Life: a roundup

FOOD

Every once in a while I purchase something a bit extravagant, wacky, and/or otherwise outside my somewhat simple routine. Tonight that purchase came in a bucket, in fact it came in 275 servings of Emergency Food Supply, 23 pounds worth, packed in a white 5 gallon bucket.

To be honest, I have been watching this bucket for months now. It has been at Costco, home of many “buy it, it’s cheap! – No! live simply” debates in my head. At first it was $130, “still less than 50cents a serving,” I thought, “not bad, but I can and do live on less than that with bulk and bargain items elsewhere.” Then it was $99.95, “hmmm… It probably doesn’t taste that great, besides, when am I ever going to eat all of that?” I suspected the $30 price drop would mean the last shot for me and the Emergency Food Supply, but decided yet again to let it go. Tonight, however, it was still there, marked down AGAIN! And to the irresistible (to me at least) $79.95.

Although I have the feeling that this is a story I’ll be recounting, ad nauseum, to my own children as we sit around the campfire marveling in glow of the still half-full white bucket, I’m pretty pleased with myself. I figure if I can just save myself a couple dozen trips to the market in the next six weeks, I’ll have this puppy half paid for.

My first encounter meal was something called Potato Ba-kon, forcing me to recheck the 100% Vegetarian claim on the shiny white bucket (yep, plenty of diacetyl tartaric acid ester of mono and di-glycerides, but no meat). I wound up pouring half the package into my hot water, thinking, “hmm, this is a huge serving” before coming back to see “55 individual five serving packages” on the very same shiny white bucket. Oh well, guess I’m down to 272 servings.
(see here for a bit on my views of vegetarianism along with other thoughtful words)

CLIMATE

Western Montana, along with much of the world, is feeling the heat of global warming:

In western Montana, all-time records were broken at locations such as Missoula (107 degrees F [42 C]; previously, 105 degrees F on July 10, 1973, and several earlier dates) and Belgrade Field (106 degrees F [41 C]; previously 103 degrees F [39 C]on August 5, 1961). Elsewhere in Montana, Cut Bank (106 degrees F on July 6) achieved triple-digit heat for the first time since August 6, 1983, and experienced its hottest day since August 5, 1961, when it was 107 degrees F. (source)

Extreme heat plagued much of Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Oregon and Washington state again on Friday. In Montana, where cattle outnumber residents by more than 2 to 1, livestock and people sought shade and drought-weary farmers watched for damage to grain. (forbes.com) [and here I thought it was 4 to 1…]

In Montana, temperatures above 100 degrees are usually not seen until August. The normal July high in Helena is 83 degrees – not the high 90s seen Friday. Triple-digit records were set or tied in Great Falls and Billings at 104 degrees each. The mercury reached 105 in the north-central Montana town of Havre, 106 at the Gallatin Field Airport near Bozeman and 107 in Missoula. (forbes.com)

“Missoula feeling hot, hot … HOT: City tops out at all-time record 107” (recent headline from the Missoulian)

“We just tipped 102 degrees a minute ago,” Dickerson said at about 5:45 p.m. “I turned around and looked and it turned from 101 to 102.”

The old record for July 5 was 97 degrees, set in 1968. (the Missoulian)

Yikes! A record wiped out not by one or two degrees, but by 5 degrees in a single sweep! We’re expecting triple digits again tomorrow and sustained upper 90s for several days thereafter. Fortunately, I am young and health and have good shelter. I worry about those who are elderly, sick, and homeless, recalling the 2003 heatwave in Europe that killed 35,000 people, “Though heat waves rarely are given adequate attention, they claim more lives each year than floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes combined. Heat waves are a silent killer, mostly affecting the elderly, the very young, or the chronically ill.”

I literally feel sick to my stomach knowing that I contribute to this. Yet I find hope in knowing that it doesn’t have to be this way and that millions of us are working toward solutions. I have faith in the intelligence and adaptability of humankind. Despite our flaws on so many levels, one thing that history has taught is that enemies are united as friends when faced with a common threat. For those interested, there will be an hour long meditation on July 17, at 11:11am GMT to address this and other problems facing us today.

LOVE, PEANUT BUTTER, AND FITNESS

The other thing heating up my life lately (pardon the pun) is an amazing romance (with a beautiful woman named Kelly). We’ve only just begun to get to know one another, spending our first significant bit of time together on a June 14th hike. From that night, and even before, she has occupied nearly every free moment of thought that I have had. And from there it gets complicated… For the whole story you’ll have to buy my memoirs. She’s off now on an exciting cross-country road trip with her 82 year old grandmother to a destination of almost perfectly equal distance from both Missoula, Montana and London, England. Downshot? It’s pretty far from both. Upshot? We’ll figure it out.

Somewhere along the way, however, Kelly mentioned that she loves crunchy peanut butter, so I bought five pounds of the stuff (from above mentioned box-store). Maybe it was an impulse thing, but in a good way, the way an old man wouldn’t think twice about helping his arthritic wife paint her toe nails (I owe that one to Father Vance).

Finally, after a long long blog post (I actually went on and on and on about love, but cut it out, to be posted someday in the future, perhaps), is the final bit: fitness. So, along with all of the amazing energy and sense of infinite possibilities that Kelly has infused me with is the desire on my part to really push the limits of my body – WITHOUT losing mind-body connection or causing damage to my body.

One of the reasons I gave up running just a couple years ago was a yoga instructor’s teachings that running, with all of its huffing and puffing, breaks the mind-body connection, sending the mind into endorphin/adrenaline induced euphoria while the body pounds mercilessly on the ground. However, Kelly mentioned a Christian nun she had heard of who maintained a meditative equipoise with her daily running by infusing each step with peace and compassion (update: a story on Sister Madonna) . So I picked up the book, Mind, Body, and Sport by John Douillard. In it he reinforces the claims of both my yoga instructor and Kelly: running can be hugely destructive, but it can also be done in a way that cultivates fitness and deepens the mind-body connection. After devouring the book I promptly went out and ran six miles utilizing its principles to the best of my ability: it was good, a bit sore here and there but considering my level of conditioning (I hadn’t run more than about a mile or two in the past 3 years) I was highly impressed. A few days later I ran four more miles, stronger, faster, and this time with almost no ill effects (just a toe-blister).

Then, last night, I ran ten miles. I started at 8:38pm and finished at a quick gate at 10:27pm. I know I won’t break any records with that speed (almost 2 hours and only just under 10 minutes/mile), but the fact that I did it at all was pretty amazing to me. What is more amazing is that I did it without opening my mouth to breath. That’s right, I ran, mouth shut, breathing only through my nose, for almost two hours. That’s the trick, in fact, to maintaining mind-body connection and eliminating body damage. Nose-breathing slows you down a bit, of course, but it also prevents the panic/fight-or-flight response that triggers all of the endorphins/adrenaline. Those chemicals give you a boost, but they also numb you, meaning that you’ll run more even when your body is calling out to slow down; you’ll only finally notice the damage when the pain gets severe enough to cut through the chemicals.

By the end of my run I felt exhausted, but I also felt entirely present with my body, with each minor ache that had arisen over the ten miles and the lingering soreness. Today I felt great, a bit sore in the hips, but otherwise well enough to jog a bit at the gym and climb halfway up Mount Sentinel. It was that presence, gained through nose-breathing, that allowed me to notice immediately and adjust to whatever arose during the run: first some numbness in my right leg, then some knee aches, then finally my hips. Each time I simply slowed down and focused on the difficult area and each time I slowly returned to like-new form.

All that is to say that Sunday, along with about 600 other folks, I’ll be running a half marathon here in Missoula. I’m not sure how fast I’ll go, or if I’ll need to stop to walk, but my goal is simply to finish without needing to open my mouth and gasp for air. (*note, I’m still researching Douillard and the sports-physiology of nasal vs mouth breathing. Douillard does not seem to have authored or co-authored anything of note in major academic sports journals, which is troubling. If anyone knows more, please let me know.)