Lucky Charms & Mr. Miyagi

Since I started off this week feeling like the energy had been completely drained from my body, I figured it might be a good thing to give myself a week to take it easy with the exercising and counting points, and have some relaxed, no worries kind of fun.

I am proud to say I was tremendously successful in this endeavor. While I still worked out 4 days this week, it was also a week full of Lucky Charms, an ice cream cone, Coronas and late-night karaoke. So, it's true that I may not have figured out the balance thing by tipping the scales too far the other way (no pun intended by the way, but that's obviously a subconscious confession to the fact that I am not looking forward to stepping on the scale on Tuesday). But that's okay with me because I had a blast while I was doing it. Might as well get a little break in now, because the next month (28 days to be precise) is surely to be one in which I push myself the hardest. Might as well go into it with a re-energized state of mind.

Given that we were both not up for another killer bike ride like the one we took last week (which honestly left me exhausted for 3 days), my brother and I decided to take a quick bike ride and run. I already knew that my energy level was low so there was no real goals for this time, just to ride. Except, my brother did remind me again that I need to stop braking down hills, because I need to take advantage of the speed. Yes, I brake when I go down hills. I get scared! I don't really know why I'm such a wimp. But yesterday I did manage to not break down one big hill, so despite having low energy levels we did manage to accomplish something!

In a moment that will remind us all of how clutzy and athletically-impaired I can be, when biking up a hill earlier, the capri pants I was wearing got caught in my bike and ripped.

Thank goodness that I managed to get out of my toe cages and off my bike, because I could have just as easily tipped right over. That would not have been any fun at all. I tore off the piece of my pants that was hanging in shreds so it wouldn't get caught again, and being the resourceful guy he is, my brother fashioned it into a totally awesome sweatband a la the Karate Kid.















You see the resemblance, right?

Except he's more like Mr. Miyagi, because he's my teacher, reminding me what I need to learn, teaching me how and challenging me even without meaning to, in my effort to keep up with him. And as it turns out, the real Mr. Miyagi also has some lessons I could use:

Miyagi: What matter?
Daniel: I'm just scared. The tournament and everything.
Miyagi: You remember lesson about balance?
Daniel: Yeah.
Miyagi: Lesson not just karate only. Lesson for whole life. Whole life have a balance. Everything be better. Understand?