. Keith finally got my pack
off me and rolled me over to relieve me from laying on my left arm as
I was. Many people in cars and on bikes stopped to ask if we needed
help. By that time Keith had already called href="http://atribaldocumentary.net/">Cortney to come pick us up
and take me to a hospital. Somewhere along the way someone else
called 911 though and as I was laying there (I couldn’t even sit up
without causing more pain) we heard sirens.

The first officer on the scene told us someone had called in a
hit-and-run with a bicyclist. We assured him that wasn’t the case at
all. By that point another police cruiser had pulled up and we heard
fire truck sirens coming. The Richmond Fire Department responded as
the first on scene EMTs and they took my vitals and cut open my shirt to
examine the injured area. They determined nothing like my collarbone
was broken and made sure I was cognizant and could feel in my left
hand.

Shortly after that the ambulance arrived with the paramedics. They
made sure I was movable and put me on the gurney and stuck me in the
back of the ambulance. On the way to href="http://www.doctorsmedicalcenter.org/">Doctor’s of San Pablo (one
of my only two choices in hospitals) they got my information and made
sure I was comfortable. That was pretty uneventful except that I was
in a lot of pain.

Once I was at the emergency room they had me switch to a hospital bed
and took all my vitals again. The doctor asked if I wanted morphine
and this is where I made the second biggest mistake of the day
(mistake one being crashing my bike). I said I felt alright enough
and I would ask for it later. BZZZZT! For those of you
playing along at home the correct answer is: “Yes, shoot me full of
morphine right now!” After a little while I told the doctor I could
use some pain meds and she marked it down, but after that it took a
long time (over an hour) to actually get the shot. I’ll go into that
more in a moment.

While I was waiting they needed to get X-Rays so they wheeled me down
to radiology and I got a couple of shots taken. Returning to my hall
position (no room yet) I was getting increasingly more and more pain
and still no drugs. At some point they wheeled me into a room to
reset my arm. After a little while a nurse came in and gave me
morphine. Before that I was sitting there pulling my hair and I had
tears streaming down my face uncontrollably because that was by far
the greatest physical pain I’ve ever had. Not only were the natural
endorphins wearing off but I could feel the tendons and whatnot
holding my shoulder together getting tighter and swelling. After the
morphine the edges of the pain were gone, but it was still a lot more
painful than I thought it should be.

The prep work for my “procedure” then began. The nurse came to put in
an IV and put the constriction band on my arm. Lo and behold the same
vein I’ve donated blood out of many times before popped right up. She
then proceeded to take my hand and try to stick an IV in the top of
it. She found a vein and got the needle in, but proceeded to wiggle
it around too much and blew the vein, leaving me with a hand with
blood pooling under the skin. In a day or two that would be one of
the more painful bruises I’ve got. She got the IV in the arm on the
first try and set me up with a saline drip.

Right before they started on my an emergency happened in another room
so I was left partially tied to the bed for them to reset my shoulder.
When the doctor came back I was given a sedative to knock me out (the
doctor said I would struggle too much otherwise) and told to count
backward from 100. I remember at 84 starting to have trouble thinking
about the numbers. The last number I remember saying is 79. Keith
told me I got to 75, giggled, and then passed out. Apparently the
doctor commented that I most people get as far as 85. I woke up about
ten minutes later with Keith asking if the Doctor had a marker. He
wanted to draw a mustache on my face. Admittedly that would have been
funny, but I’m glad he didn’t. After the snapping my shoulder back
into place I felt a lot better. I was also really hungry but had to
continue waiting to be discharged.

Cortney was great through the whole thing. At the scene she and Keith
put the bikes into her car and then followed me in the ambulance to
the hospital. She then took her car to Keith and my house, parked it,
got clothes for both Keith and I, and then drove Keith’s car back up
to the hospital to pick us up. She was amazing throughout and I can’t
thank her enough.

From the hospital I got a prescription from Vicodin and Ibubrofen. I
have to tell you, I’m not a huge fan of the Vicodin. All it did was
make me a little loopy and unable to concentrate. It really didn’t do
much for the pain. The ibuprofen does help with the swelling and
inflammation so I’ll stick to that. I was also issued an immobilizer
which is a strap that goes around my chest and has a manacle for the
upper arm on the side and the wrist in front. It basically keeps the
arm from moving to prevent you from re-injuring it. The sucky thing
was I had to wear it in bed and I’m a stomach sleeper. Sleeping on my
back and side (barely) lead to a couple of nights of not good sleeping.

Today I saw an orthopedic surgeon, href="http://mttamorthopedics.com/dr_stuart.htm">Dr. Charles
Stuart of Mt. Tam
Orthopedics. The visit was great. He told me I don’t have much
to worry about since this is my first dislocation and I’m older it’s
less likely that I’ll be able to re-injure it as easily as if I was
younger. He did warn me off falling on it with a straight arm as that
would probably dislocate it backwards again (like if there are three
feet of freshies and I go and tumble straight armed. That wouldn’t
happen anyway, but still). I now have a prescription for physical
therapy and I’ll be working on strengthing the muscles to help prevent
this from happening again. Updates as they occur.

This week I’m back in line with how I was working out and eating
before I went to href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/Travel/New_Zealand/">New
Zealand. I was still working out but just not pushing myself very
hard and certainly not keeping an eye on how much and what I was
eating. Granted, I was able to hold my weight with some minor
fluctuations, but after a couple of months that’s just not cutting it.

Weights had also been out of my regimen for the period in
between because I had injured my elbow on the trip. It was sore
but it didn’t really bother me after a day or so while down there.
When I got back and tried to start on weights again and there was too
much pain for me to do even three or four reps. Today I got back on
the bench and did what I feel was a good work out (bench press and
dumbbell press) to get back into it. My elbow feels good and the only
parts of me that are sore are the parts that are supposed to be.

This of course leads me around to why it was that I slacked off:
motivation. I’ll admit it, I have a problem with motivation, or
rather, a lack of it. When I’m unmotivated to do something I really,
really, have a problem doing it. I mean, I will force myself to do
things that need to get done because I see the benefit in it, but I’m
probably going to mentally grind my teeth while doing it. There were
many days I really didn’t want to goto the gym, but I did it and I
usually felt better after. Somehow that just wasn’t enough though.
In preparation for going to New Zealand I was at the gym and eating
right just to get there and be able to run with it. Now, two months
on, I’ve found a few new motivational forces.

Starting now I’m going to train for next years href="http://www.aidslifecycle.org/">AIDS/Lifecycle 5. It’s a 585
mile bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles over six days. There
is still plenty of time to train for it and I’m already doing well on
my rides, I just need to increase the frequency. This will be a goal
like going to New Zealand. Get more fit, have fun, and have an
experience I’ll remember for ever. Maybe along the way I can break
myself into not being such a motivational slacker.

Those that know me know I don’t drink coffee and I occasionally have
a soda, every six months or so. As it is the only caffeine I get comes
from what is found naturally in chocolate. This morning I got a chai
latte while on an errand with a guy from work. Now I’ve got a
caffeine buzz like I haven’t felt in years. Normally I don’t have
much reaction to caffeine when I do have some, but damn, this is either
going to make me go full on to the hardcore stuff or swear it off even
more. I’ll probably just swear it off, but this is crazy. I kind of like
the feeling while hating it at the same time.

onclick="window.open(this.href, 'popupwindow',
'width=840,height=640,scrollbars,resizable'); return false;"> class="storyImg" width=86 height=84
src="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/images/weight-thumb.png"
alt="Weight Chart">
Well, I’ve been going on the exercise program and healthier diet for
almost a year now. So far I’ve lost 75 pounds. Let me repeat that,
seventy-five pounds. That’s
small children, heck, it could be two of them! It’s incredible that I
let myself get so overweight and I can try and point fingers at myself
but that won’t do any good now. Thinking back to when I was 16 and I
did a month of trail crew at href="http://www.scouting.org/philmont/camping/">Philmont. I was
supposed to meet my parents the day or two after we got off the trail.
They got there a day early and I ran into them in a breezeway. I was
shocked to see them, but their expressions were of even greater
surprise as I was much thinner (all my clothes were falling off of me)
and had probably grown a little since they last saw me. I had a great
chance to keep that up and didn’t. The only explanation that matters
at this point is that I was lazy, but that’s not the case any longer.

The biggest effect this has had on me is forcing the lifestyle change
I so desperately needed. I now engage in regular physical activity
and I’m eating much healthier than before (buh-bye fast food and
frozen pizzas). Generally this is by way of the href="http://www.touchstoneclimbing.com/mc.html">gym, but I’m
starting to branch out with things like hiking and soon I’m going to
get a road bike to start up on that too. When I don’t do the gym I
start to feel it. I guess it could be characterized as guilt (no, not
that Catholic Guilt either) but more and more it’s that I just feel
better doing it, so I keep going.

In the last couple of months I’ve really noticed myself sliming down.
I get the feeling other people have too since that is generally the
comment that is first made. What’s really fun is seeing people after
a few months, then they really flip out. Comments have included
“Where’s the other half of you?” and “Whoa! You know I could really
stand to loose ten pounds, you’re like an inspiration.” My favorite
was from a friend visiting from the east coast that I hadn’t seen
since September of 2004. I had, however, worked with this person for
many years in New York. He said I was “…at the normal danimal
size.” That made me feel better since I was at about my current
weight for a long time, so there is some progress.

Now, not to scare anybody, but I’m going to show some pictures here.
In order to save the sanity of the masses these are small snippets
that you must click on to see the full image. First is me in November
of 2002 at Alcatraz (with Keith and Dode, taken by href="http://andremazzone.com/">Andre):

onclick="window.open(this.href, 'popupwindow',
'width=1024,height=682,scrollbars,resizable'); return false;">
width="567" height="30" alt="At Alcatraz" />

Now here I am at work in May of 2004, shortly before my 30th birthday
and about two months before I started working out (the award is one
we won for talking toenail
fungus):

onclick="window.open(this.href, 'popupwindow',
'width=768,height=512,scrollbars,resizable'); return false;">
width="567" height="30" alt="At Work" />

And finally, here is one Andre
took almost a month ago when href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2005/05/16">KP, Todd, and Sarah
came out for a visit. Somehow I don’t think this picture looks
like me any longer, but maybe it’s just that I’m wearing my shorts so
low. Regardless, enjoy:

onclick="window.open(this.href, 'drepop', ''); return false;">
width="511" height="30" alt="At Work" />

So there is is. I’ve come a long way in this year. I’m going to goto
href="http://danimal.org/SenorTacoSnowboarding/New_Zealand/">New
Zealand in August for two weeks of href="http://danimal.org/SenorTacoSnowboarding/">snowboarding
which is something I don’t even think I would have imagined myself
doing last year.

That I can goto the href="http://www.touchstoneclimbing.com/mc.html">gym every other
day and do a non-stop 45 minute cardio workout is great for me (I even
did 10 minute miles the other day!). I’ve started doing a lot more
weight training on the off days as well which probably accounts for
the plateau in my weight loss recently, but that’s okay because I can
see the results in my muscles (another source of comments being my
muscular legs. They’ve gone from getting toned to defined recently).

For some reason I still remember something my teacher said in my href="http://www.bellaire.org/new/">high school health class. It
boils down to the fact that from 15-30 years of age there is
a window to make a choice on how healthy you will be. After 30 it gets
a lot harder to make the body changes that are needed. Also, after
30, you are at a higher risk for things like adult onset diabetes and
heart disease. I’m not sure how accurately I’m remembering it, but
it’s obviously made an impression on me.

I still have many pounds to go and I expect it to get harder from here
on. I do know that if it wasn’t for the encouragement of my friends
and family I wouldn’t be nearly as close as I am today. Technically
I’m still obese with a Body Mass Index of 32.1 kg/m².
I don’t know what my target weight is supposed to be, but I’m shooting
for 195 to start with and then I’ll push it down from there. That
will be 110 pounds at that point (starting at 305 lbs.).

There are of course some good things about loosing this much weight.
The best by far has been in the clothing department for sure. Not
only did I just donate a lot of clothes that are now too big for me
(like, pants I could put on and put my arms down the sides), but I’ve
also gotten to start wearing t-shirts that I was carrying around for a
long time that were too small for me. Many of them are from college
and early at Blue Sky. This
has about tripled my t-shirt wardrobe. Of course, that also means
some t-shirts that I had been wearing are now too large, and that’s a
bummer, because some are really great.

In public I actually feel better about myself now. It used to be I
didn’t like sitting at some booths at restaurants. I just felt pressed
in and uncomfortable. That should have been a sign right there. The
other one is people that would call me “big guy” as if they knew me.
For some reason that really ticked me off, but let’s face it, I was
big. It used to happen regularly, and now it doesn’t happen at all.

Good times are ahead. I’m just too anxious to wait for all of them.