Tag Archives: Iowa

Passing time on a February Saturday

Only a speck is all that's left after six months. And that can only mean one thing: RAGBRAI is only 168 days away.

Only a speck is all that’s left after six months. And that can only mean one thing: RAGBRAI is only 168 days away.

If there is a theme for today’s blog posting, let’s call it: Moments at the Muscatine Community Y.

Earlier in the week, I published a blog post in which I spelled out some fitness goals for February. And then I posted my workout on Wednesday, which consisted of three sets of five repetitions of:

  • Barbell squat — 225 pounds.
  • Barbell lunge — 85 pounds.
  • Dumbbell calf raise — two 50-pound dumbbells.
  • Barbell deadlift — 225 pounds.
  • Supermans — As many reps as possible for one minute.
  • Dumbbell shoulder press — two 50-pound dumbbells.
  • Dumbbell front raise — two 20-pound dumbbells.
  • Dumbbell lateral raise — two 20-pound dumbbells.

In addition to that workout, I led a full-body resistance-training class and a cycling class on Monday. Tuesday, I attended a cycling class. I skipped the gym on Thursday and led another cycling class on Friday.

Today, I did three sets of eight repetitions of:

  • Barbell bench press — 185 pounds.
  • Dumbbell incline press –two 50-pound dumbbells.
  • Lat pull-downs — 130 pounds.
  • Barbell pullovers on bench — 45 pounds.
  • Barbell rows — 85 pounds.
  • Preacher curls — 60 pounds.
  • Curls — two 30-pound dumbbells.
  • Dumbbell triceps extension — 50 pounds.
  • Triceps kick backs — two 20 pound dumbbells.
  • Barbell shrugs — 100 pounds.

In between each set, I jogged for two minutes on an elliptical machine. Oh, and for anyone who is really interested, I’ve eaten somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,300 calories today if my record-keeping is close to accurate.

Sunday, I’ll lead a cycling class.

That’s enough about the real reason I was at the gym, let’s move on to:

  • Realizing there is still a speck of orange polish on the nail of my right big toe. It is all that is left over from my toenails, which a friend painted in July for RAGBRAI. For some reason, marking the passing of time by the polish on my toenails planted this song in my head and then this one. I much prefer the latter to the former.
  • Not really my driver's license.

    Not really my driver’s license.

    Letting rip with an F-bomb when I dropped my hair clippers on the locker room floor and broke them. Guess I’ll have to wait a day or two to cut my hair. I wonder if anyone will notice. Speaking of which, a wise-ass friend asked the other day what is listed as my hair color on my driver’s license. He wanted to know if “shiny” was an option. But the joke’s on him because I don’t see hair color used as an identifier on an Iowa’s driver’s license.

More reasons to begin counting down days until RAGBRAI: The other day I compared winter in Muscatine with winter in North Dakota. Simply put, there is no comparison.

After reading it, a friend, who does not want to be identified, sent me this. DO NOT click the link if you are offended by bad language or are a native North Dakotan without a sense of humor.

Big changes at Muscatine supermarket; bigger attitude changes

Hy-Vee 2

Walking through the new and improved health market in Muscatine’s Hy-Vee supermarket Tuesday evening felt almost like a religious experience.

I didn’t expect to see anything like it in Muscatine. Ever. It could even provide me with some needed motivation.

Jill Skeem

Jill Skeem

Six years ago — I can’t believe it’s been that long — I lost a bunch of weight after meeting Jill Skeem, a nutrition counselor who introduced me to a mostly macrobiotic, vegan diet. After a few months, I looked and felt better than I had in years. Then, I went through a lot of life stress, fell back into bad habits, moved to Muscatine and gained back a lot of the weight.

Check it out: Jill Skeem has published a new vegan cookbook that is for sale here.

Giving some of Jill’s recipes and lessons another whirl could become easier with the changes being made by the Muscatine Hy-Vee.  It can’t hurt.

The store’s new and improved health market is beginning to sell many of the foods I learned about from Jill — most of which Muscatine residents previously had to drive to Iowa City or Davenport to buy.

Realizing Hy-Vee could do something that leaves me so excited represents a seismic personal change. It’s at least equal to the change I will go through when I finally reach — and maintain — a healthy weight.

For longer than I’ve waged that battle, you see, I really disliked Hy-Vee.

Ask anyone who grew up in my hometown. For the rest of your life, when meeting someone who knows anything about Iowa, you participate often in conversations that go something like:

So, where are you from?

Me: Chariton.

Ah, the hometown of Hy-Vee.

Me: Yeah, every town has to be known for something.

Hy-Vee is an employee-owned supermarket chain with 234 store in Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Founded in 1930, Hy-Vee operated its corporate offices in Chariton from 1945 to 1995, when they were moved to West Des Moines.  The company’s main distribution center is still in Chariton. I’d guess Hy-Vee is easily the town’s largest employer.

But it has often seemed as if my siblings and I were the only graduates of Chariton High School who never worked for Hy-Vee.  As a boy, it was difficult to admit even grudging admiration for Hy-Vee because it owned the bank in Chariton that foreclosed on my parents’ farm in the 1980s.  My parents paid a steep price for mistakes they may have made, along with those made by people associated with that bank. It was a very tough time.

Many years have passed,  however, and my views have changed. My parents moved on and lived better than they ever did on the farm.

And after finally arriving in Muscatine in 2007, I met people such as Jeff Canfield, the then-director of the local Hy-Vee, along with his successor, Kasey O’Kelly. They are both great guys who are very community oriented. Any company with managers of their caliber can’t be all bad regardless of what I may have thought about Hy-Vee 30 years ago.

Hy-Vee 1This new and improved health market is only going to add to Hy-Vee’s new-found luster in my eyes. The shelves aren’t even fully stocked and work at the store might not be done completely for another couple of weeks.

But this is a great improvement for Muscatine. One that may help me improve, too. And maybe you as well.

It’s all very exciting.

President Nixon and the kitchen-table debates

Richard M. Nixon

Richard M. Nixon

Today would have been the 100th birthday of Richard M. Nixon, 37th president of the United States

This news has been widely reported, so I’m sure you already know. But his death offers an opportunity to share the obituary Hunter S. Thompson wrote for The Atlantic when Nixon died in 1994 at age 81:

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he’s gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive — and he was, all the way to the end — we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.

That was Nixon’s style — and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don’t fight fair, bubba. That’s why God made dachshunds.

Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson

Thompson, noted for writing Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, committed suicide in 2005 at the age of 67. And he most likely had at least as many detractors as Nixon had.

It wasn’t until later in life that I became familiar with Thompson and his gonzo journalism.

But my some of my earliest memories of politics involve Nixon. My mom and dad were 29 and 33, respectively, on June 17, 1972, when the Watergate burglars broke into the Democratic party headquarters. It’s safe to say my parents were not Nixon fans, especially Mom, who had grown up in Lucas, Iowa, the home of famed labor organizer John L. Lewis, who died in 1969 at age 89.

Nixon won re-election on Nov. 7, 1972, defeating Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota in a landslide. This was four days after my sixth birthday, so it would have been nearly impossible for my parents’ feelings about Nixon to have not left an impression. And searing it into my memory was the fact that my paternal grandparents, whose farmhouse was a few hundred feet from the house in which I grew up, were Nixon people. This undoubtedly added to the tension that was probably already beginning to develop even then between my parents and paternal grandparents — later straining to a point that would take far too long to detail today. You’ll have to read the book if I ever get around to writing it.

Anyway, I can remember my grandpa reading the Des Moines Register at our house, the adults talking about the Watergate scandal and my parents — later, after my grandparents had gone home — wondering how anyone could support Nixon … especially in the days surrounding his resignation in 1974. I don’t know if either of my parents ever voted for a Republican presidential candidate prior to Nixon, but I’d be very surprised to learn they had in the past 39 years. And I don’t suppose my family is unique in how it may have been shaped by Nixon.

His death is worth remembering here if only so that it might help make sure someone like him is never again elected to be president of the United States. And it’s a good reminder that if the United States could survive the damage Nixon wrought, it can survive any of the challenges it faces today.