Two years have passed since my mountain bike accident. I go through oscillating versions of reality where it doesn't seem real and settle into the fact that I almost died.
"I'm tough, a little bike accident couldn't do me in."
"No, you almost died."
"..."
"No, Phil. You literally came a centimeter away from being paralyzed for life and a little further than that and you would have severed your spine, killing you instantly. Leaving your wife without a husband and your son without a father. Devastating your family and those friends and family who love you. You felt the icy chill of death against your neck. When people say 'you're lucky' you have no idea how right they are."
And I relent to fact.
In this post I will continue with my fat loss progress for the remainder of 2014. Every Wednesday I took a shirtless picture of myself on my iPhone and emailed the picture of myself with my goal weight, actual weight and other details like my belt loop and activities I was doing. The text of these emails will be in the caption below each photo. I went through ups and downs, successes and failures, wins and losses but I came out on top. It's really great to see these pictures again and revisit this dramatic change I made in my life. I hope you get something out of it.
This is an interesting bit of a post. It was hard to keep going with this story because I got derailed. I got derailed in a way that changed my life. This blog post was supposed to chronicle my next steps and all the information I learned from Rick. That changed when I realized that it would take several blog posts to complete and wouldn't be suitable for a blog format. So, I started writing a book instead.
I was debating with myself on how to proceed. I think it's important to understand where I came from in regards to my weight and self perception.
Certain angels enter your life and change the course of it. My bass teacher, Louis Johnson was one of those. I'm going to tell you know about one of my bass/guitar students changed my whole idea about what being healthy was.
I was highly motivated to kick this cholesterol thing. I made it through Thanksgiving and started a fitness program in December. It's a program that I had done several times in the past and had some success with. It's an ipod workout program called Fitter U and it's designed by a guy called Yuri Elkaim. The program is three months long and it starts you from a zero base level of fitness and progressively gets you into competent condition. The download to your ipod and the pdf files is $99 dollars and I feel like over the years I got my moneys worth.
I lost 50 lbs in 6 months. Since then I have hovered around 190 to 185 comfortably. I've never been this healthy or happy with my physical well being in my life. I have become an avid cyclist and try to get out every weekend. I never saw myself living this way or being a "health nut" as Monica calls me. The reasons I got as big as 235 (again, mind you. I was as big as 245 in my 20's but that's another story) were the usual ones. Busy life, work. Being a parent and that first year of sleep deprivation and trauma. That first picture was at Julian's first birthday party. His first year of life is what I call "the lasagna year" What we ate was primarily frozen food that had to be thawed and delivered loads of calories in short order. I was not happy having my picture taken. My reaction to my self image was "I don't care. Who am I trying to impress?" These were just excuses that I gave myself, I realize now. I knew I could do better but was not willing to make the lifestyle changes necessary to positively make a change.
Then, the doctors visit. This was in November around his first birthday.
You have borne witness to an American tragedy.
You have witnessed the American electorate nominate a xenophobic buffoon into the highest office of the land. This high office has been made low. The American presidency is now a joke and it's not even a funny one. The joke is classless, in poor taste and the more you look at it, the sicker you become.
My life can be split into a pre- November 12th 2012 phase and a post November 12th 2012 phase. My entire perception of life, love and family shifted on the day I became a father. I used to hold value to things that are actually worthless and now I treasure things that I used to take for granted. Little moments, subtle phrases, nuanced idiosyncrasies give me the greatest joys and the biggest laughs.
I have been inactive on this blog and on social media the last few months due to the ramp up leading to my first triathlon. I wanted to eliminate all distractions and focus purely on training. Now, with the event five days past I am ready to turn back to whatever state of normalcy I had earlier in the year. This was my big physical goal for 2016 and I have been preparing for my triathlon since the beginning of the year. Here's a somewhat complete story of how I accomplished the tri.
I have come to a place of clarity as of late. It was tough going for a while, I was worried and wasting tremendous amounts of time on Youtube and news articles studying the Trump phenomenon. It was worrisome, scary, fascinating and a waste of time that could have been spent on other more constructive things. Then it recently hit me once I listened to a podcast on NPR's Fresh Air called "Trump Revealed". It hit me like a wave of calm because I could finally put my head around the guy, compartmentalize him and deal with his persona.
A soothing voice enters my ears via my bluetooth headset connected to my phone.
"GRADUALLY BECOME AWARE OF THE PROCESS OF BREATHING. NOTICE WHERE YOU FEEL THE BREATHE MOST DISTINCTLY."
Okay, I feel it in the center of my nose and in my torso. Back feels a little sore. Maybe it's because I hit the pull-ups too hard this week. Maybe I should skip it today?
I have been shuffling a heavy workload lately and have been basically burying myself in my cave to catch up. All in all, good problems to have. Since my last blog post, news of the world outside of my cave has been catastrophic.
Civil unrest, terrorist attacks, mass shootings. I choose to employ a tactic of disengagement from social media the last month but I couldn't get away from all the bad news. Things are looking very grim in the world at the moment. Louis missed all this, he would have been saddened by the state of the world right now. I often think of him and the things he taught me. I am constantly meditating on one thing he told me in particular.
Now let me ask you music teachers out there, do you have any student's that don't practice?
We are complex creatures, us humans. We have the capacity to love and nurture. We also have the capacity to kill and torture. Any person who does not recognize the duality we all have within us should be approached with much suspicion. They are probably too stuck on one side of the equation. If someone is trying to sell you rainbows and bunnies, you can bet on the inside there are a slew of decapitated kittens.
Prior to cycling, I never had a sport. Possessing the coordination of a dizzy toddler, basketball and football were never strong suits. I gravitated towards music because it didn't involve objects in flight headed towards my face, save for the odd music stand here and there.
To ride a bike, only a few things are necessary to do well;
- Be tenacious (of which I am capable)
- Stay on the bike (of which I am mostly capable)
I have some decisions to make as far as having a public presence that will exist on the internet for the rest of my life and beyond. Do I behave in a way that endorses no particular ideology and speaks of no topic that could be controversial in nature? This is the approach of someone who is trying to appeal to everyone to sell a product and become a household name. I'm a bass teacher and music educator as well as live and in-studio musician. Who cares what I think about gun violence?
Spring has sprung, summer is coming and it's an election season! Time for evening walks, cookouts and social media Hitler comparisons. Yesterday was primary voting and the results are confirming that this election cycle is a unique one. Both parties are divided and it looks like the choices are a vacation to Detroit or a vacation to Somalia (depending of course on which side of the political spectrum you stand).
Through all of this, I am reminded of one man, Warren G.
