E Ride

I went out on a bike ride today with Mark. He had his e-bike and I had mine. You may recall that I've been borrowing Mark's bike since last Spring. I put a good 600 miles on it.

Today the course took us downtown, down into Peaceful Valley, out on the Bloomsday course to George Wright Cemetery, onto a great paved trail high above the river back to Doomsday Hill and then work our way back to the house through the neighborhoods.

Mark was complaining that his bike wasn't acting right, surging to high speed whenever he peddled. Just before we got to the cemetery, his bike died. There was no power from the battery.

Mark had to ride it all the way to the house under human power. The worst part was Doomsday Hill. I tried to pull him up the hill, but it didn't work.

So, he got a really good work out for the day. Good thing he's in pretty good shape. That would have killed me.

E-bikes are heavy.

Yard Work 2026

I should be posting this on my other Blog that deals more about the house and stuff we do in, on, and around the house. But I have a streak going on this Blog and I don’t want to break it…yet.

It’s been another nice day and we finally got into the yard and got some clean up going. 

Susan worked in the side yard and got up a lot of leaves from under the arbor vitae. The Pruners are coming on Monday and we want to get ahead of the clean up and mess they are going to generate.

I got a fire going in our fire pit and burned up a crap load of sticks.

I’m going to go out for a little while on the bike. It’s just nice to waste this great day.

I am setting a goal of getting the odometer on the bike up to 1,000 miles by Labor Day. I think that is a totally attainable goal and I’m already 100 miles ahead.

I might actually surprise us all and get way over that mileage.

It remains to be seen.

Channeling Peter Fonda

I’m on a pretty good posting roll for April on this Blog. This is my sixth day in a row, which means I’m probably about to blow it. Forget that I even mentioned it.

One of the great things about living in Spokane is that in the Spring, when the weather starts getting nice, you really appreciate it. Today is a Super Appreciable Day. My iPad says it’s 70 degrees. My thermometer in the back yard says 73. 

Whatever the temp, what a day!

I’m currently sitting on the front porch with an ice cold Kokanee beer listening to a guy over in the park having a mental episode as he has an argument with himself. He’s been out there for at least two hours and he’s just spouting expletives with amazing gusto.

I was calling the cat to come to the front porch and every time I yelled “Gnocchi!”, he would yell “Shut up!” He’s a young guy and he’s clearly in some sort of a mental crisis. I’m tempted to be a good Christian and take him over some water and some food, but I don’t want to encourage him to hang around. So…so much for being a good Christian.

Well, the cops showed up and after giving the guy the opportunity to calm down and take off, he continued to leave to shout and yell and berate and then, they handcuffed the poor guy and took him away.

In other mental health news pertaining to me, I have just returned from a fabulous bike ride on this fabulous day. I was out for about an hour and a half and I rode 12 miles. When I got back home I did one lap around the park strictly on electric motor power so I really rode about 11 miles.

If the battery is wearing down as I come to the end of a ride, I like to try and wear it down as much as possible and get a good, full charge on it. Plus it’s fun to buzz around the park at 20 mph with no effort from myself. It makes me feel like “Easy Rider”.

Duel Bike Ride

 I got Susan out on the e-bike today. We rode around the park a couple of times so she could get used to it and then we headed downtown to the park.

She had a little difficulty because the bike is just a bit too large. She is a little tentative on the bike and so, a little nervous.

We ended up riding to the Hub for a couple afternoon beers. We met up with Mark and enjoyed a couple of pitchers. People in there kept buying rounds for the bar so we barely spent any money. And we got to meet the infamous Daniel Lopez. Google him.

I think we managed to ride about 5 miles.

Happy Easter!

Big Toe Update

I have reconsidered my earlier diagnosis of my right big toe. I think I have gout.

My neuropathy in my toes is preventing the gout from becoming terribly painful or debilitating. That’s why it did not occur to me early on that it might be gout. It’s been 10 years since I’ve had gout.

So I need to find some Cherry Juice and start drinking heavily. That’s the preferred home remedy for gout. There is a prescription bill that is very effective called Cholchrys, but I have none of that.

I’m currently writing from the tasting room of VduV Winery. I had a very slow day yesterday until ten minutes before 6:00, closing time. I didn’t get out of here until 7.

I am hoping to have an equally slow day today right up to 5:00 when I leave.

I brought a radio down so I can listen to the first of the Final Four games today. The first one is Illinois versus UConn. I don’t really care about the outcome of that game because my bracket is already toast on that side of the sheet.

Arizona plays Michigaus at 5:50 and I plan to be at the Illinois Avenue Bar and Grill to watch that game on their very large TV screen.

I’m hoping for a win by Arizona, partly because it may help one of my brackets, but more importantly, the coach of Arizona, Tommy Lloyd, was an assistant at Gonzaga under Mark Few. There’s a home town connection there.

Okay, that’s it from VduV for now. Just three more hours and I’m outta here.

Health Event: Numb Big Toe

I’m writing today to document what I’m calling a Health Event.

I’ve had numbness in my toes for years, at least 20 years. I’ve been to doctors to try and figure it out and it essentially came down to a diagnosis of neuropathy, which means, “You’ve got numbness in your toes”.

This morning, I’m noticing that there is a change in my right big toe. I don’t have a good way to describe it other than…my right big toe is number. Not number like counting, number like, more numb.

It’s not painful but it is kind of effecting my gate when I walk. There’s just a touch of a limp when I’m walking. I think I’ll end up adapting to how this feels and just go on.

In the meantime, I have documented the numbness here and I will keep an eye on things to make sure nothing changes color or gets number…excuse me, more numb.

Cartoon Update

Back on January 13th, I wrote about my website, www.adventuresofretiredguy.com. You can check that out to see what I wrote.

Here is the cartoon I have posted for today.

This is now an update concerning what I wrote.

I have made it through my month off and as expected, I did not do a very good job of building up my inventory of cartoons. The goal was to get about two months ahead.

The reality is I have about three weeks.

I did slack off and coast for the month, as I suspected I would. But I ran into a problem right after the first of the month where my iPad died.

I was working on it, in fact, I had just finished a cartoon and sent it to the website, when the thing just winked out. That was it. It was dead.

It was kind of devastating because I had a lot of material on that iPad. I had lots of cartoon ideas and lots of set up drawings. I will now have to recreate those drawings.

The iPad is essential to how I create these cartoons, so I had to get a new one. I went down to the Apple Store and first, had the old iPad checked out to make sure it was really dead. The guy said the Logic Board was fried.

So, I went on to look at a new iPad. I decided I wanted to go from the 11-inch screen to the thirteen-inch screen. $800.00. Add another $75 for a cover and ultimately another $154.00 for an update Apple Pencil and I have spent about a grand on this new iPad.

Because of this, I lost the first half of the month to draw cartoons.

You would think that would make me buckle down and really get to work for the last half of the month, but that’s not the way I’m built.

As I said, I'm about three weeks ahead on actual drawn cartoons and I have a bunch of ideas down on paper to create new ones.

I'll be working at V du V winery tomorrow, so I'll get some cartoons done then and again on Saturday.

In the meantime, I shall just slog along and try to get the inventory built up.

Lunch wid’da Boyz

One of my favorite Retirement Activities is to go to lunch with people. For the most part, those people are “guys”, but I don’t feel limited by that.

On Tuesday, Susan and I went to lunch at Jimmy John’s in Lincoln Heights for our 31st lunch. It’s a group of about 10-12 folks who get together on any month with 31 days. We know each other from church. I would not classify this lunch as ‘the guys”.

I have a regular weekly lunch date, loosely scheduled around Thursday, where I go to lunch with Rob (who I’ve known since kindergarten) and Mark (who I’ve known for about 45 years). The routine is we go somewhere to get a sandwich and take it to the Hub Tervan, where we enjoy our sandwiches with relatively cheap beer.

Today I went to lunch with Geoff and Mike. The routine with these guys is we go to different places and check out their food.

The destination was the Logan Tavern (ya see, I known how to spell it right) and we enjoyed their footlong hotdogs. Ten bucks! I had the chili dog which was quite a meal.

Beer was also included as well as lots of conversation.

I was hoping to ride my bike to the lunch, but the day was quite rainy.  The weather service recorded .17 inches fell today. And I’m too much of a pussy to ride wet.

100 Miles

I went out on a bike ride today and got to 100 miles on my Odometer.

Here’s a picture.

That picture pretty much sucks. The glare from the sun pretty much took away any detail. You can barely see the 100 number on the odometer at the bottom of the screen.

Here’s another after I got home and out of the sun.

So, I have made my first milestone (perhaps my first 100 mile stone) with my e-bike.

It was a great ride and it’s nice to get out. It's still kind of chilly but I bundled up and had a nice ride.

March BP

The notations AM-AD and PM-AD indicate days I took an anti-diarrheal pill to help combat the side effects of Ofev, the medication I am taking to slow the scarring in my lungs. The main side effect is the Big D. The "Hy" with a slash through it indicates days I did not take Hydralazine due to low blood pressure. Additionally, my average blood pressure for the month was 115/71.

Health Update

I went up to Northtown Mall yesterday for a walk. It was the first time I've been up there in quite a while. 

I haven't been doing any regular exercising. I've gone out on my bike when the weather has been favorable and I skied about 2 weeks ago, but nothing you could call regular activity.

The walk yesterday started out strong. I felt really good while walking and thought I would try for 3 laps around the mall. That would be about 2.25 miles.

I stopped to sit and rest after two laps for about five minutes. When I started walking the third lap, the energy and vitality I felt at the start was no longer there. I felt a bit weary...not to the point of passing out...just feeling a little shaky.

I ended cutting the full lap short. For distance for the day, I'm calling it two miles.

Both yesterday and today started out with low blood pressure. In the range of 110/60. Yesterday I felt pretty good. Today, a bit shaky.

It looks like it might be warm enough today to warrant a bike ride, but I'll have to see how I feel as the day goes on.

February BP

 

My Daily Activities and Bond, James Bond!

Over the weekend, I lost a crown. I was chewing on a very hard Milk Dud when there was a sudden loud crunch. I had a pretty good idea of what happened and I pulled the mostly chewed up Dud out of my mouth, and managed to recover the crown…or what was left of it.

I had to do some intense rinsing to remove all the chocolate from the crown.

I’m not suffering any ill effects from losing the crown. I have a slight sensitivity to heat and cold in the back of my lower left jaw, but I was kind of feeling that before I lost the crown.

So I called my Dentist this morning and they are going to get me in tomorrow at 1PM.

My other big accomplishment of the day was completing our taxes for 2025. I went on line and found a website that seemed to indicate I could do my taxes for free on it.

I filled out all the information it requested and for the most part, it was pretty easy. I seemed to get everything completed according to the website’s satisfaction and it indicated we would be getting a nice refund.

I hit the submit button, which seemed to work, and it said I would be receiving an email within hours to let me know if the IRS accepted the return.

Then a window popped up that said the advanced version of the program costs $29.95 and how would I like to pay?! The advantage was my return would be saved on their server for three years with easy access if I ever needed it. 

One of the options was to deduct $29.95 from my refund. But that also included, in much smaller type, a $39.95 additional processing fee.

There was no option on the screen to just continue with the free version, so I opted to pay the 30 bucks with my debit card and screw you for the processing fee.

I have just now checked my email and I have indeed received a message from the tax site saying the IRS has accepted my form.

I’m going to go upstairs to my large mainframe computing device and print out my return for my files.

The rest of day belongs to me. I’m going out on some errands and then I foresee a nap in my future.

Either that, or I will continue watching the whole James Bond series on Netflix. I have just finished “Thunderball” and the next one up is “On Her Majesties Secret Service”.

I have special place in my heart for this particular movie because it was the first James Bond film I ever saw in a theater.

I fondly remember the scene where the bad guys are chasing Bond on skies and he jumps a train track where an engine with a big snow blower on it is approaching. One of the bad guys misses the jump and falls into the auger blades of the snow blower. The ejection chute blowing out all the snow suddenly turns bright red.

So cool for a 12 year old!

Bike Ride Day

It was warm enough today for a bike ride. I think the temperature hit 50. I called Mark to see if he wanted to go and he thought it sounded like a great idea.

I had a little problem with my bike not wanting to power up. But I put it on the charger for a few minutes and that coaxed it into turning on.

We rode down to the park, down along the river through Peaceful Valley, across the Sandifur Bridge and back to the park along the Centennial Trail. It was a 7.5 mile trip and we were out for about an hour. 

Even though we were on e-bikes, I still felt like I got a pretty good workout. I was definitely feeling the burn in my legs when doing the big hill climb up from the Sandifur Bridge.

I guess this is one of the benefits of the mild winter we’ve been having.

CT Scan

I have just returned from Inland Imaging near Sacred Heart Hospital for a CT Scan with contrast of my abdominal region.

I assume this is a follow up of the scan they did last summer trying to get information on a lesion they found on my pancreas. This all happened during testing to see if I qualified for a heart transplant through Stanford Medical. It turned out to be nothing, or at the very least, non cancerous. Despite that, you may recall that Stanford turned me down for the transplant.

I left the house at 8:00AM for an 8:15 appointment. I was home shortly after nine. So it was very quick.

The interesting part is the contrast feature. They hooked me up to an IV and at one point after several scans, they announced, “Here comes the contrast.”

Starting slow and then speeding up, my body was flooded by this warming feeling that felt very weird. 

I have an appointment with the Pancreas Doctor scheduled in about a week. At that point, I’ll have another update.

Ski Day Number Two

My friend Geoff invited me for a ski day at Schweitzer today. I generally don’t ski Schweitzer because they have priced me out of the market.

I went today because I was able to get a half priced ticket due to Geoff’s Icon Pass. Even at half price, the ticket cost $67.00. That’s more than any of the other areas are charging. The half price cost is MORE than the regular price being charged by any of the other ski resorts in the area. 

To make matters worse, this has been a horrible ski season for all the resorts. There has been a major lack of snow. Lots of Schweitzer is not even open.

They have pretty good coverage but you have to watch where you’re going in many places on the hill. Rocks and weeds are abundant.

The snow was wet and sloppy, the kind of snow you would expect in the Spring.

The weather was the best part. Clear with high clouds, and occasional sunniness.

The bad part of the day was the way I responded to the activity of skiing. As always, the walk from the car to the lift is the worst part of my day. It felt particularly bad today. It took a while to recover.

We got in seven runs, the last three I skied with my oxygen generator. I can’t say it made a huge difference. Perhaps my stamina improved a bit but by that time, I was pretty skied out and ready to end the day. The last run in particular was rough on me. It was a very long run and I stopped a lot on the way down to catch my breath.

This is my first time skiing where I am seriously wondering how much more I can ski. It was a rough day and I am dead tired right now. I can barely type this post.

January BP

 

Bike Ride

It managed to warm up into almost the 40’s today which gave me the opportunity to try and go for a bike ride. I rode downtown and down along the south side of the river to the Sandifur bridge. I crossed there and headed back, stopped at the Falls briefly to take in the roar of 2,000 cfs of water rolling downstream, and then a stop at the Warming Hut.

The Warming Hut is really called David’s Pizza and I wrapped my fingers around a nice hot chocolate. I was quite chilled. The Rumple Minze in the cocoa helped as well.

I did 7.7 miles in about 45 minutes. That does not include the half hour pit stop at David’s.

Morning Drugs

I pulled out my morning medication today, looked at the hand full of pills and decided, I should have a picture of this to document my morning pill intake.

So there we are.

And there’s another post for the year! 

Adventures of Retired Guy

Have you checked out my website? 

It's www.adventuresofretiredguy.com. 

I've been doing it for two years now.  It may be the one New Year's Resolution I have actually kept in my lifetime. 

I post a cartoon every day during the week and then write a little commentary blog on Saturday. Sunday belongs to the Lord, so I get a day of rest.

Here is today's cartoon.

I decided to do this because I was no longer drawing since retiring. I didn't care for that. I have realized I have lost a lot of my computer skills I used when I worked. I struggle when I use Adobe Illustrator. I have simply forgotten how to do things. 

So, I decided to keep my hand in it by forcing myself to draw. It's mostly a cutsie little comic strip I do for my own pleasure. It does not appear to draw a large audience. I wish I could generate some income from it, if nothing else than to pay for the website. It costs about $450.00 a year.

At one point, I had built up a two-month backlog of cartoons. Today, I'm down to about a three-week backlog.

I have decided to take the month of March off and publish "Best of" cartoons for that month. That will, in theory, give me time to build up my backlog. In practice, I probably won't do a very good job of building up and just coast for the month. I hope that is not the case, but I know me.

Ski Day Number One

The ski season has begun for me.

I skied at Silver Mountain today. It turned out to be a great day. They still need snow but the coverage was pretty good. No rocks. There was a high light overcast with portions of sunshine.

My neighbor Fred invited me the other day. His family has a house in Kellogg and they regularly ski at Silver.

I don’t think I have skied at Silver in maybe 15 years. I’ve always complained that the runs at Silver are too short. Now that I have issues with my stamina, they didn’t seem that bad.

And the one thing I’ve always liked about Silver is they have chairlifts with footrests. That really saves your legs over a long day of skiing.

Although, since today was my first day up this season, my legs are pretty wiped out.

As to the cost of skiing in 2026 at Silver Mountain, it cost $20.00 in gas to get to Kellogg and back. I spent $9.25 on a small bowl of chili and a hot cocoa. It cost $66.78 for my ski pass for a grand total of $96.03. With nine runs for the day, that comes down to $7.42 per run. If I include lunch and the gas, which I generally don’t, the total is $10.67 per run. 

I am not including the beer I had when I stopped at the Snake Pit on my way home.

229.6

Thursday night is the traditional night when the neighbors gather for Thirsty Thursday. Even though it was January First, nobody was doing anything, so we got together at the Anderson's.

There was snow coming down so Susan and I drove down the park to the Anderson's. She brought what was left of the Hoppin John she made for New Years. 

There were a number of tasty items on the table and I enjoyed them all. That was essentially, all I ate yesterday and I gained two and a half pounds.

It must have been the pineapple cake that did me in. I had at least three pieces and it was d'lish.

227.2

It's a New Year and so I am posting in an attempt to post to this site every day this year. I'm aware this will never happen. It's possible I will break the streak as early as tomorrow. But for now, I have got it started and I actually have some information to impart.

I am starting the year at 227.2 pounds. That's a damn sight better than last year on this day, when I weighed 242.6 poundages.

I do not intend to get back to that realm of weight. In fact, here's the thing. I no longer have much of an appetite. I can easily get by on one meal a day and it will not be very big. The confounding part is that I am not losing any weight. I've been hovering over this 225 to 229 zone for the past few months.

I can't say for sure when my appetite changed. I've been noticing for several months that I don't eat like I used to. I don't even get the enjoyment out of eating that I used to get. Except when it comes to sweets.

I still love my chocolate and sugar. I may feel full, but there is always room for one more cookie, caramel, or Hershey's Kiss. I assume that's what is keeping me plump-ish.

Things to look forward to in 2026...I will turn 69 in March.  I'm not going to make any jokes but it seems like an appropriate age for me. 

The Bicenquinnquadinary is coming in July. That is the word I am using to designate the 250th birthday of the United States of America.

The political atmosphere in the U.S., and in fact, the world is still tense. We are a deeply divided group of people. 

For the record I will state here that I don't like Trump. He's an arrogant narcissist who speaks without thinking. I'm really not sure how to gauge his intelligence. Pundits who I trust say he is smart but I don't generally see it in the way he behaves. 

That being said, I like his policies. I'm glad the borders are closed and they are going after people who came in illegally. I understand their desire to be here. But you have to do it right. And we have to know who you are.

I don't know what Trumps plan is for Venezuela. I'm concerned about what we're doing down there. Same goes for Iran, the Gaza Strip and Ukraine.

The one thing I'm glad about is we don't have Kamala Harris in charge. Don't like her at all. Not because she's a woman. It's because she is a Socialist and a bit of an idiot. I can't take any more word salad statements. 

And that has nothing to do with my appetite!

Okay, I'm on the record for 2026. I would look forward to comments from those of you out there who are reading this, but I don't think anyone like that exists.