Back Up!

 Today is my third installment of how to survive your diabetes in an emergency or just any sort of situation that is considered "not normal" which of course most of our freakin lives.  So lets recap, the first thing to have is a handy dandy flashlight that works, then you need to keep 72 hours of water near you and then a system to purify water for longer than that.  Now, I want you to think about not having your beautiful technology with you.  Think of a random person walked up to you with a hammer and decided to smash your diabetes purse, meter, CGM, and pump.  OK, so you might not be on one or all of these things (I hope you at least have a meter).  Can you survive without them?  The answer better be yes.  First there is basically little ways around not having a meter on us.  My "Pingy Thingy" is pictured above but you must remember there was a time when there were no meters around to automatically read your BG's.  There used to be a thing called "visual test strips" that basically told you that your BG's were either 100 or 400 depending on the light in the room.  Now I used to keep a bottle of 50 visual test strips with me but have gotten lazy and don't have them any more.  With today's "free meters" you can have a meter in your purse or man purse, briefcase, car, one in every room of your house and a couple tucked away in a sock drawer, and some in your 72 hour kit.  Just make sure again they first work, and second you have strips to go with them, and last that the batteries are in good condition.  Personally I hate meters that do not use a double or triple A battery, and I have not used any of the rechargeable ones yet but I am sure one will be on my door someday.

 A CGM is not something you are supposed to bolus off or use as an actual BG meter but you should always keep a meter on you even if you are just walking around the mall or something for an hour or so.  I am extremely guilty of this and have had a couple of times where I was away from my meter for a couple of hours, did the unspeakable of bolusing off of my CGM then I get back to my meter and find out I am 400 or 68 because the sensor was not working properly.  This is a hard habit to break so never start it in the first place.  Remember a CGM is just a system to "kind of" tell you where you are at and always bring a meter.

Last item I think is a "first world problem" is how much we depend on our insulin pumps.  If you think you will die because since day one of diabetes you have been on a pump and have never not known a day of diabetes without a pump then you are living in an egg that is going to be dropped someday.  Have a backup plan for when your meter does something wrong or breaks.  The best is to keep a bottle of long acting insulin in your diabetes purse with a needle, second is to have practiced your "oops my pump broke" emergency plan.  You need to know a ratio for a long acting insulin and stuff.  Now remember I am The Diabetic Camper and for a living I am an Accountant so none of this is medical advice and to do this test you must co-ordinate it with your medical professional.  Since I camp alot there have been several issues with pumps in the backwoods and have practiced this on a lazy Saturday and Sunday while in town and when I needed these skills I knew what to do in an actual emergency.

With these back ups and emergency plans you also need to keep infusion sets around, insulin, medications, band aids, stuff, weird things, low treats, and who knows what else but you need it so make sure you go through your diabetes purse and look at your supplies, go through your car and verify you have meters, strips, batteries, and supplies for pumps and what not in it.  If you travel I like to have an entire supply of everything in each of my bags, a copy of my prescriptions, and comfort foods with me like a granola bar and skittles or something.  I once had a doctor tell me: Dave, if you are high for a while eventually we cut a toe off, you lose your vision and all sorts of other things but it takes a while.  If you go too low once you are dead instantly.  Don't ever put yourself in a situation where you have nothing in that predicament.

I hope you did not take any of these past three days as "advice" because I do not doll out any of that stuff here.  I do hope I opened your eyes to how to think about being diabetes prepared for any situation and to know how to stay calm and come out alive in the end.

Water

 Once you have enough flashlights around you the next item on the list of items for any emergency is water.  First thing is you should keep several gallons of water around the house for immediate use when the power is out or a dooky station goes down and taints all the clean water in the system.  I keep like five gallon jugs of water full in the house just for these type of situations.  Then when you are out and about a water bottle, not bottled water needs to be in your vehicle and near you for most of the day.  I take my water bottle with me almost everywhere and fill it up as I go.  Remember drinking half your body weight in ounces every day will cure your diabetes, no I am kidding it will hydrate your cells properly which leads to weight loss, steady BG's, and other neat stuff.  The bottle above is a picture I took of something they sell at stores now that have a filter in them to remove simple items like chlorine taste and other simple things.  Do not consider something that makes water taste good as a true water filter.

 This item here is another selling gimmick.  This is a water filter straw that does not remove dooky or contaminants from water but simple things like chlorine and other items that "taste" bad.  These are good if you can only drink bottled water because you are allergic to tap or something.  They do help in promoting good water.  Have you ever been camping and had safe food but came down with a bit of runny butt?  Sometimes rust and stuff gets into old pipes and a filter like this will help keep that stuff from giving you the butt of runny.  Just remember they do not remove bacteria or other organisms out of the water just "things."

 Besides having fresh water in your house, car, and personal self the next step to being prepared for a disaster is having iodine water tablets.  Yes the same iodine that a doctor will be using to clean you before he does his quadruple heart bypass because you have chicken nuggets in your blood stream also cleans and kills anything in your water.  People don't like the taste of iodine so now alot of these things come with a taste remover but the iodine has never bothered me and so just throw away the second bottle if you can handle the taste.  So with having the water in your house that gives you a 72 hour window of something to keep you alive, then the iodine tablets clean water you will need after you run out of the 5 or so gallons of water you drank.  These things run like five bucks and have a shelf half life of around forever so buy them once, put them in your post 72 hour survival bag and be ready for anything.

These chlorine dioxide tablets work just like the iodine but instead use another chemical for those people that are allergic to iodine.  I personally like the iodine tablets best but these are great to have as well.  You can always use both if you feel like the dooky in the water is too strong just for one and always use a ratio that is stronger chemical than water when mixing these things.  I once had iodine water that was not processed water and came down with a month of post deer water runny butt and I simply wanted to just die.  I would eat or drink anything and five minutes later it came out the back end.  You don't want this to happen to you, and the doctor gives you this stick and a card board piece of paper and says you have to smear 25 samples on the card so they know who's pee you drank.

Then there are also water filters and pumps and centrifugal things but lets just assume you are not going out and camping for a week anywhere in the next year or so.  That is why I have left those of the list and they also are temperamental and anything that is mechanical is made to break so if you don't use them they don't work.  Stick to chemical processes to keep yourself safe.

Recap this stuff, first keep about two gallons of water in your house for every person living there.  Don't do like a 55 gallon drum and look like an idiot, you don't need that much fresh water in your house.  Next keep fresh water in your vehicle and also always keep a water bottle on you.  I have two gallon jugs in the bed of my truck and always keep my water bottle on me filled up with nice fresh tap.  Then you need to have some iodine water tablets or chlorine tablets in your house for when you empty the fresh water in the house you can then fill the jugs back up and clean the dirty water and live to see another day.

Let there be Light!

 I told you all yesterday I was going to review with you my list of what you should always have either with you or in your emergency kit.  Recently I was asked what is the most important thing I would tell someone or anyone to have on them if I could only tell them one thing.  That is of course have a flashlight on you at all times.

 Now not all flashlights are created equal and from The Diabetic Camper (the worlds only diabetic camper so remember that!) that you need to get a "quality" flashlight.  We have all seen those ones with like a billion little LED's in them and ones that cost 99 cents but please do not buy those or even touch them.  They might give you worser diabetes than you already have because they are just that bad.  Why are they bad?  Because you have to understand how an LED makes light and it is not like your old non-government approved bulb where you just had to touch the positive and negative side to the bulb to create a closed circuit and walla!  instant light.  LED's require a circuit board to put the "0's" and "1's" into the right hole to tell the LED to turn on.  So your 99 cents is dependent on the cheapest circuit board with a gazillion LED's to not turn on.  Now I have about a thousand of those cheap lights in my house and I feel bad because I get coupons to get them for free all the time but now I just throw away the coupon because they all break and a broken flashlight is like a diabetics pancreas, it just sits there wasting money and space.  The light you see above is one I picked up on "black Friday" which is the best day to shop for random crap like this.  I keep that one in my truck with its 500 lumins it is like the sun in the palm of your hand.

 Here is my flashlight I keep in my briefcase and I also run at night with this light.  This is a 100 lumins light that only requires 2 double A batteries.  If you are not going to buy a flashlight on "black Friday" then your next best bet is www.Amazon.com or www.Woot.com or any number of inter-web pages that sell these suckers at great discounts that are delivered to your house with neat Chinese characters on the package.  So what do you look for when buying a "quality" light?  The one that The Diabetic Camper would tell you to get is a flashlight with a bulb made by: CREE.  These are the Cadillac of the light bulb industry and they produce the light that is claimed by the packaging and also are extremely durable.  Remember the circuit board thing I told you about earlier, you need a good one not some sort of Tandy 4600 piece of junk.  www.cree.com and CREE is even a public company: http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/stock-price?symbol=US:CREE&ocid=en-us_bingiaquotebtn

OK final note on flashlights and well light in general.  What use is a flashlight without any power?  Yes it is the same as a diabetics pancreas, just wasting space and money (I kind of like this joke).  So what to do about keeping your batteries good in your flashlight?  When I was 12 years old my first scout master taught me a trick I have used ever since and it is the greatest thing to do.  When you are finished with your light, take the batteries out or just one out and flip it around so that if you bump the button to turn the light on it won't because there is no complete circuit.  That brings up those cheap 99 cent lights as well and their cheap circuit boards.  This trick does not work in them because their boards are so cheap that if you flip one battery around alot of the time it ruins the board.  See how good that 99 cents was worth to you?  Go out and spend a decent ten bucks on a good light for your car, home, purse, man purse, diabetes bag, and a couple more just for fun and when you need this light I have just told you about just send me a thank you email, that is all I like to hear is how one small piece of advice I gave a billion people (OK so maybe like 100 people read this blog but lets just go with it) can save at least one person.

Tornado Damage.

 So my mother lives in Moore, OK and not sure if you heard but recently a tornado came through there.  She was lucky and her neighborhood was not hit at all, but as soon as you leave her neighborhood and go across the street is where the tornado hit.  Since this past weekend was Memorial weekend and I had already planned on coming to Oklahoma to visit I called and canceled my plans because of the tornado.  That is when my mother assured me that I would be OK at her house and that she wanted me to come up and hang out.

 The picture above is of a church that was hit by the tornado and if you look behind the tents you can see the steeple that was blow off the top but in almost perfect condition.

 Here is a picture from I-35 heading north at the medical buildings that were hit.  When I saw this I was worried about how I was going to make it to my mothers house.  She lives near 4th and Santa Fe which is where you see the Channel 5 national broadcast from.  Good thing again was that alot of the streets had been cleaned and what signal lights that were still out had stop signs.  The first responders and clean up crews get two diabetic thumbs up for their work and efficiency.

 This is a picture of where alot of the aid workers were set up across the street from alot of damage.  It is absolutely amazing how like right in the middle of where the tornado hit there is a Sonic drive in and was basically untouched from what I could see and they were packed with people eating there.

 This is a photo about a half mile from my mothers place as I drove through the heart of where the tornado hit.  Power lines already restrung and debris put into nice piles.

In the end it is always hard to prepare for anything and the people that lost their lives is a tragedy.  We can't stop everything, but just being prepared for disasters similar to this is very useful.  The rest of the week I will be posting about items we all need to have with us and around our house to help in situations like this.  Once I arrived at my mothers house we went over what she did in the tornado and her emergency items and I must say she is pretty much ready for most situations.  Maybe it was being married to an Eagle scout and raising both her sons to become Eagle scouts but she was well planned and prepared.

The DC was featured on the inter-web!

 

 

 

JoiOur Community: A Minnesota Partnership to Conquer Diabetes Read More

The Diabetes Debate: What are its origins? Read More

Diabetes and Heart Damage —
an iPS cell approach. Read More

Diabetes and Metabolism — The how
of clinical studies. Read More

Researchers test promising new diabetes drug. Read More

Decade of Discovery: A Minnesota Partnership to prevent, optimally treat and ultimately cure diabetes. Read More

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Check it out!  I was featured on http://www.decadeofdiscovery.org/featured-stories/blogger-spotlight-dave-hennesey-of-the-diabetic-camper/

I cut and pasted the article below but make sure you visit the link above and tell them how much you enjoyed reading my story.

Blogger Spotlight: Dave Hennesey of “The Diabetic Camper”

• By: Decade of Discovery
• May 23rd, 2013

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Chances are, when most of us hear the word ‘camping’, we don’t immediately associate it with diabetes. But, why shouldn’t we? Dave Hennesey is the author of The Diabetic Camper, and he’s trying to add some variety to the diabetes blogosphere by combining his Type 1 diagnosis with one of his favorite activities—camping. Dave shares helpful tidbits of camping advice, interesting products to use in the wilderness, and his general perspective on how camping can apply to your diabetes philosophy. We asked Dave a few questions about his blog and his unique take on tackling diabetes—and here’s what he had to say:
1. How did you get started with your blog?
My blog started in a couple of different ways that converged into making me “The Diabetic Camper.” First I read Kerri Sparling’s SixUntilMe because I liked how she wrote. Then I realized […] there were no diabetes related camping blogs. There were all sorts of running with diabetes, cycling with diabetes, people with diabetes, and parents with diabetic children blogs but no pure outdoor go pee on a tree with your diabetes focused blogs. That is when I looked into blogging.
2. Why do you blog about diabetes?
I blog about diabetes because it is simple for me to write about my life and since I am a diabetic the two go hand in hand. Throw in my 25 years of camping with diabetes, working at scout camps, doing high adventures with diabetes and all of this added up to post after post of things I have done or learned over the years to deal with my diabetes in the wilderness.
3. Camping and diabetes are an interesting mix. What do you hope people take away from your blog?
My main focus it to teach people that even though they are not “outdoorsy” like me or anything, they will encounter some sort of “oh my” moment where diabetes goes wrong and you have to think outside the insulin vial to come up with a way to survive the situation. I want to turn people’s MacGyver [instincts] on in these situations. They might be on a plane and they have a delay and their pump has issues, or they might be low at a train station, but the one thing we all have to do in these “oh my” situations is find a way to get out alive and that is what my blog is all about. Knowing simple things to carry in your diabetes purse to solve life’s diabetes problems or even what gear is good or bad to take on trips.
4. What lessons have you learned from your journey with diabetes?
The biggest lesson I have learned from my journey is that all machines are meant to [break], so have a “manual” backup for everything. Insulin pumps go bad, meters quit on you, and even CGM’s fail but what we all seem to forget is that long ago like 20 years ago we lived without that stuff and having a vial of long acting insulin and a needle tucked away on a trip can save your life. Having a bottle [of] old school visual test strips can get you out of a ski trip that was -12 degrees and your meter only works down to 32 degrees. Have a plan for everything that can go wrong, or a way out for all other situations. That is the biggest thing I have learned and probably why I love to camp so much. Camping brings you to the basics of living with diabetes. It is just you and your disease out in the wilderness. Maybe you have cell service, maybe you have electricity but you are outside [without] all the distractions and you get to feel life at its most simple point, and it allows you to just be diabetic.
5. How does your diagnosis influence your everyday life?
Diabetes affects anything and everything in my life. If diabetes does not affect a part of your life then you are overlooking something. I once had a doctor when I was a young teenager that told me if I didn’t think about my diabetes at least seven times a day I was overlooking something. I look back now and realize that seven times a day should be more like seven times an hour every hour or you are overlooking something. My good friend Vic likes one of my patented [sayings]:” being more diabetic” and it took me probably half a year to get him to understand what “being more diabetic” was. It is that point in your life when you accept your disease more than you did the day before. Maybe you used to be embarrassed to test in front of friends or show people your pump, but one day those things don’t bother you anymore and that is what “being more diabetic” is all about. I love to have people ask me about the nubbins on my stomach or my drug dealer pager because I get to spread the word about diabetes to these people. When we look at ourselves as role models of a disease then we take better care of ourselves. Every diabetic is a role model and should act that way.
6. Do you have any tips or advice for other people living with diabetes?
Read my blog for one month and you will just see the tips and advice I have for all the diabetics out in the world. The most basic tip I always have for every diabetic or person for that matter is to always have a flashlight on you (that works). Light is comforting, you can work with it, signal with it, and even throw it at a bear to save your life but put a flashlight in your car, home, diabetes purse, and anywhere you can.
7. What are your favorite blogs to read?
I read a lot of blogs and one of my favorites is Celiabetes. Nikki has diabetes, celiac disease and all sorts but she is probably the most positive person on the planet. I love to read positive stuff. Scully is a Canadian diabetic that cycles and she has a great sense of humor with plenty of four lettered words that will crack you up. Scott writes about all sorts of stuff and really keeps people like me in the loop about what is going on with diabetes and his life. Off the top of my head those are probably the first three I check out every day, I like positive fun stuff and these three blogs are always good reads.
Thank you for sharing you unique perspective, Dave. Perhaps we’ll see you out in the wild! To learn more about other bloggers like Dave, please check out the rest of our Blogger Spotlight series. If you would like to share your story with us, click here!

Follow-up

 I have to give you all a funny (well not funny if anyone got hurt) update to my recent run in with a truck.  The picture above is an SUV-minivan-car thing that is stuck somehow in the power lines that hang out over the road.  This is the exact intersection where I was hit by the truck.  I think we will now for sure find a new way to cross the street.  Which could be a new set of jokes for me, why did the diabetic cross the street?  To get away from the truck that hit him earlier in the year or something.  I will work on my getting hit by a truck line of comedy.

 That was my follow-up and now I want to talk about "cute" creatures to not take so lightly.  A couple of weeks ago my dogs were outside barking away at 4:00am and so I went down to let them in but only Archie wanted in and Riley was just running her mouth off so I had to investigate what she was up too.  She was at the side gate just itching to get something and I couldn't see anything but from what she was telling me it was there and finally when the sun started to rise I saw the "cute" mouse hanging out on the fence next to the house.  Yes, this guy is so cute but No, he is not harmless and don't think you are saving the environment by letting him go either.  This field mouse that came up from the creek a couple of blocks away because of the rain will cost you money if you don't kill them.

Here is the field mouse from the other side of the fence.  I poked him with a metal rod so the dogs could have hours of fun catching him.  The reason you don't let "cute" critters just go sometimes is because first when it is dry they love to eat your sprinkler system to get at the water in the plastic line.  Don't think they can eat your sprinkler system?  Trust me they can and will.  Then if you have a gas grill they will chew on the hose leading from the tank to your burner so the next time you turn it on if the gas is just a slow leak you could have a field mouse bomb.  Now lets move onto the snakes I get because they eat these things.  Next, the mice like to get into your dryer tubes and once they are in there they easily are running around your house dropping feces and spreading malaria or something.  How about your garage?  They get in there chew up stuff and make nests out of your camping gear or tent and the next time you are out camping and pull out that fancy tent you bought last year you get to see how a field mouse put a sweet hole in it and had babies on the floor of it.  Kill them before they cost you.  I think this is why I have always enjoyed having pets, even though my dogs are not use full for much they keep alot of the critters out of my house.  When I was a kid we hat a cat that was like a freakin puma.  I never saw a live mouse until we put her down and that is when I realized that those thousands of mole heads, mouse bodies, half living crows she would let go of in the house were from our backyard and not down the street at "other" peoples homes.  The animals we keep help keep us.

Pickled

 My good type 1 buddy sugar diabetic Don has this stash of goodies he brings to all our runs and rides as promotional freebies and stuff for anyone who wants it.  Don is probably the most self disciplined person I know of because he never takes any of this stuff for himself just for everyone else to try.  You get Jeff and myself around Don's goody stash of give aways and we clean him out of half his stock.  One thing Don has in this stash of freebies are these "Pickle Pops" that are a simple and neat item.  you can drink the pickle juice straight or freeze them, put them frozen in your jersey (sometimes on hot rides I slide one frozen one on each side of my cycling shorts), but the idea behind pickle juice is to stop or prevent cramping during events.

 Now I am no scientist or wizard as you can tell from the picture above but, I will try most anything once.  On our 100 mile journey through the gates of hell and back the humidity was like at 60% and from what my wizard friends tell me, or are they scientist friends I have?  Either way that humidity can cause cramping.  I am a man that has missed out on many of life's fun items and cramping is one of them.  As I reached mile thirty and this lady next to me was jabbering on how she is going to skip the 100 miles and just do the 100K because she is going too slow (quitter, diabetics can't quit because we will die) and that is when the backs of my legs started to feel this biting feeling.  So I stopped at a rest stop to stretch my legs because my thinking was that maybe I tweaked something and I needed to stretch it out but stretching did nothing.  Then I remembered Don and those Pickle pops I used to always drink during our training rides and how he said they were for cramping and not for scaring off the pretty ladies.  Then I remember my triathlete friends talking to me about how you can drink too much water and that can lead to more problems and that switching to a Gatorade or pickle juice to increase the salt or potassium levels in your blood can help.  Remember I am not a wizard nor a scientist so these are things that I have heard in classes, inter-web discussions, or just hanging out with people so none of this is advice and if you take it as advice you are on the wrong blog, I went to school for accounting not a medical degree.

I don't think there are any wizard studies that prove pickle juice or salt actually is like medicine to cramping but from this diabetic to you I will tell you it got me to the finish line of a 100 mile ride.  I switched to only Gatorade and pickle juice and at every stop I filled up, check my BG's (my blood glucose was a steady 156, thanks Dr. Mark for your book!), and felt better after each drinking of the stuff.  Now I know that pickle juice is not just for pickling pigs feet, eggs, amputated body parts, eyes and small animals.

Here is the stuff they had at our rest stops:

http://www.goldenpicklejuice.com/

Here is the stuff I steal, I mean get from Don:

http://bobspicklepops.com/

Feeling 100!

 So a couple of months ago my buddy Don found this bike ride on May 18 (last saturday) that had a 100 mile distance.  Not one of those metric 100K things but an actual physical 100 mile ride.  I was stoked, he was stoked and Jeff ditched us (probably for the better).  This ride started with one lap around "Texas Motor Speedway" which was real cool but that was all of the cool for the day.  Now TMS is like 60 miles from my home and the race started at 7:30am so I woke up at 4:00am and was out the door by 4:30am and the picture above was me and like four other people at the track before 6:00am.  I am late to everything so I planned to get lost a couple of times and I always need time to air the tires and snack on something.

 Here is Don and I both sporting our "Red Rider" jerseys since we both are diabetics of the sugar kind.  It was nice having Don at the race, when I did the triathlon last month it was just myself so having someone else to hang out with before a race is always welcome company in my book.  The picture above was about the only happy moment we had for the seven plus hour torture session.

 You see all these folks in this picture above?  They all started with the 100 mile group and the course was so bad (really bad) that the only difference between the 100k and the 100 miles was that we did a second 35 mile loop after we started the ralley with a 30 some odd miles riding in a beautiful industrial area trying to not get hit by semi-trucks making deliveries.  So when you made it to this certain point on the course (around mile 60) for both the 100K and the 100 mile ride you took a left turn to head back to the speedway or you went straight and did your second lap of 35 miles of trains, planes, and semi-trucks.  Most of these people switched to the 100k once they did the first lap of turtue.  I am sure you are not making sense of my bad description of the course but think of TMS in the middle and we did a 30 mile circle on one side and two 30 mile loops on the other side.

 I know you all wanted to see some leg and here is my real nice I guess you could call it a farmers tan but I call it my not so sexy biking tan.

 More bad pictures of farmer/ cycling tan lines.  You know how long it is going to take me to get ride of these lines?

The final moment of victory, Don and I enjoying the only things we could get from the concierge people as they packed everything up, one cold water and one cold Diet Coke.  The race announcer told everyone at the start of the race that if you did not have your vehicle out of the speedway by 3:30pm it would be towed.  The picture above was taken at 3:15pm as we scurried to our vehicles right after this photo.

Now Don apologized to me for finding this ride but I keep telling him it is not his fault.  Heck how would we know that riding bikes along highways, industrial parks, chip and seal roads would be so bad if we hadn't done it in the first place.  That is why these are adventures, we do them to find out what they are about and hopefully live to tell the horror stories later.  Oh I almost forgot to mention the extra fun they gave us and that was when we made it to the speedway after our second loop of fun we had to do two laps around the outside of the parking lots surrounding the speedway.  Now TMS holds like 200,000 people so you are basically circling a small city twice just to finish the 100 miles.  I told Don that he has to do the Autumn in Bonham this year in October to see what a good race is like.  They don't take us on any highways and each small quaint town hosts a rest stop with all sorts of chairs, firefighters, ham radio operators, food, and fun.  They even have real SAG vehicles in Bonham.  This race had people at rest stops driving around looking for people on the course as to see when they could tear the rest stop down, not your typical SAG vehicles.  They say your first time is supposed to be memorable and this definitely was that because we lived to tell the funny stories.

Brothers

 I totally had another item I wanted to post for today but this morning I received a phone call from my brother.  He tells me that whenever I put pictures of him in my blog that he looks like a fairy.  Does the picture above make my brother look bad in any way?  Of course not.  Then he goes into this rant about how the gas price in Oklahoma City is like four bucks and went into how Kansas has like 3.50 dollar a gallon gas and some person he plays inter-web games with in another state pays like 3.25 a gallon.  Then he asks me what the price is in Dallas and I let him know it is a rough 3.40 a gallon and he just gets all mad and stuff, talking about how this is wrong and Oklahoma always has cheaper gas and bla, bla, bla.

That is when I stopped him and told him to just let it go.  There is nothing you can do about it and surfing the inter-web for a cheap station that gets you  price discount of .02 is not worth the stress in your life.  A person a long time ago once told me when I was bragging how I found cheap gas to stop and look at the savings for this bragging I was doing.  It came out to a whopping .46 cents and that was something that I was proud of.  They then let me know to not worry about the little things and just buy gas and that extra 10 bucks you spend over a year is not going to hurt you but the stress will (I have diabetes and stress is bad).  I took this information to heart and now on I don't stress about anything that I personally cannot change.  There is no point to it, you just have to accept it and be happy.  My brother agreed and we hung up the phone and I feel that he probably had a much better day after that by not worrying any more about crap that is out of his control.

I used to stress out about "being diabetic" as a kid.  I hated being different (besides my personality I love being different that way), so it depressed me and I did not manage myself properly during my high school and early college days.  Then I accepted that I was not going to cure myself by ignoring my disease and actually decided to take care of myself and lord be how much better life is by just accepting that I can't cure myself but I can take care of myself and that made me "more diabetic" and now I love telling anyone that I am diabetic, cracking diabetes jokes, and taking my shirt off to prove I have a disease with my CGM sensor and pump site on my insulin ravished fat rolls.

Bicycling Magazine

 I finally feel like a real cyclist, my first "Bicycling" magazine came in the mail.  Now I can read all about how to not get hit by a truck, and other pertinent things that have been on my mind.  The cover of this magazine sucked me in right away, how to have more fun?  Who has more fun than me?  The 101 best maintenance tips ever, I am so going to read this and let Jeff know that his tires probably need air in them before we ride.  Not to mention all the discount inter-web places to visit and get gear on the cheap.  I already saw an ad for something my buddy Lew has in his truck, this www.recrac.com thing where you can screw your bike into the sides of your truck.

 So now as I was perusing through the pages of my new magazine and I came across the article above which stopped me in my steps.  An article on a professional sugar diabetes cyclist and I knew at that moment that baby Jesus must know I am a diabetic and had them run this article on the first issue I got.  maybe he looked down at me and had a grin and a wink for me.

 Sometimes in life it is the small things that we need to make us feel accepted and trust me my slow cycling speed, looking bad in way too skinny spandex, or my 2003 Fuji red, white, and blue thunder bike does not make me a cyclist.  Actually nothing really makes me a cyclist besides confidence and belief in myself and once I had that then I was a cyclist. 

Random Wednesday

 I had a bunch of small items I wanted to post about but did not feel they were all worthy by themselves so today is a pot of random-ness items.  So last weekend when I showed up at my mothers house at 10:00pm she greeted me and then tells me "Oh I have a surprise for you in the bathroom" now all of you just now went "gross!" so get your head out of the toilet (pun intended).  That is just the way us Hennesey's talk, I knew exactly that she was not talking about something that was about to be flushed but she had done something to the bathroom.  I went to the bathroom and cracked up laughing when I saw the toilet paper holder she bought.  People ask me if my high quality sense of humor runs in the family and from the picture above you know it does.  How funny is that guy, but I am not quite shure why he has the toilet plunger on his head?

 OK, random item number two.  My buddy Jeff whom I have told you all about his constant surfing the inter-web for funny diabetes pictures dug up the one above (I guess it was easy enough to go to www.diabetesduo.com and get it but I didn't).  He texted it to me and I laughed, and laughed and laughed.  Then I cried laughed and snort laughed and even some snot laughing.  So funny, "test" strip poker, duck duck juice and my favorite truth or a1c.  Whomever thought of that stuff is an absolute genius in the realm of diabetes comedy.

 Random item number three if you were counting.  The longest going stupid question (yes probably 80% of all questions diabetics get are stupid) but the age old "do you have the bad kind?" question is like a knife in our un-useable pancreas.  So the fact that this puts it perfect and I want to say this to all people from now till the day I am cured or die of a diabetes related multiple gunshot wound death or something.

Then last but not least is random item number four for your happy Wednesday (or whatever day you are reading this, just replace Wednesday with the day of the week it says on your PC) is how yesterday I got a 100 on my BG test!  So happy perfect score to me and hope your diabetes is buckled in for the ride and that it has all hands and feet inside the car.

Mothers Day

 What do you get your mother that has everything?  OK, so my mother doesn't have absolutely everything but she has all she needs or even wants.  I could have bought her chocolate but she doesn't like to eat alot of that stuff, or I could have bought her flowers and she just had me plant a new rose bush in her backyard so she has all the flowers she wants.  My mother had a custom computer made just so she can play World of Warcraft, even her monitor is like six feet wide.  I have never known a monitor so big you run out of mouse pad three times before the courser gets to the other side.  So I took my mother out for a bike ride.  Just my mother and her favorite son (don't tell my brother I am her favorite).

 My mother was OK with just a short and simple ride in her neighborhood but I wanted to show her the hidden world of cycling.  We headed to the banks of what they call: The Oklahoma River, which is just a section of the North Canadian river that has been turned into a long lake with river boat rides and lots of rowing stuff.  The picture above is of the river boat loading up to show people wild and crazy Oklahoma City.

 Here is a view of the ride and we had a blast.  My mother did like three miles out and then she stopped and said "I am ready to go back my arms are turning pink"  I tried to get her to do just a bit more but that was it for her.

 Here I am getting her bike into my truck and I of course took the opportunity to do a self image of me with her bike.  I took her to the bike shop because she wanted me to fix this mountain bike she bought from WalMart which was a lump of doo-doo.  I told her that it wasn't worth the money to work on and then we headed to a real bike shop were she picked out a great cruiser.  She went with the mountain bike 26" tires because she felt safer on them than the lighter 700 series road bike tires.  I rode the bike up and down the street a few times and was surprised by how the bike did put you in a good upright position.

The last photo we took before heading back.  I loved how my mom got all dolled up to go out on a bike ride, I told her she needs to get a cycling jersey for next time so she can put all her stuff in the rear pockets but she wanted to try out her new bag for Disney World over fourth of July with my brother, his family, and one of his best friends and his family.  On the way home she made me drive around so she could see ways to get to the Oklahoma River from her place so she could go out and ride.  So that makes one more cyclist on the road.  Just a few million more to go.  When we got home she said to me, "wait till I brag to all the ladies in Sunday school about what I did for mothers day."  I hope she enjoyed it as much as I did.