Monday, December 17, 2012

Sparky is Spinning Her Wheels

Sarasota, FL       High:  77     Low:  60

Sorry if I offended anyone with yesterday's blog. We lost a follower and I'm assuming it was because of the negativity of the blog and my personal reminiscence of events that happened when I was a teacher. Yesterday affected us all in different ways, and sorry we had to lose a follower over me remembering some stuff that wasn't the most positive!

Sparky decided to try a "Cycle Spin" class this morning. It's offered Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays for 45 minutes each session..WOW! What a workout! (Eldo says she can barely walk after doing it.) HA!  Sparky is ok....just whupped. Interesting class...never done one of those before. The instructor was very motivating.....she had great music to keep us going. You dial the tension on the bike up and down to mimic climbing hills and inclines, and you dial the resistance WAY back to practically nothing and pedal like crazy when she says, "Now SPIN!"  What Sparky didn't realize was you had to turn the dial a LOT to get tension increased on the stationery bike. The instructor would say, "Gimme some HEAT!" which meant add resistance to your pedaling, turn the dial. Sparky turned the dial and couldn't tell any difference. She'd look at the dials on the bikes of her neighboring exercise riders and put her dial in the same position. What she didn't realize was that they had turned the dial at least two rotations to get more resistance. For the first ten minutes of the workout, Sparky thought, hey, this is a piece of cake! She figured all that bike riding this summer had really paid off, and she was in shape! HA! Little did she know!
After class and still able to smile!

Finally, she thought she wasn't seeing any difference in pedaling, something wasn't right and the gal next to her said, "You might want to turn the dial a LOT more and see if that helps." Oh, yeah! Now Sparky was starting to sweat up a storm and breathing HARD. You change positions a lot during the spin/cycle class. You stand up and pedal with strong resistance, you sit down and pedal, you lean way forward like on a racing bike, you work your core and side waist muscles, you bend, you stretch and ride without holding on the handlebars (Sparky decided to hold on with one hand or maybe she would have fallen off!) You do figure eights with your body. The music was funky and fun and Sparky really enjoyed it...She's going back in a few days when it's offered again....After soaking a few days in the hot tub! Eldo could tell Sparky had a good workout because her face was beet red!

An uneventful day the rest of the day today.....errands.. listening to acoustical guitar music down by the pool this afternoon for a couple of hours...knitting ornaments like crazy for little trees for when the family comes next week....She found 4 little trees on clearance at Michaels for 3.50 each and thought this would make it a little more festive to have a little decorated tree in each of their rental places.

Sparky is going to have a little mini tree decorated with all hand made knitted ornaments for each family. Sparky LOVES to make stuff! (As the full cupboards in the rig testify to that! laughs Eldo.)

9 comments:

  1. Just love those little mini ornaments :)

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  2. You got your work out finally with a little help.

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  3. I enjoyed your post and it really made me think about it from your point of view. It may have had nothing to do with loosing a reader. I have lost readers to my greyhound blog and assume they could just be clearing out the blogs that they no longer are interested in. I do that from time to time. You can't please everyone all the time. :-)

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  4. Being a retired teacher (and one who just accepted a position to finish the year for a friend who is changing jobs) I found your blog to be a true reflection of what goes on in schools. It isn't always pretty, but it is so worth it. I appreciated your posting from a teacher's viewpoint.

    Love the little ornaments!

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  5. Followers come and go. At least mine do. Darling ornaments.

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  6. Those ornaments are ahhhh-dor-a-ble. . .and that spin class looked like work. . .good for you!

    Janice
    ReadyToGoFullTimeRVing Blog
    FaceBook.com/ReadyToGoFullTimeRVing

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  7. The blog from yesterday was about red tide and seashells. What's negative about that? Guess I don't understand people.

    JC

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  8. I agree with Jim and Sandie. Followers come and go. Likely it had nothing to do with what you said which was from the heart and I can't see why anyone would take offense. Mine come and go too. It's ok. I just wish more would comment so I could get to know them. I have about 6X the followers as I have commenters.

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  9. Love your story about the spinning class. I did one once and was sore for a few days. Regarding your "sad day" blog, I also think you captured the reality and history of gradual changes in the classroom quite well. I was lucky to teach my whole career in a district that never had any school violence, but we were only 45 minutes away from the shooting in Springfield, Oregon. These events always seem surreal to me, but I think Newtown is a game changer. My grandma used to always say, in broken English, "the bucket fills up." On a brighter note, the hand knit ornaments are precious.

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