I recorded a little video for GeekFit, (the podcast I do with my friend Steve Klassen) showing off my unicycle skills. Check out the video below. You can read about what got me into unicycling again in my previous post: Re-learning to unicycle

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Back when I was a kid I did all sorts of things to keep myself entertained, here’s a quick list:

• BMX Bikes
• Mountain Bikes
• Pogo Sticks
• Scooters
• Rollerblades
• Skateboards
• Unicycle

Unicycle?? Really? Tell me more? Somehow in my preteens we acquired a unicycle. It was a Schwinn and it was a pain in the.. well, inner legs to be quite honest. The seat HURT and I mean HURT a bunch, I’d have rashes and bruises in my inner thigh near my groin area due to how crappy this seat was made. It was as if they took the back of 2 Schwinn seats and smashed the fronts together to retrofit this seat. I bent the areas that hurt me as much as I could but it still hurt me quite a bit. I learned to ride the thing by holding onto my closed garage door and ride back and forth. Later I learned to free mount and then I got a bit into jumping bit not much. The unicycle was pretty hard to work on and I didn’t have the proper tools or know how to fix it. Changing the tire was a pain in the butt since none of my friends or I knew how to take the wheel off.

Fast forward 15-20 years later and I’m watching the morning news recently and some guy named Terry “UniGeezer” Peterson was on KTLA morning news showing off his impressive skills [Youtube vids] … and modern Unicycle. After seeing the program I was hooked and started researching out the perfect starter unicycle for my height and weight. The one thing that made me happy was that they redid the seat and that the technology was there to make a unicycle more enjoyable to ride. I searched Craigslist and ebay and all sorts of places to see what the correct one would be for me to get back into the swing of things with a unicycle. I knew I wanted a 24″ Torker LX since the seats are good and they are built tough enough for my price point. I didn’t want to spend a fortune on something I may just give up on 10 mins after failing to ride the damn thing. Me being a cheap bastard I looked and looked and looked and had a hard time finding one for under $100 until I found one on Craigslist stating it was a 24″ Torker LX for $65 and the current owner didn’t know how to ride it and gave up. She said they had one other person interested and “if the hippy doesn’t come through we’ll call you and you can buy it from us”. Days went by and nothing, no call or email. I event emailed them to inquire on the status and nothing. Out of the blue I get an email saying if I want it I can come pick it up in Hollywood. So I headed there located the building and had a hell of a time finding parking. Once I arrived the persons mom I was buying from met me at the elevator with the unicycle. I looked it over and and was pretty happy except that I noticed it was a CX and not a LX it also lacked the handle on the seat I wanted too. I tried it out and thought, for $65 bucks its worth buying to mess with. I took it home and gave it a go and MAN did my legs hurt after doing just 30 minutes of riding.

Memorial day weekend I took the unicycle to the park with Jessalyn and we rode around the tennis court. I on the uni and Jess on her scooter. We raced around the tennis court until she was too tired to continue so we went home and she took a nap. I went out front and tried to free mount the unicycle without the assistance of any walls or other objects to help me I gave up after 45 sweaty minutes not able to mount the uni. We had a bday party to attend and Jen suggested I bring the unicycle since the kids grandparents might get a kick out of me attempting to ride the thing. I think I did quite well so we recorded a bit of video showing my progress. I also talked about me picking up unicycling again on the latest GeekFit Podcast.

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Steve and I relaunched GeekFit this week, we’re both looking for motivation and it looks like us yapping it up is the way to go. I’ve been working on hacking up the site design and making sure all the podcast directories know we still exist. See, its been 7 months since we last hit record on that podcast and well, the RSS feed has dried up. Some of the directories have been doing their cleaning and have dropped us. What sucks is that I spent 3 days listing us on every podcast directory out there. I really don’t want to do that again.

My wife is pleased that I actually talked and carried my own weight on the show. In previous episodes I was kinda on the side with Steve running the show. Now that I have a few podcasts going I’m more comfortable behind the mic and don’t mind making an ass out of myself. Give us a few more episodes and we should be a pretty solid show.

If you haven’t checked out GeekFit or have no clue what I’m taking about click the link below and press the play button on the website. The show is < 30 minutes long and should be easy to work into your day

GeekFit Podcast #22 [Feed] [iTunes]

Thursday I woke up with a sore shoulder and neck. I didn’t think anything of it until I woke up this morning with it hurting even more. I couldn’t stand it any more so I called my doctor and had them fit me in. Unfortunately it was 10:45am and they made the appointment for 11:00am. I took lunch early and high tailed it to the doctors office. I got there just in time and found out that I jacked up my rotator cuff. i got my meds and headed back to work. Unforunatly I didnt know how well my body would take he meds so I planned on taking them when I got home tonight. When I got home Jen took off to Chris’ football event and I med’ed up and chilled. Since I’ve never have taken muscle relaxers before I was expecting to get all jacked up and not be able to function. That wasnt the case, nothing happened and my shoulder didn’t feel any better. At first I thought something was happening but i think it was just my mind playing tricks on me. I think I’m going to call the doctor tomorrow and see if its ok to up the dosage or something.

Tomorrow Steve and I plan on recording another GeekFit, we plan on discussing a new website I signed up with today called Traineo. Check out the episode if you wanna know more about the site.

Today is another one of my brothers court dates an I took off work to attend it. Quadrent.org has the info if you want to catch up.

Today they may make a deal for him, were not 100% sure but I wanted to be there just in case to show him some support. I’m the only one that will have gone to one of his court dates that he knows or is related to him for that matter.
Anyhow I spent the night at my moms in norco instead of driving from my house this morning. It was a good idea but the bed sucks here, at least I won’t have to drive far to riverside.

After all of this I’m off to work to funifg the rest of the day.

Wow I wrote this entire entry on my blackberry 7100i and with very little typos even with this goofy keyboard it has.

I’ve been using SparkPeople.com for about 4 month now and I thought I’d tell you a bit about it.

SparkPeople is a website to help you keep track of your food intake and physical activity and help you with the calculations based on the data you input. The site has a decent amount of food in its database, and as more people use it more data is avail to the general population on the site. This way if your the only one that eats Product X you would be inputting the data into the website so the cals and other stats can be tracked. When someone else eats this Product X you will save them from inputing the data again since its already in the DB. They have a “SparkPoints” system where they reward you with points for different tasks you complete daily (food intake, exercise, logging into the website, posting in the message board and drinking at least 8 cups of water a day). I tend to go to the site as soon as I get to work after checking my email. The site is quick to access and use, and it takes me only 3 mins or so to put my workout data in. You can also track your weight and measurements too. They provide you with a downloadable measuring tape so you have no excuse to quickly measure yourself.

SparkPeople.com is good stuff, and if your like me and hate to do the math and keep track of stuff, this site makes it quick and easy to get these tasks done with little effort.

Get a Free Online Diet

I thought I’d give a lil update on my weight loss. At the end of February I started at 260 lbs and as of 5/30 I’m weighing in at 245 lbs. Above is a chart I generated using SparkPeople.com which is the website I use to keep track of my progress.

Steve and I are still doing Geekfit.com (we’re going to be doing last weeks podcast sometime this week). We use the podcast to discuss our weight loss techniques, our food intake, and our workout routines. If you haven’t listened to our podcast please give us a try.

Friday after work I went and had my RMR (rested metabolic rate) tested at my 24 Hour Fitness. I went and bought the BodyGem attachement (by healthetech) for $19.99 and met up with the personal trainer to begin testing. She took me into the back room where they do the testing (so you don’t feel as if everyone is looking at you). We sat down and discussed the test, then she calibrated the machine and put the part that I bought onto the end of it. She told me it should take anywhere from 5-10 minutes of my just breathing normally until the machine would beep. I pinched my nose with the supplied pinchers and began the 10 mins of breathing. 8 mins into it the machine beeped signaling that the test was complete. She read the results: RMR: 2160 calories per day. She then took my measurements and did the pinch test for body fat and then calculated the results: Current weight: 251, 30% body fat, 75 lbs body fat, 176 total lean mass, ideal body fat 20%, 25 lbs needed to lose to reach next milestone.

From what the “Body Fat Chart” states I’m “unhealthy” which is Body Fat %: 22+. Fair is 18-22, Average: 15-17, Lean 11-14 and Very Lean: under 11.
For reference, I was 12% body fat my senior year of HS, but I was also a twig.

It took a bit of effort (and a kick from Jen) to wake up at 5:45 this morning. Lucky I prepped my stuff this last night so I just had to change clothes and grab my stuff and go. I ate 1 cup of cereal this morning so I have something in me before I worked out. I did the circuit training which is suppose to be 25 minutes, I ended up taking longer to learn the machines, and didn’t do them 2 times each like I was suppose to. I end up doing some other machines to get a good mix in. After that I went and tried the elliptical machine again. Man, I suck at that machine still. I gave up on it before i killed myself or embarrassed myself more and did 30 solid minutes on the recumbent cycle which was a pretty good work out. I headed back home and got ready, then took off for work. I got here at 7:15 (rain + 66 mustang with crappy brakes = accident waiting to happen).

I woke up at 5:45am this morning. Typically I wake up at 7-7:15 to get ready by 7:45 to get to work by 8ish. I was rushed every morning and I’m glad for this change. So 5:45.. I ate a bowl of raisin bran cereal then took a water bottle, towel, pda + headphones, and granola bar and headed to the gym by 6:00. The parking lot looked like they were having some sort of sale. Many.. many cars in the lot and as I walked in the gym was filled with people doing all sorts of things. Last night was the polar opposite of this morning. Last night there were maybe 10 people tops most of them were doing free weights. Today everyone was either “spinning” or doing running and other cardio. I followed suit and climbed on onto the treadmill and hit quickstart. 30 mins later I gave the eliptical machine a try, man.. that a bad idea. For one I felt weird on it, I’m a decent sized guy.. 6’3″ and most of it is legs so I have a larger than normal stride. This machine made me feel like I had to change my stride to 1/4 of my normal. The grandmother like person next to me was working the shit out of the machine and I shook my head and said “I’ll give this a try later” she nodded and smiled and I headed to the StairMaster which was more up my alley for now. I did about 2 minutes on this machine and around 6:55 I got cleaned up and then headed home. 7 am and I hopped into the shower cleaned up, dressed and saw that Jen was awake and making lunches. I finished getting ready and by 7:10 I had no idea what else to do but play with Jess a bit and watch the morning news. I actually got to work on time this morning which on most days I do, but today I walked in awake, chipper and ready for my day.

So, now what? Whats my plan? I’m going to do this every morning this week and do 3 days a week cardio only and 2 days a week cardio plus 30 minute circuit training they have setup there. My first goal is to work up my stamina so I don’t get floored while working out. Once I have that I think i’ll be able to do more intense work outs and not get tired as quickly as I did today. I worked out for the solid 45-50 mins that I set aside this morning, but since I haven’t worked out in quite some time I got our of breath fast even with very little pushing that I was doing. I’m thinking the conditioning that I’ll be doing will fix this up in no time.