Phisically and mentally my strength is decline

Mental strength decline caused no desire to write.  I have a hard time corresponding with my friends even.  My poor blog had stopped  3 months ago??!!

Even though we still have riding and walking regularly, our energy and endurance definitely declined and it takes a lot of time to recover from each event.

Why?  I can't sleep well or deeply as I used to.  In my case it take quite a time to get to sleep.

Anyway I bike, walk, paint, play recorder and piano, and do gardening.  So it's not really the end, but it is coming gradually.

I still need to clean out one room of junk.  Hope I will be better when I finish it.

The fox showed up on the deck when I was playing recorder with my friend.

I can't believe myself!

In spite of weeks long foot pain I was going to join the group hike to cheer myself up or get my confidence back.  But I wrote down the wrong date on my calendar somehow.  I still couldn't find any reason.  And the wrong date is tomorrow and the hiking event has already finished 2 days ago!!

I'm so sad, and I'm so embarrassed.

We've been thinking about something seriously lately which is very stressful.  Maybe that's why I had such an unbelievable mistake.  I really need to watch out for myself.

We haven't walked for 11 days.  We walked in twilight.  The sunset sky was pretty.

The Birthday gift made me restart

My dear friend gave me this pretty and cheerful Cloth.  I liked it so much that I put it in a frame.   Since then I started exercising and even bicycling.

Several reasons stopped us bicycling and even walking for a while.  One of the reasons was my knee problem and toe pain.  But a little by little I decided to work on that.

Any absent days for exercise  made our strength go down so mercilessly;  it is astonishing.
I  really need to keep going.  Hope this time we will work longer.

Helen Putnam regional park hiking in the group

When we left for the park, it was chilly and clear.  But when we reached the city of Petaluma, it was very foggy!
We hiked and biked at this park many times, but this was the first time to hike on such a foggy day.

But some parts of the park were fine.  

The bridge we've never noticed was on the trail of the southeast side where there is more forest and lots of poison oak sticking out.  Yeah, we've avoided walking through that.  But following the group of hikers was not bad. 

When the blue sky came out, the temperature changed completely so that I sweat a lot.
Just before we finished today's hike, the leader pointed out the back of the sky with dark gray clouds, and said rain will come.

But we dropped by the store to pick up some groceries.  When we came out of the store, the heavy rain was pouring away.  So we waited for awhile, then it calmed down, so we got into our car and went home.

What a fortunate moment in which we could hike.  We got tired and in pain, but after sleeping an hour we were fine.  We felt good.
Never imagined the weather makes our life dramatic.😉😁
 

The Sonoma Land Trust Eliot Trail

A week before, we hiked on the trail with worry about rain.  We had some showers from time to time, but we could enjoy hiking by the bay water.
Then, I realized that I had a hard time getting to sleep if I didn't have any exercise.  So this week I started walking in the morning around 2 miles to get sunlight.  It seems to be working so far.

Today I walked over 3 miles with an umbrella, and after the falling rain stopped, we biked almost 5 miles in the afternoon.

Well, hope tomorrow's hiking will be fun for us.  We both are a little worried about our never-goes-away lower body pain from walking, biking and gardening or any chore.  But at our age we should forget it and just carefully keep going.  Nobody knows how much longer we can do any exercise.   

 

A warm weather is so precious

All of a sudden warm weather came back.  
We walked, we worked gardening, and we biked.  What a precious gift we had today.  Wish it could continue more.

Nowadays Pain Always Comes Afterwards

Usually it happens 3 to 5 hours later.  After bicycling, after walking, after any stretching work.  And the second pain period comes next day.  So we are always in pain, some kind of pain all the time.

But we don't want to take any pills yet, because we are so afraid of the side effect of the medicine.
So I'm not sure how long we can keep up. 

In addition the weather got very spooky.  In the morning is cloudy, then sunny! but it just lasts 2 or 2.5 hours to change to a nasty and cold rainy miserable day all the way to night.

So we did bike yesterday and walk today during the brief moments of sun with a lot of leftover pain.

At least we have a place to live, a little food to eat.  Thank God.😷

It's a beautiful day.

In spite of left over legs' pain from the last two hikes, we pushed ourselves to ride in our neighborhood.  My left knee was already hurting at the beginning.  So I started slowly.

It was beautiful afternoon, even the plum flower were blooming in our garden.

 




The pain eased down by bicycling for a while, so we decided to ride more.

A little over one hour, 7.8 miles, our longest ride this year.
I want to go on a bike trip soon.  Where will be good I wonder...

 

Sugarloaf Ridge Hiking

We joined a Fire Recovery Walk which was held by Sonoma Ecology center today.  I've never walked Sugarloaf Ridge before, so I was excited.  
Beginning of the hike we saw the last year grass area where the fire didn't get.

 
Then, we saw so many burned areas, but also new life from blackened trees and ground.

Because of our left over pain from a previous hike two days ago, we were almost going to cancel this hike.  But we did hike and we were pleased.

We learned:
Burned tree shouldn't be cut right away, leave it as long as possible, because the tree can often recover by itself.  The life is still inside.

Controlled fire will be needed to protect nature just like Native Americans had been doing for decades.  Fire kills fungus, unwanted worms, ticks, and controls the growth of poison oak.

 

Our first time to hike on Kortum Trail

From Shell Beach, 

to Wright's beach Campground 

we walked.

 That was a superb ocean view hike yesterday.  Next day we both got aches from our toes to small backs.  But we pushed ourselves to walk in our neighborhood this morning.  A little better now.

 

A week ago hiking

It's a chilly morning again.  Just 63 years old feels so tired from cold weather, in the future how I can manage I wonder..

What a big difference, I was very energetic a week ago.  The weather was so warm and sunny like in March.  Looking back at the photos I took might boost my energy back.

Along the trail, wild flowers were giving exciting colors.

I do need to keep walking.  How about pushing myself to walk in cold morning at least around my house.  My spirit needs to be lifted. 

Tried riding my old folding bike after long time

Realizing that my body is aging and weakening made me train myself with the old heavy Schwinn today.

It was heavy before and it is still heavy today too. 
But I could finish the usual routine on the community roads.  I feel great even though I hurt everywhere.

Last year we rented bicycles in Santa Cruz, and I had to rent a children's bike because of my short height.  The bicycle handle was very different from my Novara, and I had a hard time to adjust myself even though the bike was quite nice.

So I sometimes need to ride on the one which makes me struggle.

Actually it wasn't bad as I thought it might be.  My legs are getting stronger by hiking.

Time passed so quickly.

Tried to remember and wrote.

January 26th:  Hiked 5.8 miles in the group at Doran Beach Regional Park and Birdwalk coastal access trail after years absence. Felt so great!

Suddenly the equestrian family showed up on the beach.  The little prince's head was waving away on the horse.  I was worried about him.  The horse poop left on the sand made us uncomfortable.  
I painted.

February 2nd:  Hiked  4.3 miles by ourselves at Sonoma Valley Regional Park.  Cougar Trail, Black CanyonCreekTrail, Glen EllenTrail, and Carmel Ave. to the market.  Back on Glen Ellen Trail, Valley of the Moon Trail, Woodland Star Trail all the way to the parking lot.  The steep up slopes and down slopes on the Woodland Star Trail were exciting and fun for us.  Even though we got sore from the hike afterwards.
Last October's forest fire scars are everywhere in the park, but grass on the ground has already started to grow. And we saw the buds of wildflowers.
I drew my sweet old husband on the trail.

February 8th:  Hiked 3.0 miles by ourselves at Helen Putnam Regional Park.  Ridge Trail, Savannah Trail, Panorama Trail, Pomo Trail, Panorama Trail, and then missed the turn to Arroyo Trail, then took the old Panorama Trail steep down slope all the way to the parking lot.  That was scary, because the slope was smoothed out by rain??!
Next time we should make sure to turn left a little after or around the view point.  Beautiful hills, very relaxing.
This is my drawing of my husband looking like E.T.

Pushing myself from the trauma

That was a long silence.  I just couldn't write ...  I just don't want to talk about my trauma, because it's not fun.  So I started writing what I thought next, I mean now.

Just living the time in front of me as fully as possible.

Well, we got worn out and couldn't pedal so much for a while.  We were in bad condition.  So we started walking at least.

This is our walking and biking blog now on.

I was almost going to give up biking, because it was so depressing to see that I can't pedal long enough.  
Surprisingly, after struggling with walking more often, the strength came back a little by little.

Thank goodness.