Election Choices

 Hello loyal readers,

I'm sorry for the long lapse between posts.  Sadly I had nothing much to say and better to say nothing in that case.  Of course one might ask, why I had nothing to say about X or Y or Z and these are fair questions.  To wit, I have no real answers.  I'm doing my normal thing, though the mask rules and social distance stuff are personal pains.  I've been yelled at when at the driving range for not wearing a mask.  Well, there was no one within 100 yards, so it didn't seem important.  But the range attendant was perhaps more knowledgeable than I.

Ok, so we have some election decisions to make in the near future and I thought I would pass on my handy voting thoughts.

Of course any right minded person would have to step up and vote for Kamala, whoops, I meant Joe Biden.  Certainly a better choice over Donald Trump.  Let me lay out the data for those who are not keeping close track.

There are a number of things that differentiate the candidates and let's look at them in turn.

Being Mean:

Shall we start with an easy one that we can all agree on?  Trump is not presidential!  He is rough and brutish and just plain impolite, particularly towards foreign governments that we are sending money too and helping to support and to his political opponents.  Who can forget his jabs at Warren, who while claiming to be a native American for privilege and profit, seemed to be lacking in the actual DNA.  But it was mean to call her names.  Just not a good look for a President towards a Harvard lecturer - even if it's an open question that she should have been there.  Also Trump likes hamburgers - which are named after a German city - perhaps a note of foreign influence?

Health and Fitness:  Trump recently was found to be sick of the virus!  Clearly this is an indication that he probably ought to retire and play golf.  Joe on the other hand seems to be a vibrant guy who is dashing off around the country talking to the people, shaking hands, and thanking veterans for their service.  (Editor's note, it is actually Trump  who is running around the country.  Joe is assumed to be at home.)  Note that Trump's doctors have cured him in just a couple of days, but they are probably just saying that to get him out of the hospital.  I heard he doesn't sleep much and is "too" active.

Stock Market: It could be argued that a president doesn't have much to do with the stock market.  But I think reasonable people can blame this one on Trump.  Yes, the markets are up and in a big way from the boring old days of the Obama administration, but this is not the whole picture.  You have to look at the taxes!  If your wealth increases, then your tax burden increases.  Who is in favor of higher taxes?  Which leads us to the next topic...

Tax plans.  Trump has lowered the tax rates for most of us.  Some folks with more money in their pockets might assume this is a good thing, but it really isn't.  As Hillary and Bill Clinton once said, "We could have lowered taxes, but it wasn't clear that the public would spend the money correctly."   But that was a long time ago, in a land far, far away.  Biden has come out with his tax plan and it looks like the average household will have the honor of playing an additional $6500 per year in taxes.  Clearly this is a forward looking view and worth signing up for.  I'm sure the extra tax revenue will be used for the proper things and not passed on to crony capitalists who would run the programs.

Experience.  Trump has said a number of times that he sounds funny because he is not a politician.  Well, that ought to exclude him from office right there.  We want politicians in office.  They know what needs to be done and will jump right in there and clean up the problems immediately.  Biden is well respected as a pol and has held office for over 45 years.  What a wealth of knowledge and experience he has.  And of course he's been fixing things for decades, so whatever minor problems that are left to cleanup (probably all Trump's doing anyways) he will know what to do and how to do them, if we just give him one more chance. 

Which leads us to the international scene.  Joe has been a traveling guy, particularly as the VP to Obama.  He's been to China a bunch and the Ukraine numerous times.  He has even brought his son with him to make friends and learn the family business.  Now you don't get this from Trump.  He has traveled before being president - built some golf course in Ireland for example.  But now he tends to threaten foreign government and wants them to "pay their fair share" of things.  That's not how it's done usually.  The good old Uncle Sam is usually happy to reach for that check and that's how I want my tax payer dollars to be spent.  Some wag suggested that the definition of foreign aid was, "Money taken from poor people in a rich country and given to rich people in a poor country."  Obviously false -- we won't need a fact checker for that one!

Environmental Issues.  Biden is famous for saying that he will not ban fracking and that he will ban fracking.  You don't get that wishy washy stuff from Trump.  He is pro fracking and pro oil.  Clearly Biden is correct on this issue.  The use of fossil fuels has ruined the country, fouled the air, poisoned the water supply, and allowed us to move about the country in our cars and, God forbid, large trucks.  Shutting this down before the 6th or 7th great extinction is upon us is critical for life on earth.  Oh, you can try and make the case that a warm house in the winter is a good thing or air conditioning is almost a right, but you would be wrong.  We have to suffer and contract human activities if you want to save the Earth -- Biden is clearly on the right side of the history to be written on this issue.

 Supreme Court Appointments: Even if Trump has the ability and obligation to appoint judges to vacancies in a number of courts, he is going about it the wrong way.  He is once again upsetting folks and ignoring the dying wish of old Ruth, RIP.  The Supreme court should be a political and legislative body.  How else will things be decided if legislatures are too scared to act?  And even if people vote down against some issue, the courts can legislate from the bench and fix things.  It is only the short sighted person who wants a strict constructionist on Supreme Court.  Activism is so much better as long as our side is in charge - which is another reason that Trump should not have put forth a pick.  Once again he is following the law and being a meanie at the same time.

I'll bring up just one more point and then we can sit back and see what happens.  The last point is minority employment and businesses.  Trump has failed us in the the area as no president in history.  Black unemployment was, pre-Covid, at historical lows.  Which means it has never been lower.  And why would we, nay, America, want something lower?   I think that the Latino populations have this same problem.  Why any of those groups would vote against their own self interests is another mystery.

Let me close here.  I think I've made my case for a straight Democratic ticket.  I hope Joe, when elected, will be healthy and happy.  We've seen Kamala here in California and it wasn't a great experience.  I'm sure she is better now.  I wanted to bring up the peaceful demonstrations in a  number of our cities, but that's just folks who can't stand Trump any longer and find that burning businesses and causing some minor issues makes them happier. 

Finally, get out and vote!  It's important.  We have  saying here in California, "Vote Early and Often!"

Testing the New Cart

 

The morning broke bright and early. With a tee time of 9:39 there was time for coffee and Barb and I ventured to Peete's for some brew.

We ran into a coffee friend we have not seen since the lock down. He is Vietnamese and it allows me to practice my two words of Vietnamese. “Sin Chow!” is hello, it's different for a gal, so be careful!

It was cool and it's house painting week at the casa, so we parked off the block. I had packed the new push cart in the GTI and I loaded my clubs into the boot yesterday. At 8:30 I drove off to Calippi, which seems to be some sort of butterfly. I got a good parking place and pulled out the cart, unfolded it, placed my bag on it, attached straps, and off to the chipping area I went.

On the way, I had a couple of curbs to negotiate. That showed up some problems with my cart setup. Basically I needed to tighten a knob, which controlled the main handle position. The joints in the cart have modest teeth and when tightened create a mechanical lock to hold the front wheel and handle in place. But if the grip is not tight enough the cart will change orientation and you can feel and hear the clicking as the teeth slide over each other.

It was a warm day and by the time the round was over the car suggested it was 95 degrees. There was a modest breeze all day and it didn't feel too warm. Oh, I was sweating through my shirt and huffing and puffing up some of the hills, but it always seemed that it could have been worse.

There were a couple of things that I'm going to look into. The cart has a bit of a hook to it. It likes to run to the left at all times. This is not too much trouble, but it caught my attention all the time. Maybe there is a shim or something I can adjust to fix this.

Also the brake adjustment wasn't enough to hold the cart on some of the hills. I thought it wasn't working at all, but it will hold, just not enough. I'm not sure if the cable has stretched or I never had it tight enough. I'll tighten the cable and see what happens. The the problem that might arise is that the brake pads might drag and make it harder to push.

Speaking of pushing effort, I was surprised how much energy it took to move the cart along. A modest down hill is best, but too much and the cart will pull you along. On the flat it's not too bad, but it's pushing three wheels through wet, lush grass. Up hill was a workout, see huffing and puffing above. I looked for short cuts where I could leave the cart for the next hole and not go down hill then back up.

When the smoke cleared, I was very happy to have the cart. My back was sore all day and if I had to lift the bag 150 times or so, I would have been hurting a lot. I'm feeling ok right now, it's about an hour after we finished and I had a beer at the course and I'm working on a hard seltzer water now. But there seems to be little long lasting physical wear and tear. I probably won't know until tomorrow.

Thanks again to R2 for the cart1 I think I can give it some new life and few additional miles on various courses.

On Pins and Needles

I went off to the diving range to test the new swing changes.

I have great hope for this change, which was to get my hands over my shoulder where they should have been the last twenty years.  I was careful as I had some leg issues with my left leg.  It was feeling a weak as if the nerves were not firing properly.  The strength didn't feel that it was there and my tendency was to roll over the left foot.  That's not a good feeling.  I didn't hit golf balls for a week so that the issue went away..


So I wander to the range yesterday afternoon.  I spent some time chipping, which is normal for me.  If you can't hit a pitch, then you can't hit a full shot.  It's a good life motto and I've been using it for a while.  The pitching went well and even that type of shot allows me to practice getting hands on the proper plane. 

A guy on the hitting line leaves and he has left some golf balls to hit.  I'd not gotten a bucket already as I wanted to see how the pitching was going to go.  As it went well, I grabbed my bag of weapons and dashed over to claim the abandoned golf balls.  There were about six or so, but I scampered on the range to collect a couple of balls that had not been hit very far.  I don't feel that this is cheating the range too much as I feel I'm moving the balls out to an area of the range that allows for easier pickup.  So I'm really helping the range out, :-).

Normally I start with the 9 iron, then 6, then 3 wood, drop back to a sand wedge, then finish with the driver.  With just a few balls, I will normally skip the driver.  The new hand position is working well and I'm getting speed, direction, and solidity of strike.  It can't get better than this!  The 3 wood has a new sound to it.  It was not clear that the balls were going a lot further, but I was really happy with the strikes.

Being careful of the left leg, I was happy to cut the session short and start back to the car.  Then I started to get a shooting, sparkling pain in my right big toe.  It is really painful and I have to stop a couple of times as I limp back to the car.  This is not fun and I'm a little worried about what it is.  Diabetes is supposed to create this kind of pain.  I consider gout too, but I think that's supposed to be in the joint and my pain is running up the bottom of the toe.  I can't suspect diabetes either as I've had so few carbs the last six months.

I get home, the driving wasn't too bad.  I've settled in my recliner and am about to put in a busy afternoon nap, which I feel I've earned at this point.  But I get up to get some water.  It's about 89 out and I've had two sweaty sessions between the golf and two hours of pickleball in the morning.  As I get out of the chair, the pain fires anew.  I mention it to Barb who is working in the recliner next to mine.  I tell her about the pains and how sharp they are and what it might mean.  I collapse into one of the kitchen table chairs and take off my shoe.  I'm expecting a very red, unhappy toe.  But what I find is a two inch sewing pin stuck into my big toe.  A pin that Barb dropped on the floor while doing her sewing, didn't find and I picked up in a sock as I was putting on my shoes.  One of the things that gives me the willies is the thought of a needle going into my foot. 

With the pin pulled out the pain was gone.  The fears of gout subsided.  I glared at Barb a bit.  Relief from multiple fronts came together.  I got my drink.  Went back to my recliner and napped the nap of the recently alarmed, but now recovered. 

Fort Bragg wrapup

I realized that I've not described the motor home and campground we were using.  So let me do that.

In the first picture we have our car and the motor home behind it.  Note the tall pines that border the MH.  That's where the squirrel was munching and dropping stuff on the roof.

This is Barb looking out the door.  It has a screen and everything.  The length is 19 long and then there are the pop out pieces that you can see on the rear.  The pop outs are also on both sides.  The pop out gives you about three feet per pop out.  The kitchen and living area expand about 6 feet sideways and the sleeping area, in the back, bumps out about three feet. It's roomy inside.  It's a lot like a boat in that all the upholstery is heavy vinyl.  Some of the cushions are cloth.  With the damp cool weather, it never felt wonderfully comfortable.  It needed more areas to stretch out.  We would fight for the couch, the loser would end up at the kitchen table, which required better posture than I have.

 

Note grill and picnic table and some chairs.  I spent a fair amount of time in the recliners, doing some reading.  There is a corn hole game there, but we didn't use it.  Note the grill, it was just the right size for Barb and me.

 

This picture is looking towards the back of our site.  The bushes in the background are filled with doves.  The quail are all over and I saw them as close as the picnic table in the middle ground.  Over last weekend those two sites were filled with a group of friends.  They brought motorcycles and riding during the day.  At night they would circle the chairs and chat a bit.  We never wandered over to meet them - ever wary of strangers!

The drive back consists of two parts.  One is the windy road between Fort Bragg and Willetts, which is about 25 miles.  Then you have 175 miles on freeway to get back home.  Not too much traffic.  We stopped for a quick bite in Willetts and ate as we drove.

The Fort Bragg area is quite pretty and worth a trip.  There are a lot of parks and beach and cliffs there.  It would have been better without the virus warping the population.

We ran into Mike again, the guy who spent a lot of time in Switzerland before moving back.  He rode up to the coffee shop on Thursday morning as we were heading out.  He was dressed for the mist/rain that greeted us that morning.  The rain didn't last.  We stopped at Safeway for the last time to get some ice as we have a few groceries to take home.  He was cheerful as ever and remembered us. 

One of the fun things we did that worked well was to purchase a Bluetooth speaker.  I have a player that would send music to the speaker and we used that when we were painting or reading for some background music.

So that is all I have to say about the trip.  It was a nice week.  And thanks to Denise and Bruce for lending us the motorhome.

Fort Bragg 7, Wednesday

This is/was our last full day in the area.  It's about 5 pm and we are going to get some Thai food for dinner. 

The camp site is bordered by pine trees that have no branches until they are 50 feet up or so.  The squirrels are gray and one of them is in the tree above the camper and he is busy chewing through pine cones and dropping debris on the top of the camper.  He is quite energetic and they are hitting every few seconds.  It's loud.  I wonder what a rain storm would sound like. 

I mentioned in the last post that we were going to Jug Handle Reserve today.  We'll, we went to the Botanical Gardens first.  They have a lot of property and have covered most of it with flowers and other growing things.  Had to wear a mask for the most part.  But the plants were quite nice.  They had a Dalia garden that was well in bloom.  Lots of pictures there as the flowers are quite colorful and graphic:

They have a lot of trails too that wind from the gift shop out to the headlands and back.  Then a succulent garden and store and nursery.  We spent a couple of hours there.  Then headed back to the camper for a spot of lunch and a rest.  Then we went to Jug Handle.  

We walked the headlands path and then down to the beach.  Sat around there for a bit and then came back for a quiet afternoon.  

They also have a section of the plateaus that produce the stunted trees.  It was about a 2.4 mile hike to get there and we didn't have the energy to look.  Maybe next time. 

There are a lot of critters in the campground.  A mother deer and her twins came by, the doves have been flocking around and filling the bushes and then that squirrel...  He came down in a near tree and squacked at me for a time from about 20 feet.  The rest of his time has been spent in the upper tree areas and dropping his refuse. 

The weather has been pretty much a consistent, cloudy 67 degrees and no rain and the occasional fog that drifts in and out. It's comfortable, though I've not been out of my heavy fleece the entire time we've been here. 

This is the beach from Jug Handle. 

Here is Barb in the dahlias. 

Another shot of the botanical garden areas.  Very nice and worth the price if you get up here. 

I think that is about it.  We will probably not do too much tomorrow.  I'll see If I have the motivation to write up some kind of summary when I get home.  In any case, I hope you all have enjoyed this brief look at this portion of the California coast. 

Fort Bragg 6, Tuesday

There are state parks about every three miles up and down the coast in this area.  Of course I exaggerate, but there are a lot of them and they are close. 

Today we visited two of them.  The first is MacKarritch which is about two miles north of Fort Bragg.  This land was owned by MacKarritch who was Canadian and was in the lumber business.  Redwoods were felled near by and then transported to ships to be sent to San Francisco and other ports for milling and use.  

The park land runs along the ocean and there are a number of black gravel beaches.  We stopped at one and spent some time playing in the tide pools.  The we walked along a nice boardwalk that led to the headlands.  Shall we look at a couple of pictures? 

Black gravel Beach! 

Barb in the tide pool. 

Then we moved south of Fort Bragg and entered Russian Gulch state park.  They had the gall to charge us for the visit, but hey we are on vacation, so no big deal.  It was a modest $7 and that would have gotten us into any other state park today. 

We were hungry at this point and found a nice picnic spot just inside the park with an over look of the gulch.  No Russians in sight... 

This is the picnic area looking southwest to the ocean and points of land beyond it. 

Here is the view going back up the gulch and showing the bridge and beach below it.  We went down to the beach after a hike.  The view from the picnic area was more impressive. 

The picnic area led to the Headlands Trail and with some time to store our food, off we went.  The trail runs on the edge of the cliff and one could easily imagine a shift in the earth and then you were in for a long tumble.  The views were nice however and worth the life's risk:

The trail looped back to the car and was all of a quarter of a mile long.  As I said, we visited the beach next, but not too exciting and then headed out. 

Our next stop was Jughandle State Preserve, about two miles back towards Fort Bragg. This reserve also had some of the plateaued areas as seen in the Pygmy Forest.  Same causes, but they were claiming that this area was only about 300,000 years old versus the 500,000 to a million for the other forest. 

They didn't charge for this, so we are going to go back tomorrow and walk the loop and see the sights. 

We still have not found a good seafood meal, so that is on the docket for tonight.  

There are lot of quail in the campground.  Right now they are in the bushes and on the ground about two camp sites over.  Barb is working the camera.  They do a lot of flying from one spot to another and the wings make snapping sounds as they fly.  Covies of 30 or so.  Neat to see! 

OK, Jughandle tomorrow! 

Fort Bragg 5

I'm at a picnic table, the sun is sinking and a cool breeze has come up. Reminds me of the long road trip on the other blog.  

We went down to the Pygmy Forest today.  It's on the south side of Mendocino by a couple of miles.  It's part of Van Damm Park, but not that you would know it.  You don't go into the park to get to the parking lot for the forest.  You go down to Little Rivers, the next town, and we are talking a minor bump on the road.  Then you look for the airport road and follow that up the hill.  In a couple of miles you'll see the first sign for the Pygmy forest.  Once you get there it's quite interesting.  It is an area that used to be sea floor.  Over the last million years an area has risen and the seas subsided to create a small plateau.  This plateau receives very little run off from the hills around it.  The soils have been leached due to a million years of rain and the lack of run off.  The soil is very acidic, and the ground is quite hard and contains little oxygen.  Anything that grows there will be stunted for those reasons. 

The park has a raised boardwalk made of wood that wonders through this plateau.  There are six signs that describe what you are looking at.  

See the above sign for some explanation of what the area produces.  

Here is a shot of Barb with the boardwalk and the trees all around. 

We also drove through Mendocino a bit.  We didn't stop.  The town is very quiet and the stores that are open have restricted entries and exits and the usual stuff about distancing and masks.  The town is still cute, but we didn't find it compelling enough to get out of the car. 

There is a nice beach just down from town and we stopped there for a bit.  Here is a shot of some of the rocks that are outside of the beach. 

There were a bunch of kyakers going out with their guides from a commercial establishment. 

And at that point we wandered back and down to the Yolo harbor area for lunch.  We were going to have clam chowder, but "It won't be ready for an hour."  So Barb had fish and chips with a diet Coke.  "We're out of diet Coke."  OK, then some lemonade.  I broke my Keto vows and had a Macadamia Nut Porter with my burger (no bun, no fries).  The meat was good and the porter was tasty.  The dark beers are probably what I miss most on this dietary transformation. 

We then wandered back to the camper and relaxed, had a snooze and read.  We are now heating some left overs for dinner.  Of course the lunch place gave me two burgers not the one I ordered.  I may have spoken too quickly and it might have been the mask...  Hard to say. 

It will probably be a quiet evening.  I do have a pinot grigio to try, though I'm not sure it's very cold at this point. 

Mendocino 4

It's Sunday and a lot of the folks in the campground have left.  We had folks both left and right and they are gone.  There are others on our back side and they have two sites with two motor homes and three motorcycles.  They are still here. 

Today we slept in until eight, made some coffee and then wandered out to the succulent gardens.  They had a nice selection of things and Barb bought five plants and some potting soil.  Succulents require some special dirt!  Here is a picture of some of the grounds:

The owner was a friendly gal and we chatted a bit.  Interestingly a lot of the businesses up here are cash only.  Not sure why, maybe don't want to share a couple of percent with the banks.  But we have been to the ATM a couple of times.  Here are a couple more of the interesting plants they have:

Then we went down to the Point Cabrillo light house.  There was a mile walk from the parking lot.  We'd been here before.  We'd had a vacation in Mendocino and came up to see the light house.  Not sure when that was.  Our memories are getting fuzzy.  It's a cute building and they have some houses you can rent if you want to vacation there. 

There are some coves that border the light house and some of the seals or sea lions were playing in the water.  Kind of rare as they seem to just lie on the beach for the most part. 

The ocean beyond the light house has some quasi-islands, probably underwater in high tide.  Here is one view, count the sea lions! 

Then we returned back to Fort Bragg and spent some time on the lookouts by the town.  It was windy with some spray in the air, but you got a different view of what the coast looks like:

We ate our stores for lunch and dinner.  Barb threatens clam chowder for dinner tomorrow.  It was a bit cooler today and we did get some sun as we played a couple of games of backgammon on the picnic table. 

We might go into Mendocino tomorrow.  Any rush of tourist might be lessened by then. 

I think that is about it.  Barb is doing a bit of watercolor painting with some success, but perhaps more questions than answers being produced.  It's all good!

Mendocino 3

Well, it's day three here and we are settling in. We slept well and went off to find the donut shop in town.  We knew where it was, as there are about three streets and some alleys in town, stuff is not hidden. 

The donut shop had a lines running 1/2 a block long and we didn't want to wait with a bunch of possibly sick strangers.  We went down a block and found a coffee shop.  We were third in line and masked up.  Met a couple of locals on the way.  One suggested that "if we stopped voting for Isreal then all the white supremacy would go away."  He had that rough sleeper look as a number of folks in town do.  His comments, repeated a couple of times, were not directed to us or anyone else actually.  He was wondering down the street and letting folks know his bit of wisdom. 

 

We got our coffee and sat at the bench outside the shop.  Then we met Mike who came up on a bike.  He was born in Fort Bragg but was moved by his family to Switzerland for 20 years until he found his way back.  He looked to be about 40 or so.  He mentioned that he had spent some time in Oregon as we were discussing bike safety and the differing attitudes in re safety between USA and Switzerland.  He had the look of  a guy spending a lot of time outdoors and mentioned that he was glamping on some family land about 6 miles south of Fort Bragg.  Sounded like he would ride into town every day, a ride of about 6 miles. 

Mike didn't have anything to say about White Supremacy or the Jewish question.  It did seem that he had a bit of the socialist bent however.  

We went back to the same beaches we were at yesterday.  It being Saturday there were more tourists about.  We wanted to get down to Glass Beach as Barb wanted to pick up some of glass.  The beach is now off limits as apparently too many folks have been carting off the glass!  The access to the back looked like it has been eroded and seemed so steep as to be dangerous. 

The story on the beach is an interesting one.  The site is the old town dump.  And it seems they dumped refuse to old cars at the spot.  then they came to their senses and decided that it's not good to dump in the ocean.  But then the folks started to pick up the glass and basically clean it up.  Well, now that is not so good either.  It seems that a lot of the sea life found the junk and glass bits providing nutritional odds and ends.  So stopping the dumping actually caused problems with the sea life!  Who would have guessed and that cleaning it up was not a good thing either! 

Here is a picture of Barb on her chair, don't ask why her pockets are bulging! 

We grilled a couple of steaks last night over a smokey Joe webber grill.  The steaks came out just a touch overdone, but quite serviceable.  We ate on the picnic table and augmented with sautéed mushrooms.  

The weather has been between the mid 50s to the high 60s.  We are wearing fleece jackets and shorts, which is enough to keep us comfortable.  We are getting intermitten sun and I'm getting time in the lounge chair to keep my legs brown. 

We also got a blue tooth speaker at the local Radio Shack.  We been playing some oldies all afternoon.  It seems to be improving the mood as Barb has been painting and I've been reading for the most part. 

Some sea life we found, photographed and then replaced in the sea. 

Above is what the sand looks like in parts.  Note all the bits of glass with the odd sand and rock. 

I think that is it for the moment.  We might venture to the beach for the sunset tonight. 

Tomorrow we may look at the pygmy forest, which is an area with some stunted trees and trails to hike.  

Stay tuned! 

Mendocino Part two

We went to bed pretty early, sinuses aflame. The bed had a soft top and seems to be cupcake shaped. I felt as though I was rolling off all night.

But we slept in for the first time in awhile. The camp ground was quiet enough for that. Made some coffee and took some pills to loosen the sinus cavities. There is the on going debate of this is sinus problems or the deadly virus! If it is the virus, I can live with some sinus issues for a short time. 

We went down to glass beach about 830.  We have been here before, but we remember nothing. I don't think it's changed that much.

We played in the tide pools for a bit. It was cloudy and cool. The light was nice. 

It looks like you will get some pictures! The proof version of the software would just crash. 

Here is barb hanging out. We saw some star fish and other critters. The tide was very low, I'll try to get some huh tide shots too. 

It's a pretty area, for example

lots of sand and fun rocks. The beach is not very far from the headlands. 

We then went into town and got some lunch stuff. Barb needed a charger cable and we were going to get a Bluetooth speaker. I have a lot of music on a player, but no way to play except on earphones. A speaker would allow a little more sociability. Oh well an adventure for later. 

We've retired back to the camper and we snacked and are now napping and relaxing. 

I was interested in some of the local cheeses. I didn't know that cheese could good for 60 bucks a pound... 

OK more later. 

Mendocino Part 1

We are on the road, so don't loot the house please!  Friends have offered their RV for a week and we are up at the POMO campground which is a couple of miles south of Fort Bragg. 

I'm not sure I'll have a lot of earth moving news to report, but Barb just asked if "Was that an earthquake?"  "No, just an RV backing up."  

It is just less than four hours to get up here from Pleasanton.  The traffic was light with it being Thursday and all the virus going around.  Technically I think we have to self quarantine  when we get back.  No one will report us, yes?  Actually everyone up here is masking and we will probably interact with less people here than at home on the pickleball court. 

The towns along the coast do not extend much past the water,.  We are probably one half mile from it now.  The town of Fort Bragg extends about four blocks inland from the highway, which is usually the closest thing to the water.   

Lots of stores and shops here are shuttered.  I'm sure the flu didn't help the economics and tourists are a large source of income.   Add in the seasonality of it all and I'd guess some businesses just slipped away.

We had some food from Safeway for a late lunch.  Chicken off the rotissery, some Genoa salami, fruit and a pork bun for Barb washed down with some diet coke.  

We've both had some sinus issues and headaches the last couple of days, so a siesta seems in order. The last 30 miles getting here is a twisty road - - not much snoozing at the wheel for the stretch from Willett to Fort Bragg. 

OK, we are here and settled in a bit.  I'll publish and leave you all hanging for the excitement of tomorrow's post!

Changes

There have been a couple of interesting and unexpected changes due to my new diet.  I thought I'd pass them along.

About six months before I retired I started to unconsciously shake my head a bit.  This is know as a tick and it's not considered to be harmful unless you can't stop it from happening -- that's what Dr. Google says.  Most of the time I was not aware that I was doing it and when I did notice I was able to control it.  I figured that it was part of getting old and thought no more about it.

But with the loss of weight and diet changes, the tick seems to have gone away.  A friend mentioned that I don't seem to do it anymore and while I hadn't noticed it, I had to agree.

One of the things that occurs with too much insulin in the blood stream, caused by too much carb intake is that the organs and torso area become fat.  Fatty liver disease is now common among non-drinkers and even children these days.  I suspect I also had some of this.  One of the other organs that gets fat is the tongue!  I used to bit my tongue on occasion in the recent past.  Of course as it swelled due to the trauma, I would usually manage to bite it again.  I've not had a bit tongue in months.  I do not miss it, it was unpleasant.  This fattening is one of the problems casing sleep apnea and poor breathing of heavy folks.

That's the latest word from the diet front.  Now, I'm off to make some Keto cookies!

A Run In with the Hell's Angels

Hmm, do they use the possessive apostrophe?   Not important to our snippet of a story, so do not worry dear readers.

It was this morning, a Friday.  The week had flown by, it seemed like Tuesday or something to me.  I had to check my watch to be sure of the day. 

Fridays are early pickleball games.  I was on the freeway at 6:40 and heading east.  The traffic was busy.  This is not the busy direction and with the virus and all, it should have been lighter.  As a proxy for recovery, one might want to take note of that.  I was in the second from the right lane and heading down only a couple of miles.  I heard, then saw the chopper two lanes to my left.  I was going 70 or so.  The car doesn't really go much faster.

The Angel was doing better than that.  Perhaps with a devil may care attitude towards the laws and mores of a just and fair society, priding itself on inclusion and universal comfort.  But he was moving along quickly and passed me.  I'm not sure I've ever seen a real Hell's Angel in situ before.  I had a co-worker who played in a band that played in seedy bars.  They were entertaining one motorcycle gang one evening and then the word was passed that the Angels were going to arrive.  The other social group decided to vacate as the threat of non-peaceable interaction was afloat.

I moved over to the right lane and then into the exit ramp.  It's a long sweeper and dead ends at a light that you rarely catch as the cross street is a state highway.  Today was no exception and as I approached the red light, low and behold here was the Angel in the left hand right turn lane.  My lane too and I stopped behind him.

This was the chance to do a bit of studying.  He had the jacket on with his colors.  Classic Hell's Angels logo, recognizable world wide.  Then there was a pseudo Germanic world war two helmet which also had a sticker on it with the same logo.  One might expect a "Live Free or Die" sticker there too.  It it was there I couldn't see it.

The bike was a Harley, of course.  What was the old line?  "Better my sister in a whore house than my brother on a Honda."  It didn't make it to an advertising brochure, but was in general circulation at some point in my distant past.

Saddlebags - expected but not made of leather.  Looked like a synthetic, heavy nylon with a bit of droop to them.  The bike looked in good condition.  Nothing old or classical that I could see.

Moving down were jeans.  But they might not have been Levi's.  Seemed to have some cargo pockets on them.  A bit unexpected there, clean too, no wear or dirt at all.  And then finally we move down to the boots.  Surely heavy duty leather with chains and a "stomp on the world" look to them.

But no.  I'm startled.  He's is wearing some jogging shoes, trainers for you Brits, track shoes!  Not black either.  These were a surprisingly bright red colored.  High tops?  Nope, somewhat slipper like in design.  I was shocked, shocked.  Had these young fellows who fly the open road with impunity become joggers or civilized to this this extent?

Then the light changed and the turn arrow lighted and we had official permission to be on our way, to join the main road and get on  with our day's activities.  The Angel's bike made some noise at it got up to speed.  He carved into the turn and crossed a couple of lanes to head south down the highway.

My pickleball courts still lay to the east and I motored down to the left turn lanes at the first exit.  I braked gently to a halt to wait for another light change and for a few moments could see and hear the Angel move off down the road.

Catching Up

I see that I've been remiss in adding to this description of the great plague of 2020.  Let me try and catch up with what is happening and what the future in the short term might hold.

The data are still unclear as to what is really going on.  Was the lock down a good thing?  Hard to say and how would you measure it?  The official numbers in re the viral deaths are hopelessly jumbled.  So the concept of All Cause Mortality is the one number that is probably useful.

I was not familiar with the ACM until lately.  Oh, Barb has bandied it about a few times but it didn't really register with me as to its usefulness.  Then I got into some of the science being done around low carb diets and sodium intake and other factors.  Then the proverbial light went on.  In the area of epidemiology you can seek to assign weight to a variable by looking at ACM.  You group your data and then screen for something.  For example you look at sodium intake.  You hopefully are able to measure the actual amount of sodium ingested for a group, then subdivide the group by intake amount and over time you see who lives the longest.

There are problems with a lot of this kind of thing.  For example did you measure the actual intake, are the subgroups similar enough to draw conclusions, an issue might be that in one group they all smoked and in another alcohol consumption was very high or low of just different?  If you can't control these other things then you can't in good faith conclude that the mortality is due to sodium intake.

What you see with these studies is a U shaped curve with mortality on the Y axis and intake of sodium on X axis.  Your mortality is high if you have not enough sodium and lower if you have the proper amount and tending to climb as you have too much.  The bottom of a U curve can drop below the 1.0 line, which is the probability of death being "average."  If it drops below 1.0 then you could conclude that a certain amount of the sodium would be protective of life.

Sodium is an interesting one and I didn't choose it randomly.  We've been told about the horrors of salt for a long time by our health betters.   They still sell low sodium this and that at the grocery.  I understand that excess sodium intake will cause blood pressure to rise a bit and if that's a problem, then low sodium stuff may be useful and important.  But the ACM curve for sodium is quite interesting.  If you get none, you die.  Sodium is used for a lot of basic bodily functions and without it, it's certain death.  So the low sodium intake area of the ACM curve is quite steep.  The it lowers quite dramatically as the intake approaches 4.0 grams per day.  Note that this is still more than the recommended daily amount which I think is about 2.5 grams per day.  Now you might wonder how steeply the curve rises as sodium intake increases.  If you eat 4.5 are you much worse off?  How about 7.0 -- three times the recommended amount?  The actual curve, estimated, is a very small rise as the intake increases.  Basically as long as you get to 4.0, any excess is not a big problem, certainly less than not eating enough.

I just looked at a video where a doctor mentioned that there was a doctor doing research in the 60s and 70s, gave rats about 100 times the amount a person might eat, found out blood pressure was up and published.

Sadly, the federal government was looking to help folks out about this time and Sen. McGovern, see previous posts, thought the rat data was directly of value when applied to humans. So that's where the US recommended amount came from.  It seems to be complete crap at this point, but this stuff changes slowly if at all.

If you are eating very few carbs then this is important to you as a lack of insulin will cause the body to dump salt.  One of the reasons that starting a keto diet will cause rapid weight loss is this, the salt goes and then excess water goes too.  This is not always a good thing as you still need the sodium and when on Keto, you are encouraged to be busy with the salt shaker.

I seem to have gone well off the rails here.  But we were talking about Covid data and it does apply somewhat.  The news is full of officials who are classifying any death with Covid as a death caused by Covid.  Rampant rumor abound as to federal payments for Covid health issues, etc.   It seems there is financial motivation to do that.  Ok, fine, I understand monetizing death, but it does make it more difficult to craft future public policy if the data are polluted.  But the ACM will really determine if the virus caused a lot of excess deaths or not.  I did see a graph for Sweden which showed about 47,000 deaths as of June 5.  The average deaths for Sweden in a year about about 90,000.  It looks like they are above the curve a bit.  I suspect that more deaths occur in winter than summer, so there may be excess deaths there.  Sweden did not lock down to the extent of other countries.  It might have been a better response, but it is easily apples and oranges - Stockholm is not New York, for example.  But  certainly there are not three times the deaths in Sweden than in a usual year.

This is getting long and I'm not sure I have a point to make, but the above stuff has been running through my head while sitting the recliner and wishing for more general access to the world.  Pickleball is back on!  Yeah!  And I've been getting lots of golf in.  My life is back to normal for the most part.  We are still cooking a lot.  The grocery bill is huge, but the restaurant bill is tiny.  The food is better, but we have more kitchen duties.  We have worked out a routine, so the cooking and cleanup is not a big deal.  The dishwasher is getting a workout, however.

It's Getting Different

The county has put us under an eight pm to five am curfew for a week or so.  Is this adding insult to injury?  Life was starting to get back to normal for us.  Well, to be honest, it's been getting better for me.  Barb is still curtailed for most of her recreational activities.

But for me golf is a go and pickleball getting there.  A lot of the pickleballers are being very cautious of playing with "strangers" and are reluctant to split up family teams.  We are not sitting near each other.  Interestingly about four of the PBers have been tested for the virus and no one has contracted it. 

There is supposed to be 50 cases or so in Livermore with a population of about 100,000.  It's not widespread assuming the numbers are reasonably correct.

I have some golf tomorrow and I'm excited to play.  I've made some changes and they seem to be useful.  But contact with the enemy is the true test of a great plan.  I'll report back with any results of note.

So we are supposed to shelter in place.  There has been a lot of police cars positioned around the various malls.  There is an outlet mall near the driving range.  Lots of highend clothes and hand bags, etc., and there was a police car there this morning.  I don't think rioters like to get up early, so it seemed to be a wasted effort.  They probably should have been getting some sleep instead. 

No rioting or protests have happened locally yet.  The curfew is new as of today. 

As I think back on it, I've experienced a few days of rage in my life time.  Probably the first was the Democratic convention of 1968.  Then there were riots in Detroit.  As a family we were going to visit my grandparents and they lived in Marine City Michigan.  We normally drove through Detroit to get there.  It was a freeway and even with the "problems" we did on this occasion.  I don't remember being able to see any rioting debris as we passed through.

I remember the Watts riots, but I was living in Illinois at the time and remember no details.  I couldn't tell you the dates. 

Civil unrest seems to show up on occasion and we were probably overdue, if one thinks this stuff comes naturally as cycles in the climate.   The educational establishment is very liberal -- and not in a classical sense -- these days.  Are the current problems the outgrowth of this new (is it new?) slant to higher education.  I tend to think that higher education has little impact on society.  The academic life seems to be a strange one.  I've seen glimpses of this as I've followed the climate change debate.  Are the overly educated young a big part of the current troubles?   And is education to blame?  Maybe we will find out!

So that is the news.  Sorry for all the foreshadowing, the real stories are yet to be known or written.

Once More into the Well

Before I stop with the diet stuff, I want to touch on Dr. Ancel Keyes one last time.  The reason for that is I saw a title to a video on how Keyes was the guy who is responsible for the Statin drugs becoming a very big thing.

I don't know if he personally had much to do with it, but once his view on cholesterol and heart disease was adopted by the public, the medical establishment, and the drug manufacturers got busy.

In 2005 the market in the US for Statin drugs was estimated at about $19 billion dollars.  Not chump change, we could say.  What does that work out per person?  Lipitor is the most successful drug ever developed by 2003, with a sales of about $12 billion in 2008. 

All of this is based on Keyes' lipid heart disease hypothesis.

Besides the cost, there are some fun side effects with these drugs.  Muscle issues, more diabetes, and liver damage.  One might ask if they do any good.  I would answer that they do lower cholesterol.  And then I might ask back, why would you want to lower your cholesterol.  You could point to Keyes and say, there you go.

LDL cholesterol is supposed to be the bad actor.  However if you want to look at what Dr. Ali says on YouTube, you will hear that LDL is a real important item and you don't want to suppress it.  Also the older you are, the more protective all cholesterol levels are.  The higher the better.   There is no study that links high LDL with heart disease.  Dr. Ali is a cardiologist with a fair amount of experience.  Worth listening to, he is an interesting speaker. 

(High triglycerides are associated with heart problems however.  I don't know if the Statins will lower those, but a low carb diet with deal with them quite effectively.)

Dr. Ali feels that his eyes were opened.  He used to toe the default line and probably did not care much about Keyes or the position of the standard of care for cardiac patients.  He has decided that he and the standard of care and his fellow cardiologists were wrong.  In fact with the traditional treatment, he feels that doctors were actively killing patients.

The current research supports his new view.

One more factoid and I'll leave the low carb band wagon behind.  Back in the 30s before there was commercial insulin, the standard of care for diabetics was a low carb high fat diet.  When insulin became available the care changed over from diet to drugs.  There are a number of doctors who have gone back to a diet based care.  Diabetes in patients has either moved into remission or is in control, frequently with no drugs or a much lower dose.

I think that blood sugar is the motivation I had to stop eating carbs.  When I was at my last place of work they would do blood work every year for free.  Over the 10 years my fasting glucose went from about 102 to about 125, it steadily bumped up a few points every year.  There is some higher blood sugar in the family.  My grandfather took oral insulin and I think my dad had some indications of creeping issues.  I figured I was going to have to face this eventually.   Sadly I can't report the current numbers.  I'll follow up with a wellness check with the doctors once they get back to work.  However I have to think that I'm doing myself some good.  I've lost about 10% body weight and last measure my blood pressure was falling - which was another item on the rise.

If anyone is interested, YouTube is a great source to look into some of these items.  Dr. Ali is there and Dr. Anwin, as well as many others.  Search for low carb high fat or keto and lots of stuff will come up.  I watched a bunch of talks from the low carb conferences, which have been held over the last 5 or 6 years.  It's fascinating to hear the history of all this.

It's Sad, that SAD

I've promised a tale.  It will not be a happy one.  It has not ended well for a lot of people and it's a tale of government and power and long term terror.  SAD is shortcut for Standard American Diet.

We have to go back to the early 1950s and we have a guy named Ancel Keyes.  Ancel was not an MD, but held a PhD in fish physiology.  Ancel went to Italy and saw how thin the people were and what they ate and decided to look into it.  From that data and others he collected he put forth the fat intake - heart health theory.

He has a famous Seven Country Study, where he shows that the less fat a nation eats, the less heart attacks they have.  At the bottom was Italy and Japan and at the top, id est, the ones with the most heart attacks, was the US.

Interesting points about this famous graph.  There were originally 24 countries in the data, but some of them didn't fit the curve, so they were excluded.  Poor science there, you should not exclude data unless you have a very good reason and if you do exclude them, and you'd better explain why.

One of the countries that didn't make the list was France.  The French have a diet very high is saturated fat and very little heart disease.  The joke is that if Ancel had vacationed in France we never would have heard of him.  So France is a problem for this theory and to explain it, they just call it a "conundrum" or "paradox." Again with the science, if you have a confounding fact, you have to explain it or change your theory.  In this case they labeled it and ignored it.

It is true that the US had the most heart attacks.  We were in the best shape economically of all the countries post WWII and ate more fat.  Here is another cute fact: while it is true that we had more heart attacks, we also had better markers for all the other diseases!  So if you were willing to accept a heart attack, you could avoid or delay the onset of everything else.

Where did the heart attacks come from?  In those days there were a lot of smokers in US.  Smoking doesn't help your heart health.

Back to Dr. Keyes.  He, to his credit, took his theory, got some backers and ran all the way to the goal line with.  He made the cover of Time!  He affected the first wave of federal dietary guidelines.  I'm not sure, but he might never have looked at another fish.

Senator McGovern empaneled a committee and looked into diet and health.  There is a famous video clip of McGovern telling a scientist who said that we don't know the answer to diet and health.  The clip is McGovern saying that he didn't have to luxury of being able to wait for the true story.

The American Heart Association was new and they embraced Dr. Keyes and help push the narrative.  They wanted funding and backing Keyes turned into a gravy train that is running to this day.

Keyes determined the "correct" diet for Americans.  There was no basis for any of his numbers, he just made them up.  There was no experimental data for this position.  Interestingly there was a lot of evidence that refuted this theory.  There were published studies that went to the 1890s and onward that found no problems with saturated fat or any fat consumption and health.  A group of scientists did speak up, and they were fighting the good fight with all the data and the truth, but lost in the court of public opinion.   McGovern's committee came up with dietary guidelines, these were passed to other federal stakeholders and were modified.  McGovern thought that 5 servings of grains a day would be fine, but it was 7 to 11 when it came back.

And the first food pyramid was dully published and sent out to schools and became the authority to which all dietary advice must be bent.  The guidelines are reviewed every five years and while they are started to change, they are fairly intact to this day.

I can remember going to the library in 1980 or so and looking at a bunch of diet books.  I was looking for a better way to eat.  Probably wanted to lose a few pounds, etc.  I went through about seven books and they all said the same thing: low fat, high carbs, grains and breads are fine.

Some of you will remember when all of the food industry started to push their low fat foods.  As much of the fat as possible was removed.  A big problem showed up immediately.  If something is low fat, it frequently doesn't taste very good.  No one wants to eat it and if you are in the business this is a problem.  But good old American know how found the answer and that was sugar.  So we swapped out fat for sugar and carbs.  Americans swapped the fat intake/calories for carbs.  The amount of protean is about the same.  We were good little citizens and towed the line. 

One of things about fat is that when it is metabolized, it produces chemicals that make you feel full.  Think of it as being self-limiting.  This is not true for carbs.  You can eat too much and only want more.  Fruit has this feature as a survival mechanism.  Animals will eat as much as they can get and then eventually spread seeds.  It is in fruit's interest to have developed this mechanism.

So the feds ran with this food pyramid.  How has the general heath of Americans been this last forty years?  Well, one might suggest that it could be better.  We are very fat and 9% diabetic and I'm not sure that heart disease has gotten better either.

I think it costs about $400,000 per diabetic patient.  Note that about 30% of us are prediabetic...  Other countries are in this same boat.  Australia is right there with us.  This cannot end well if things stay the same.

So government made a very bad decision and to this day have not admitted to it, nor fixed their advice.  The American Heart Association is still pushing Keyes' stuff.

Try this quote from Wikipeadia about Keyes:

"In particular, he hypothesized that dietary saturated fat causes cardiovascular heart disease and should be avoided. Modern dietary recommendations by health organizations, systematic reviews, and national health agencies corroborate this."

Note the wonderful circular logic of this: "modern recommendations ... corroborate this."  Of course Keyes helped write these recommendations.  Sheesh.  Of course there are very powerful institutions blocking any changes to this.  To wit, the sugar industry, the soft/sport drink guys, etc.



There has been modern research that proves that fat is not the problem, but carbs are.  I saw a talk yesterday and the researcher was pretty sure that his data showed that fructose is an especially bad actor and there is a chemical radical released when metabolized from it that really helps cancers get on with their business.  So don't think that fruit is going to save you.

Kids are showing up with fatty liver issues.  Normally this is a disease of drinkers, but not nine year olds.  Kill the sugar, usually ingested via soft and sport drinks, and you can fix this is a matter of weeks.

So as soon as government makes a decision, then industry adopts to it and soon have a vested interest in keeping it going.  Look at wind farms and solar panels, they are not cleaner, only work when the weather is proper, never at night if you are a solar panel -- don't ask about clouds and dust and solar eclipses and grid problems - this good green stuff!  And it is, but that is federal and state money being sent to some developers.  The food industry is tightly connected to high sugar, low fat.  Changes may come, but it will be slow and there will be impediments to any changes.

So what is the answer to this type of things?  I might suggest that the federal government not get involved in making these decisions.  You eat what you want.  Set up your own schools.  Let private companies develop energy sources - if they are profitable, great, if not then we will not take a long, long, expensive bath.


One could write books about this and some have!  There are interesting stories worth looking into.  The Atkin's diet and others are banging on the door a bit and some doctors have embraced the low carb diets for themselves and their patients.  I find it convincing and they have data to prove their points.   The dietary guidelines are being modified, but very slowly.  There is a lot of damage to repair, but wonderfully a lot of folks respond and get better is a very short time with a dietary change.  Maybe we will see the day when products are advertised as "Low Carb, High Fat!"  Until then we'll always have bacon.

---

There are a lot of interesting talks by researchers on this subject.  I've watched a bunch on YouTube.  Search for HFLC or "low carbs down under" and you'll find a bunch.  See the talks by Phinney and Dr. Ali, Dr. Unwin. 

Diet Details

I wanted to write about what interesting things I've run across in re the low carb - high fat diet.

Back a few months ago it was my view of how digestion works is that we have little miners in us and that they would chase down the molecules and nutrients that we need.  For example we have to eat some iron, but we didn't need to eat liver.  These little guys would store and use what was required and pass on the rest.

Some of that is correct, but I was wrong on several fronts.  So let me lay out a simplified view of the actual symptom.  It looks like researchers have nailed all the details down to inter-cellular levels and it seems to be quite reliable.  I'm comfortable with accepting this view as being correct.

Food comes in a limited number of forms.  We have the fats, the carbs, and protean.  The body handles them separately.  I'll add fiber to that too as a separate category.

So fats have their own tube and get passed down to the colon and there you get some bile being added.  There are a lot of vitamins in fat and this is where the get absorbed.   Bile is not released in the absence of fat intake and if you take vitamin D3 for example, you have to take it with some fat or it won't get absorbed.  There are a lot of good vitamins in animal fat; a lot of them on the required list.

Proteins and fibers go through the stomach and get an acid bath and then into the small intestine.  Stuff gets extracted from there and then fiber is passed on to the large intestine.  The colon uses more of a fermentation process to deal with fiber.  Interesting point that the researchers have made is that the human system is not optimized for fiber and vegetarian food.  The gorilla is.  Gorilla colons are ten times longer than a human's.  Note their large bellies!  Basically if you are vegan or something, you are not using your body as designed.

Now the most interesting item are the carbs.  They get processed by the liver and readily get into the blood stream.  The total amount of glucose in the entire blood stream is about a teaspoon's worth.  When more carbs hits the blood stream than that, insulin is released.  Insulin in quite a material and does a lot.  It's main job is storage.  If the glucose is not needed for immediately energy or for short term storage in the muscle, then is it converted to fat and stored in fat cells.  Note that you don't get more fat cells, they just change in size as they fill or empty.

The problem is if you have too much glucose running around.  The body will keep producing insulin.  If this goes on for too long then the body become insulin resistant.  And soon after that you get diabetes.  One of the effects of this is that various cells and the brain get starved for glucose, which is the energy source.  It is suggested that a fair amount of senior dementia is due to lack of glucose in brain cells, due to too much insulin.  The insulin damages some of the cellular mechanisms which then block the movement of glucose into the cells.  The cells are starved for energy. 

The standard treatment for diabetes has been a low fat, high carb diet and more insulin.  Because if there is too much blood sugar, then adding more sugar makes sense and the same for insulin!

There is a GP from the UK who was in practice for 25 years.  He had two problems, well, three I guess.  He was a product of traditional medical schools, he was a bit of a scientist, and he became diabetic.  But he was lucky in that he had a patient who "cured" herself of diabetes.  To his credit he didn't fall back on his training, which told him that there was nothing to be done about diabetes, it was a long downhill run and part of getting older.  He looked into it being a scientist.  He had never seen diabetic remission in his 25 years of practice. 

So what was the cure?  It was just eating very few carbs.  After his research into this patient, he adopted the diet himself.  His condition is under control unless he eats bananas.  By the way, he is a very amusing and likeable speaker and can be found on YouTube, his name is Dr. David Unwin, worth the watch.

What happens when the body is "starved" for glucose?  I did mention that glucose in cellular energy material and the brain needs a lot of it.  Well, the body being an impressive multifunctioning device will take the fat out of its stores and convert the fat back to glucose as needed.  So basically, no problem!  The fat storage system is so efficient that we all have energy for a long time just in the fatty material.  There has been some research in extreme athletes who are using a no carb diet.  Some of them have less than three percent body fat, they still have lots of energy ready to go. 

Finally if the brain needs more glucose, it will convert protean to glucose.  If there is no protean intake, then you start to lose lean body mass - think of those in starvation.

As I have adopted this diet, I'm down a bunch of weight, my waist is getting smaller, I'm no longer hungry, and I really don't miss the carbs.  Having the fat burning mechanism running, as energy is needed, it is pulled from the fat stores.  So I'm not looking for the next meal.  Also what I can eat is pretty good.  Cheese, nuts, meat, cream, salads, basically anything but sweets.  It is quite satisfying and then there is bacon!  I do miss a few things.  Barb made a peach cobbler the other day and I did have a couple of very small servings.  She did a nice job and it tasted real good...

That's a bit of a simplified view of digestion, there are YouTube resources if you are interested.  Look for Unwin and Phinney if you want to know more. 

I want to talk about how the standard American diet came about.  It's a sad big government moment that should scare us all.  It's not the only one and there will be more down the road.

Golf!

Some counties are more relaxed about the end of life on earth than others.  Alameda, where I live, has a population of about 1.7 million people and we have about 1500 cases of the virus.  Let's see what that is in percent...  it's about 0.09%.  So if you engage with 100 people, no one will have the virus.  If you meet 1000 people, still 0,  let's see at what point does the pobability approach 1?  Well, maybe 10,000 people...  Seems like more than usually shake hands with in my life time.  And Alameda county wants to make sure we are all safe, as the first priority of any government is to protect the residents from any possible harm. 

But I'm not here to talk about the attitudes of the power structure of Alameda, as their view is, blessed be the lord, not universal.

I scampered off to Stockton today.  It's in San Joaquin county.  Where the Weltanschauung is a bit different.  They, properly in my point of view, see that providing golf access to the populous is not a bad thing.

Oh they have precautions.  You are separated by plexiglass from the pro taking green fees and you have to swipe your own credit card -- how vulgar!  And the range balls are free!  Well, I'm sure it's included in there somewhere.  Everyone has their own cart!  No water on the course or snacks, but one can bring one's own.

I got there an hour early and probably hit a full bucket of balls.  Then I met the others and off we went to play.  It was a nice course, well kept, nice water holes, generous fairways, lengthy, but not too lengthy. 

The downside is that the course is about an hour away and the rough was longish and I was not good around the greens.  The greens were bent grass and not very fast.  I had a couple of three putts, but made a couple longish ones.  I hit some nice shots and only one bad drive.  It did find the lake on 18, but my reload split the fairway and went 265, a highlight of the day. 

I got home and suddenly realized that I was out of gas.  The body was not up to a long day of golf and I took a cart!  I've been limping around all evening, my neck is a bit sore and I'm hoping that I'll sleep the sleep of the just.

But it was great to see the buds and get out into society again.  I'm happy to have put my life on the line a bit for those fine feelings.  Come on you powers that be, make us all once again free!

Thursday Week 4 or 5

We've lost track of time and we're not sure where we are in this experiment of social distance and biological imperative.

Twenty pounds so far, I think.  Without the stay at home stuff I would have expected another 5 or so off.  Clothes are getting looser.  I've gone the keto route and hopefully the resting blood sugar is down where it belongs.  I found the bathroom scale, so I can take some measurements.

On the 15th I paid my taxes and send the government a fairly large check.  Then on the 16th, they sent me a stimulus check, sadly not quite large enough to cover the taxes.  But I guess I can't complain unless it all gets inflated away.  I'm wondering how well the economy will ramp back up.  I expect that it might go smoothly for the following reasons.  One is that almost all sectors of the economy are equally hit and a lot of businesses had to take time out.  There were ongoing expenses, but the folks who were collecting for the expenses seemed to be taking that time off too.  So I'm hoping that every one and businesses can fire back up without too many having gone over the edge into ruin.

We are doing fine.  Barb has continued to work from home.  I think there are a lot of others who managed to do that.  Maybe on the ramp up a lot of companies will find that having employees not in the office worked quite well and they allow more of that.  Less commutes, less gas, emptier streets, etc., all are nice benefits from that.

When we have gone to the store, it has not been very crowded.  Strangely flour seems to be the item no longer on the shelves.  Everything else was there.

The chaise lounge chairs showed up today.  I've been trying to get some sun bath time in and the patio chairs we had were not comfortable.  I found some that allow comfortable postures, but they don't go flat, but they have drink rests and built in pillows.  Reading and napping should be well received with the chairs.  Not expensive so if they get us through the dark times, it will be worth it.  Now all I need are some sunny days...

What is left is to get through until California eases back to a more normal state.  It's a crazy state, so normal wouldn't happen in any case, but maybe we can get back to where we were.

Ha, funny story.  One of my pet peeves is the dumb plastic bag rules here.  You have to bring your own or they charge you ten cents for a bag.  This is to protect the environment.  What you are not supposed to notice is that half of what you buy is wrapped in more plastic than any number of the single use plastic bags -- it is just another law that allows some politician and some ignorant activists to feel good.  Of course as that started a couple of years ago, scientists pointed out that the reusable bags are a great way to spread germs and disease.  Also the environmental impact of a reusable bag is thousands of times worse than the single use bags.  And now, with the virus running the state, we are no longer allowed to use reusable bags and, of course, the plastic bags you still have to buy.  Wonderful.  I smile so wide tears come to my eyes.  Ok, it's just so sad and you'd think that grown men who have the jobs to look after us and the environment could see the truth and not do obviously stupid things.  You can put plastic straw bans in that category too.

Bottom line, all is good here.  I hope you are all doing well out there too.