I did "it" or something like "it"

I saw this picture thing on the book of faces and had to snag it for myself.  Very under rated diabetes comedy in that one.  So anyways, I have always had dreams of actually almost being in the athletic crowd all my life.  I kind of almost feel that way when I do marathons, but have always known that I had to do something bigger and diabetesier than that.  Then I met my favorite diabetes mentor Vic.  He is captain cool and ultra athletic and has allowed me to almost follow him around two steps behind him or so.  Then one day he told me to do one of those 70.3 triathlon things.  I almost peed my pants, puked up non diabetes friendly food, and kicked him in the shin for saying that.  Complete shock.  This was like two or so years ago.  Ever since then I have been trying to do athlete style things and wearing athlete style outfits and eating athlete looking food.  The thing was every year I would get so far then oh a heart surgery, or allergies, or diabetes would rear its ugly head up and put me out of the game for several months.  Then it was start it all over again with the athlete sleeping schedule, and athlete tv shows.  You get the point, that it felt like I would never stay alive or healthy long enough to actually be able to give someone lots of money to let me finish one of their 70.3 triathlon athlete events.  Then this year happened, I did one marathon and felt good, did another marathon and felt good, did a 100 mile bike ride and still felt good, so I put the small fortune down to be a participant in the Redman 70.3 triathlon in August.

I was so nervous about the swim and bought a wet suit and have been in the pool most Wednesdays (not in my wet suit) trying to slightly almost keep up with the actual triathlete people or the little kids in swim classes.  The funny thing was that the 1.2 mile swim was the best part.  I felt like doing the 2.4 mile swim would be great.  The bike was rough (Oklahoma winds just really started to get annoying after a while) and the run was of course 91 degrees in the middle of the afternoon (yes people because I am slow) but it was great.  I walked a bit, ran about 3/4 of a mile, walked a bit and loved it all.  I think this constant year after year, issue after issue has pushed me into just relaxing and having fun mode that I love.  When I finished I was tired but knew that I beat my personal time of arrival (I figured 8 hours and did it in 7:46 hours).  Baby sat my nephew that night and slept in till almost noon the next day and now I can officially say that I am almost arms distance from being only a couple of miles away from being the athlete type of person and am proud of my participation medal (we are supposed to not accept participation medals because only first through third should be able to show off their accomplishments or something like that I am told).  So I am going to keep training and see if I can't be ready in just slightly under a year for the Wisconsin actual ironman official full triathlon athlete thing.

https://jstrawberry.wordpress.com/

 

I have an update on my last post.  First I have to apologize to Jules (she is the lady who writes the above blog) that when she read my last post about her blog about our dates.  She was actually on time to the first date and I was late fifteen minutes because of getting turned around.  I enjoyed dating her for the short time it was but am pretty sure that my complete idiot'ness and getting everything messed up has ruined my opportunity for anything more to happen (she also wasn't impressed when I read on her blog that she was going to call it off with me and I had all of you post nice things about me a winning move either, it actually did the opposite).   

A view from the other side

I love that there are almost many people that miss reading my blog.  For some reason I have just been in like a year long or so funk and haven't had the energy to post random things that happen in my life lately.  I miss it as well and have recently had a gaggle of things that I have been trying to write about but they all just come down to half baked ideas and thoughts that aren't blog worthy.  Till recently when I just got the amazing juices flowing.

I have been single for a while now and dating ladies is a lot of fun.  The getting to know the basics of kids, home life, and hobbies.  Then the first date and everything else about the whole process is great.  I embrace pretty much anything and everything that comes my way or is in my life, sometimes I embrace having diabetes too much some say.  Who knows, but I just enjoy all of it and love the amazing adventures and opportunities that have come my way.

Recently I dated a lady who is right up my alley.  She loves to hike, has a great personality, and is very attractive.  We have been on three fun dates and then the wildest thing happened.  I was on the inter-web and came across a blog that she has.  How amazing is that?  Another huge awesome quality we share so she earns another gold star.  Curious as I am I clicked on the blog and it was like opening Pandora's box or something.  Come to find out that she is like a serial dater and her blog and not to mention book she has written is all about finding guys to date and write about it on her blog.  I enjoyed reading it so much because it is like seeing the dates from her point of view without telling me them directly making it more sincere and stuff.  From the beginning I knew that this was not "the one" or anything.  She is a brilliant thinker and I am closer to a box of wet hair in the deep thoughts category, but she has so many things that we share that dating would be fun.  So here is here blog:

https://jstrawberry.wordpress.com/

 

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I am played by the character named "Doug" and a few small details have been left out (I think to make me seem less awesome than I already am) like that she was actually 15 minutes late to our first date breaking her own rule number 1, I asked several follow up questions to the softball game but she is a fast walker and had to try to slow down and respond which might be why she  doesn't remember it all.  I did apologize about being late for dates number 2 and 3, but in her defense I went right into comedy and let her know exactly where I messed up with being on time.  Finally the science thing was during the movie and I enjoy short funny comments during a movie but didn't want a thesis statement about the real world and comic book wrong world science during the movie.  I would have loved to hear it afterwards.  My friend Ken is great at those discussions and I enjoy hearing them.  Small things, but I just wanted to share.  So if you would so kindly leave a quality response on her blog mentioning about how awesome this "Doug" guy sounds and lets have some fun with this!  Thanks for waiting so patiently while I gear the blog back up!

screws and pins!

The world of diabetes is always out to get us.  No matter what we do we are at risk of not doing something or the risk of actually doing something and it all affects our diabetes.  Last sunday my buddy Jeff was riding along with myself and a gaggle of other people in a "Tour de Cure" tune up ride when I first blew a tire hitting the largest street sink hole on the planet.  So about eight of us fell into a second group that stayed together.  When we ride we don't leave any riders behind, that should be the motto of all diabetics as well in every aspect of our lives.  Anyways, back to the story at hand.  We were coming up to the second rest stop at about mile 20 when my friend Robin and I stayed at a stop sign to show the rest of our group where to turn.  Then we started towards the friendly gas station when we see up the hill Jeff start to turn then instantly go down.  I raced to see how my favorite diabetic buddy was and he was discombobulated, a bit shocked, sore, stiff, and out of it.  We knew instantly that it was time to call in for a car.  Jeff and another rider leave and he decides that the pain is just enough to visit the emergency room to get a professional opinion.  In the end he wound up doing some quality hip damage and in the picture above you can see one of the pins they put into his hip.

Jeff is now out of riding for something like six weeks, and not able to run for like ten weeks.  He is in good spirits and we joke about how the worst place on the planet for a diabetic to ever be is a hospital because we always get dumb questions like: do you take anything else for your diabetes besides insulin? Like insulin isn't enough to take for diabetes.  What I always take out of times like this, besides all the quality grandpa hip replacement jokes we get to make fun of Jeff with, is that we must always live our life to the fullest.  We can't sit around and be scared of diabetes and stuff.  We have to understand that anything can happen to us at any moment and doing nothing would mean not living life to the fullest.