End of July the 31st, 2009 Last Ditch Effort

My wife, my oldest son, and I just returned from a lecture at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCA). There were two lectures, one about the history of machine guns and one about the great experimental filmmaker, Stan Brakhage. Stan Brakhage was my late father's mentor and life long friend. I remember visiting Stan and his many kids from my own childhood. When art people think of avant-garde and experimental films they first think of Stan and then my father, Paul Sharits. The Brakhage lecture was incredibly enjoyable. The machine gun lecture was led by a historian from the Air Academy. He gave the history of the machine gun. It was also very informative and also interesting. It was very funny when both lecturer's were teaming up on questions from the audience. It was a sold out event.

Final day of July. I thought it would be great if I lost 20 pounds in July. I weighed in at 331.6 this morning, but around 328 when I returned from my last bike ride. Tomorrow morning is the final tally, but I'm sure I made it. Thursday was a challenging day as far as exercise, but today was insane. First, I went to the pool and swam 55 laps (1 hour), then lifted weights for an hour, and then, I rode from Morrison to downtown Denver. We refilled our water at MCA and got to meet and take pictures with the Denver Nuggets' "Birdman" (Chris Anderson). He is totally cool. He even stopped his giant vehicle to say goodbye to me. I'll post pictures on FaceBook. After we met Birdman, we headed back to Morrison. In all, it took Greg and I 3.45 hours to travel the 35 round trip miles. Boy, I am sore (mostly saddle sore). When we got home, but then I took a couple of Tylenol and took a half hour nap before the lecture and I felt much better. Along the way, I developed a wobble in my rear tire that was hitting my brake pads. It added to challenge. So did the rain and wind, but it is an excellent series of trails. While my mountain bike is in the shop, I am going to pull my very favorite road bike out of storage.

In the past week I rode 80 miles, swam for 5 miles, and lifted weights for 4 hours. Not a bad week. I hope to top that in the coming weeks. I am setting my goal for 20 more pounds in August. I figure that if I'm eating well and exercising like a mad man I should be able to reach it. I want to thank all of you that visit my blog. I had over 400 page impressions (visitors) in my first month online. Thanks; tell your friends, and visit some of the Google ads. I do get paid for click throughs.