The Deep Lagoon

It was unusual for the lagoon to be deep enough for water skiing at the beginning of summer, but one speedboat was going back and forth yesterday afternoon. The dog had never seen a skier before and stopped to watch for ten minutes.

It was also deep enough for a pod of pelicans, which is a rare sight in an often-dry area that has no fish. Ducks and geese are common, but these were pelicans, so it was my turn to watch.

We got back to the house after an hour had elapsed. The family said the dog was probably tired after all that walking. I looked at him, and he wagged his tail. I gave him a treat. It would be our secret.

Just Do It

Hazard when walking the dog in Foster City: coyotes

After breakfast I go over to my son's place to walk his dog. It's a win-win: my son has more time to get ready for work, the dog can tend to his business, and I get to spend 30-45 minutes in the Peninsula sunshine.

Walking, as has been known for many years, confers health benefits, especially for the Social Security crowd who can't run anymore (c'est moi). Among these benefits is one that's not mentioned in polite company: the freedom to relieve flatulence.

It began as a joke on social media, but medical experts say there’s real science behind the viral “fart walk” wellness trend.

Coined by 70-year-old Canadian cookbook author Mairlyn Smith, the term refers to a brief stroll taken after dinner, often to relieve gas.

“Going for a ‘fart walk’ after dinner is something that’s going to help you age wonderfully,” Smith declared last year in a now viral Instagram post.

Since then, the hashtag #fartwalk has earned millions of views on TikTok, fueled by a mixture of humor, personal anecdotes and surprising medical support...

“From a medical perspective, what it can really help do is promote digestion. It promotes intestinal motility, which is to squeeze and move things forward,” said Dr. Max Brondfield, an assistant professor of gastroenterology at UCSF. “It helps keep the entire digestive tract happy and balanced.”

Brondfield and other physicians are publicly endorsing the practice, not just for digestive comfort but for deeper systemic benefits.

Among them: blood sugar regulation. After eating, glucose enters the bloodstream, triggering a rise in blood sugar levels. Over time, especially in those with insulin resistance or sedentary lifestyles, this can increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes.

But walking, even for just five to 10 minutes, appears to blunt this spike.

"Fart walking" outdoors is not only good for your health, but the people who live in the same home will appreciate it too.

Falling Into the Future

illustration: Kiersten Essenpreis/WSJ

Last spring I tripped over a garden hose and fell face forward onto the dirt. I thrust out my arms protectively and luckily wound up only with a scraped elbow. I am now extra mindful to concentrate on walking and keeping distractions like my phone at bay. I haven't fallen since.

Falling by the elderly has become an epidemic.

More than 1 in 4 people over age 65 fall each year...Every year, falls among older Americans result in about 3.6 million emergency room visits and 1.2 million hospital stays, at a cost of roughly $80 billion. Nationwide, 41,000 senior citizens die from falls annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In recent years, prominent figures such as comedian Bob Saget, former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman and Ivana Trump died after a fall...

Nationally, the death rate from falls jumped 41% from 2012 to 2022, the latest period for which statistics are available. Among seniors, the contributing factors for falls are frustratingly complex. Reaction to prescription drugs, impaired vision and even such basic things as loneliness or ill-fitting shoes often add to the risk of falling.

“There has also been research on dual tasks, like doing more than one thing at a time,” [Arkansas prof. Jennifer] Vincenzo notes. “It’s hard for you to focus on movement if you’re focusing on doing another task, talking on the phone or texting, so that if you have impaired balance or walking problems, you’re not going to pay attention to that and potentially fall.”

My parents fortunately suffered only minor injuries from falls at home. Being unable to get up by themselves, even with the help of their spouse, eventually prompted their move to assisted living.

I hope that I am years away from having to follow in their missteps, but the tumble that I took in the spring showed that it-will-never-happen-to-me is an attitude I no longer can afford to have.

SFO: the Bounce is Gone

(WSJ photo)

During my working years I flew on United Airlines dozens of times (nothing compared to the marketing guys who were members of the million-mile club), and I grew very familiar with the moving walkways in Terminal 3 at San Francisco International Airport. The 400-ft.-long rubber coverings will soon be replaced with metal plates, and, surprisingly, there appear to be more than a few travelers who will miss the rubber bands:

The bouncy walkways at SFO’s Terminal 3—three are inside the passenger connector to the building—have been around for at least 30 years—even airport officials aren’t exactly sure when they were put in. Unlike the ones more common with movable metal plates, these are made of a long, continuous piece of rubber, and sit on rubber wheels.

Kids like to hop and skip on the "bouncy," and the padding is easier on aging hips, knees, and ankles. However, these modest benefits do not outweigh the economic costs.

The bouncy has been no fun for mechanics, though. At the three other terminals at SFO, which all feature more conventional walkways, [SFO spokesman Doug] Yakel said those belts are made with metal modules that can be swapped out if one breaks. But since the bouncy is made from one continuous section of rubber, he said a malfunction often means the entire belt has to be replaced.

“There’s only one outfit that makes these and there are very long lead times, and these are very expensive to procure,” he said. “It’s simply not a cost effective moving walkway anymore.”

Of all the places and things that have bowed to the ravages of time the rubber-band walkways are far down the list, IMHO, of items that will be missed. For the vast majority of travelers who do not have mobility problems it's better that they walk and do not ride anyway.

New Year's Resolutions: Limited Accountability

These resolutions, reproduced from four years ago, are more like good habits to be developed than concrete goals (it's the contrast between "lose weight" and "lose 10 pounds"):

More	Less
Reading books	Web-surfing
Water	Sugar
Getting rid of stuff	Buying stuff
Taking courses	Electronic games
Writing letters	Saying "yes"
Sleep	Texting, esp. thank-you's
Fruits and vegetables	Fried foods
Exercise	TV
Organization	Procrastination

I'm going to apply numerical criteria; the first, "reading books," will become "read one book each month." As for the rest, I'm going to keep them to myself. Public accountability is over-rated.

Pickleball: a Danger to San Francisco's Way of Life

Presidio Wall courts near Pacific Heights (Chron)

First world problem: the exploding popularity of pickleball has caused some San Francisco homeowners, bothered by the noise, to petition to shut down pickleball courts. [bold added]

In the petition, [Holly] Peterson argues the sound of yellow-plastic-ball-meets-paddle “isn’t just grating” but that it’s “altering our way of life and the wildlife of our cherished Presidio.”

She and another neighbor, Mary Tesluk, demand that the city suspend all pickleball play until a full environmental study can be completed on the sport’s impact on everything from wildlife to parking.

It took only a few mouseclicks to discover that Holly Peterson lives in an 8-bedroom, 11,320 sq. ft. mansion that's being listed for $36 million. The twist is that her home has a private pickleball court.

There is custom millwork throughout as well as bold colors. The kitchen, for example, has a blue La Cornue range as well as matching blue cabinets and blue leather stools. The primary suite has a balcony and two large dressing rooms. Off the kitchen and family room is a deck with an outdoor kitchen. A steel staircase connects the deck to a large garden terrace and a pickleball court.

The super-rich are different: disco balls and private pickleball (WSJ photo)

Personally, I admire her nerve for trying to suspend pickleball for San Francisco's little people, that is, those who don't have their own courts. I also appreciate the petition's argument that pickleball is antithetical to wildlife and the environment. (It's reminiscent of the City of Woodside trying to halt housing development because of the danger to mountain lions.)

It's really noisome when environmental rules that were meant to stymie evil industrialists are used to thwart what supporters of these rules want for themselves. That's not what we meant!

Point of View

Diamond Head rises sharply from the Waikiki flatlands.

While the rest of the family was at the Waikiki Aquarium, I walked around Kapiolani Park. I have walked in and through the Park to get to the Zoo or family picnics but never took the time to stop and smell the coconuts.

Few people were around today, a few joggers and parents pushing strollers. Gone were the long see-saws and high swings made of rusty iron that creaked when I played on them. They were bigger and more dangerous than the playground apparatus in my own neighborhood, but danger is what made Kapiolani Park fun to five-year-olds who were lightly supervised back in the day.

I didn't make it around the entire circumference because the family was done at the Aquarium in 45 minutes. It was time for a late lunch at Rainbow Drive-In, less than a mile away off Kapahulu Avenue. In the contest between burning and consuming calories on this trip, I'm losing...or winning, depending on one's point of view.

Proprioception Drills

Surf-stance balance squats

Balance exercises and strength training are normally separate, but Maui trainer Suzie Cooney has come up with six (6) exercises that do both:

A strong core helps keep us steady on our feet. This group of muscles—the abdominals, plus the muscles along your spine, pelvis, glutes and sides of the torso—drives power to our limbs while stabilizing the body.

When Cooney trains athletes like 2022 Stand-Up Paddling world champion Connor Baxter, she complements core training with proprioception drills. Proprioception is the body’s ability to sense its orientation in a constantly changing environment.

This WSJ article not only provides the strength-and-balance exercises that your humble blogger has been looking for, it also illustrates each exercise with a .gif.

GIFs, like the one that shows surf-stance balance squats, both convey much more information than a still photo and are more efficient than a video.

Note: Not every one will have access to a white-sand beach to break their fall, so most people will have to add a rubber mat to the shopping list.

And How Did That Make You Feel?

(Sleepstation image)

To the list of tips for falling asleep (turn off screens, avoid stimulating entertainment, don't exercise before bed, etc.) sleep specialists have added savoring: [bold added]

Savoring is well-studied as a strategy to improve our general well-being. A considerable body of research shows that it can boost mood and help reduce depression and anxiety. Now, psychologists believe it can help us fall asleep and have better sleep quality, and are starting to study its effectiveness.

Many of us ruminate as we’re trying to drift off. This is where savoring can help. “It gives your brain something else to focus on—something emotionally compelling and pleasurable,” says Dana McMakin, a professor of psychology at Florida International University, who studies savoring.

Savoring differs from other strategies you may use before going to sleep. When you savor, you try to re-create the positive emotional state of the experience. It’s not the same as practicing gratitude, which involves thinking about something rather than trying to feel it. And it’s different from meditating or trying to be mindful, in which the goal is to quiet your mind. Savoring aims to fill it up with positive emotion.

One has to be selective in the positive memories one dredges up: memories from childhood with people who are long gone can turn sad; moments of triumph and vindication can be exhilarating...and stimulative; and of course, recalling savoring's original gustatory meaning, reliving pleasant dining experiences can make one hungry, not sleepy.

Come to think of it (or not), to get to sleep I'll just stick with emptying my mind, not filling it with thoughts, however pleasant they may be.

The Rut That I Fall Into

Waikiki's Kalakaua Avenue, like the Las Vegas Strip, is quiet in the early morning. Most of the tourists are still in bed; a few athletic souls under the age of 40 are running along the sidewalks that were packed just ten hours ago.

The Starbucks on Kuhio Avenue opens at 4:30 a.m. It has a steady stream of customers--hotel workers, tourists, and policemen.

One of my favorite pastimes is to stroll the mile from my parents' home to the Starbucks, pick up a coffee, then take a different, longer return route. I'm back by eight, and the whole day is in front of me.

Such is the rut that I fall into when I'm in the Islands, and I've lost the urge to be busier. Don't criticize, dear reader, if you haven't tried it.

Intuitive Eating

(Image from nutritionist resource)

It was easy to strike a New Year's resolution off the list. I didn't achieve it, I just crossed it out.

Losing 10 pounds is no longer important. (Some) dietitians say that losing weight should not be the goal.

One should focus on "intuitive eating":

Many anti-diet proponents instead advocate intuitive eating, or listening to the body’s innate signals around hunger, fullness and food preferences. Central to the process is giving up tracking weight and categorizing foods as morally good or bad.

Rather than lose weight by denying one's craving, one should focus on eating but not overeating, exercising moderately in activities (e.g.,walking, golf, bicycling) one enjoys, and going to bed when one is tired.

A more accurate term might be intuitive living with guardrails. The weight and health will take care of themselves.

Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May

Foster City Lagoon on Tuesday, January 11th

It's a goal, not a resolution

A modest exercise goal since the beginning of the year has been to take at least 10,000 steps each day. That's a little over four miles, which means a minimum outdoors walk of three miles plus a pedestrian (!) activity like shopping.

Hitting the target this week has been a strain because breathing has been difficult. In decades past I enjoyed the sweet smell of operating fireplaces, but late-onset asthma has quelled that pleasure. Before setting out I pack the emergency inhaler and check the air quality: [bold added]

Air quality across the Bay Area was “moderate” to “unhealthy” Thursday morning due to a high-pressure system trapping pollutants in the air over the region, meteorologists said.

The high-pressure system that brought sunny skies and seasonable weather to the Bay Area this week has also made the air stagnant, meteorologists said. A temperature inversion is to blame.

That’s when the air closest to the ground is cooler than higher elevations, allowing fine particles from car exhaust and fireplaces to stay trapped at the ground level.

Aaron Richardson, a spokesperson with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, said poorer air quality levels at this time of year weren’t unusual.

He said people using their fireplaces is the biggest source of fine particle pollution.

The Bay Area received a lot of rain in the past two months that helped clear the air, he said.

“But now with this high-pressure system, pollution is building up a little bit,” Richardson said.

San Mateo County banned the addition of wood-burning fireplaces in 2015. The silver lining is that our two grandfathered fireplaces, which we haven't used this century due to allergies, could be a desirable feature to a prospective buyer.

Well, enough musing about future real estate values. Time to put on the walking shoes to try to extend that future a little longer.

Around the Neighborhood

Walking around the neighborhood is not only good for my health, it also serves as a source of inspiration for landscaping, color schemes, and home improvements.

As we do with people we admire, we look for characteristics that we can adopt to improve ourselves and perhaps our social standing.

Sometimes we come across sights that make us grateful for what we have already...

Old Times Sake

On Tuesday I put on the standard-issue wired headphones (see following post) and embarked on a 4-mile stroll around Ala Moana.

Skipping Waikiki, I walked past the boats in the Ala Wai harbor and dreamt briefly of the benefits and costs of owning one. Nope, not even if I had the money.

View of Diamond Head from Magic Island.

For old times' sake, I took the loop around Magic Island. My father would often walk the path while I, going a little faster, would circumnavigate Ala Moana Beach Park.

We would meet at the car, then drive across the street to the shopping center and relax with a coffee at the Food Court.

The Food Court in the COVID era has been stripped of half its furniture, and Dad would not have found it as inviting.

Across Kapiolani Boulevard was Don Quijote. I was refreshed by the air conditioning inside but didn't buy anything, not being inclined to walk the final mile carrying a bag of groceries.

The traffic was much heavier than when I was a kid, but now there are four more stop lights along the way to make the crosswalks less hazardous. In 20 minutes I was home.

The Under-40 Men and the Sea

(Chronicle photo)

Their one-month journey to Hawaii puts to shame complaints about my own trip:

On Wednesday [June 30] afternoon, a four-man crew of rowers pulled their 30-foot boat into Waikiki, setting foot on land for the first time in a month and setting a new world speed record for crossing the Pacific Ocean between San Francisco and Hawaii.

By completing the journey in 30 days, [Jason] Caldwell’s team smashed the previous race record by nine days and clutched a world record for the fastest all-male crew of four to row the mid-Pacific route east to west in an open class rowboat...

Caldwell, the only American, has crossed the Atlantic twice. His three teammates, all Brits, are a mixed bag of experience levels.

Angus Collins is one of a handful of people to have rowed the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. Duncan Roy had taken down the Atlantic as well. But the fourth crew member, a tattooed mountain of a man named Jordan Shuttleworth who owns a CrossFit gym in the United Kingdom, had no ocean-crossing experience and was added to the team earlier this year.

Despite the record speed, the men endured punishing challenges at sea. To make time, they paired up and rowed in two-hour shifts.

The first two weeks, the men battled headwinds through cold and rain, and nearly capsized pushing through massive swells. Shuttleworth suffered debilitating seasickness that kept him all but out of commission for the first week.

During the back half of the trip, the water flattened out, but subtropical heat kept the men from gaining much-needed rest.

Comments:

1) A pace of 80 miles a day two rowers at a time: their conditioning and BMI are in a different universe from mine.

2) Journalistic quibble: " a world record for the fastest all-male crew of four to row the mid-Pacific route east to west in an open class rowboat." Why the qualifier "all-male"? This is not a gender issue--are there faster times by mixed crews, all female crews, etc.? If it's the fastest time regardless, leave off the "all male." If it's not, how about a sentence explaining who has the record?

3) Hawaii requires all Mainland visitors to have in hand a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of departure. Wonder if that requirement was imposed on these gentlemen. Side note: Governor Ige will lift the testing requirements, effective July 8th, if visitors have a vaccination card. Assuming the crew was vaccinated, they should have slowed down to avoid the quarantine (kidding).

Peace Be With You

Today's Gospel lesson (John 20:19-31) was the well-known story of Doubting Thomas, but the priest chose to focus attention on the first five verses that were about God's Peace.

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

The disciples feared being found by the Jewish leaders, who would not hesitate to imprison or kill them. Today, despite our immensely better circumstances, we are plagued with our own sets of anxieties. The Peace of God remains as relevant as ever.

The priest said that meditation and music bring him peace. I find that breathing exercises, playing an instrument, and listening to an audiobook have a calming influence.

This afternon I went for a walk and felt better...

Trust the Science: Relax

I meditate, most productively when lying down (mindful)

Neuroscience says that downtime (aka "doing nothing") increases productivity. Specifically,

Take a long shower

Play a game without keeping score

Cook a big meal

Take a solo walk

Just sit down.

I've been diligently performing these "activities" over the past year, but the people in the household say that there's been no visible increase in productivity.

Taking a page from global-warming stalwarts who've been saying "snowfalls are now just a thing of the past" for 21 years, I say, be patient.

Trust the science.

Aging Wisely

Lee Daniels in his LA backyard.
Pajamas by Maison Margiela (WSJ)

Producer and director of critically acclaimed, successful movies (Monster's Ball, The Woodsman, Precious, The Butler) and TV series (Empire) Lee Daniels, 61, has it all together. Excerpts from his WSJ interview:

What time do you wake up on Mondays, and what’s the first thing you do?
I start at 7 a.m. I pray, which has really been new, because I didn’t do that before. As this pandemic has grown, I’ve found myself praying longer. I pray, meditate and, after, I do my hike [in Franklin Canyon Park]. I do a brief workout. I do my infrared sauna. Then I shower and begin work.

Do you have a go-to breakfast to start the week off right?
I put on 17 pounds at the beginning of the pandemic, so I had to drop it all. If you’d asked me at the beginning, I would have said pancakes and bacon. But now I don’t have breakfast at all; water is what I have. I don’t eat until 2 or 3 in the afternoon.

You’re doing the fasting thing.
I’m in it to win it.

Do you drink coffee or tea?
So I lied, I’m sorry. During the holidays, I wasn’t completely fasting. I’d have a double shot of Starbucks espresso with eggnog. I’d put it in a blender with ice. If I wanted to treat myself, I’d put a slab of whipped cream in it, but that’s rare.

Do you take any vitamins?
Once you get past 60, you take everything under the sun. I take eight or nine every day: vitamin D, a men’s 50+ daily multivitamin, vitamin C, Flora Plus, lecithin, an advanced probiotic... adrenal support and liver detox.

Do you have a time-management or efficiency hack?
The last thing I do before I go to bed is I look at my schedule for the following day, and that really gives me an understanding of whether it needs to be edited, altered, [if] I need more on it [or] I need more me-time so that I can pace myself. Sometimes I like to cram it, but then I find myself out of steam.

What’s your media diet?
At the end of my workday, around 8, I’ll go into my bedroom and I’ll start with CNN, I’ll move to Rachel Maddow, and then I’ll hear Fox, so I can hear what they’ve got to say. I get a lot of alerts on my iPhone, [so] throughout the day I’m listening to news [on] Apple News.

Lee Daniels and I are doing the same things--fasting, meditating, exercising, consuming vitamins, viewing media that we disagree with--but he's doing it better. He's an excellent role model for us over-60's.

One other thing that I'm striving to do is to resist being provoked. Anger, along with pride, is an ancient sin that is too often praised. Lee Daniels has advice on that subject, too.

What’s one piece of advice you’ve gotten that’s guided you?
It’s never personal. Don’t take it personal.

No Lingering

For once politics and COVID-19 have been blown off the local front pages. The morning news reports 55 mph winds are buffeting the Peninsula. Fortunately, there are no reports of downed trees or power lines...yet.

All three of our garbage cans were intact, though many of our neighbors' had been knocked over. I would have straightened a few and retrieved the contents strewn about, but COVID-19 has made touching any surfaces potentially dangerous---that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Speaking of the coronavirus, I'll go for a long walk today. The more cautious ones in my circle have advised that I wear a mask all the time outdoors because of the micro-droplets that linger. With 55 mph winds there will be no danger in the air.

It's All in My Mind

Trinity College Professor Shane O'Mara says that walking has benefits in addition to those associated with physical exercise, it helps the brain:

2011: 4 miles to the top of the ridge in Rancho
San Antonio Park, then 4 miles back

In our evolutionary history, walking upright set our hands free, allowing us to carry food and tools and children and also to point and gesture. Because we could point to predators and prey in the distance, we could look in the same direction, paying shared attention to what someone is pointing at—a capacity that demands an elaborate brain system.

Walking is also how we find our way around the world. It is how we created our own internal GPS maps before there was GPS. This gives the lie to how we might think we navigate—that is, by sight...After all, we can find our way around in a suddenly darkened room. Close your eyes and point to where the door is: That’s your cognitive map at work. Moving is the thing. It silently updates your position in your GPS without your even realizing it.

Beach and lagoon, Foster City

Movement through the world changes the dynamics of the brain itself. Recent experiments show that walking increases the strength of the signals in parts of the brain concerned with seeing and other senses, such as touch...

Experiments by the psychologists Marily Opezzo and Daniel Schwartz of Stanford University have shown that walking boosts creativity. They asked people to quickly come up with alternative uses for common objects, such as a pen. They found that people whom they got to walk before coming up with alternative uses came up with almost twice as many novel ideas as those who remained seated.

I've been going on regular long walks for nine years. The good professor says that walking enhances my social intelligence, internal GPS, sensory signal strength, and creativity.

Yes, I can feel the brainpower growing. It's unfortunate that my family and friends haven't noticed...