Snowy trail taking Lucky for a walk.
The kids thinking about summer on the frozen pool. 🥶😊
The new Good Day Coffee in Faribault has some incredibly good pie! Recommended if you are in the area.
I so enjoyed these articles from CJ Chilvers on personal websites and link posts. He captures a lot of what I love about my own website and why I have given my link blog a real place online. Thanks to another wonderful personal website from Patrick Rhone for highlighting these.
There are still great, independent, personal websites out there. You just have to find them. It is worth the effort. Come join us out here! 👋
As part of our Martin Luther King day we all watched Selma tonight. It is a powerful movie and a stark reminder of how recent the events of the civil rights movement are. The portrayal of Dr. King is wonderful as well.
Starting to read The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich. My book club is reading this. Looks interesting, and long. 📚
Tammy, Mazie and I were looking for a long hike today so we drove to Lebanon Hills Regional Park and hiked the Voyager Trek Loop for 5.4 miles. It was Lucky’s longest hike and she did great.
Trail selfie, with my silly looking scarf.
It was very pretty out. This was our first time hiking in Lebanon Hills but definitely will not be our last. We definitely want to retun in the summer.
2021 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Breakfast
I was able to attend the 2021 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Breakfast this morning. It was a great way to reflect on the messages of King as part of the holiday.
I was impressed that this was the 31st year of this event. General Mills took some incredible leadership in making this event happen, and in bringing diversity and equity to their organization. It was also great to see the fabulous work of the UNCF highlighted.
We watched Trolls World Tour tonight. It was fun and I liked all the music in it. Tiny Diamond cracked us up a lot. The story has very obvious messages about valuing differences told through music. Everyone liked it. 🍿
We had a John Hughes movie night with my brother and his family with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. There is more swearing than I remembered, or at least you notice it more with a 10, 12, and 15 year old watching. Mazie still liked it. 🍿
My brother Isaiah and his family visited this last weekend and on Saturday we noted the 5th year since we first met. In those five years we have gotten to know each other really well. We even took a trip to Chicago together. Our families have also gotten close and our kids have great cousin time together.
It would have been easy for us to go through our whole lives having never met. I’m really glad that we did and that we have gotten to know each other so well.
Plus it is fun that I get to be the older brother. 😋
Lucky and I at Victoria-Evergreen Park in Minnetonka.
Noticed in Streaks today that I have meditated 700 days in a row. Meditation has become a bedrock habit. It has also become a key component of my #FitByFifty missions.
Family Screen Time Review
We are trying something new thinking about our family and how we use our devices, most notably our iPhones. We all have enabled Screen Time on our devices and we are doing a weekly Family Screen Time Review. We just did our first review which went really well. We are making it up as we go. We decided to do two things, taking turns through the family at each step, parents first then kids.
- Share key data about our screen time. No judging, just data. How much on average did we use our phones. How many pickups did we have. What apps and websites we spent the most time on. The thought is for this to just be sharing and data.
- Highlight a surprise or insight. After we have all shared our data we then share a highlight or insight that we took from our data. The intent again is that this is reflecting on you, not on other peoples data. Mine for example was surprise that I spent so much time on a particularly website. During this step, we might take a further step of creating a rule or limit that will help curb that in the future.
This first week I had spent 2h 43m on average per day on my phone. My most frequently used apps were Safari, Unread and Mail. I averaged 55 pickups a day. My insight or surprise was that I spent 2h 5m on the New York Times website that week. That was more than I would want to spend. So, I created a rule to limit that website to 20m a day.
The review was pretty easy, took about 15 minutes and had plenty of laughs as well as everyone went through their data. There was some pride in high and low numbers. At worst, we gained awareness and had a discussion about the relationship with our devices. At best, we created some structure to help guide us in the future as well.
I think a key part of this needs to maintain a shared introspection. Not judging other peoples data or creating rules for them. Instead, having a dialogue and leading by example for our kids. I’m looking forward to doing a few more of these.
Bitcoin has gone crazy this year. That is more than a 10x price change in the last year, most of it in the last month! Doesn’t seem correlated to anything of measurable value. 🤷♂️💸
We take Lucky on a walk nearly every day and usually go through Pamela Park for a 1.2 to 1.6 mile loop. With the pandemic the ice rink and ponds have been very busy with lots of skaters. It makes the walk more fun to see people out and having fun. ⛸🏒
I got my Peloton “Cooldown 2020” video this weekend. I think its fun that they make these and kudos to them for making them easy to download and keep. #FitByFifty
New 60-min Peloton PR
I hit a new 60-min PR in Matt Wilpers Power Zone Endurance Ride this morning. 676 kJ versus my previous 653 kJ from Sep 26, 2020.
It was another Zone 2 / 3 ride but I leveled it up since I felt like my zone data is a little old. I need to do a new FTP test! I spent a lot of time in the higher end of Zone 4. You can see that the last 3 efforts my power faded a bit. I was definitely feeling it in my legs.
My heart rate was at Threshold for 67% of the ride and bursted into Max Capacity during the efforts toward the end. You can see I was a bit gassed as my heart rate was climbing and power was dropping in those final efforts.
It was a great ride and I was joined by a number of friends riding live as well. I’m a big fan of Peloton Live Rides, it encourages you to push and make the most of it. #FitByFifty
This seems like a moment in time worth noting. The founder of Facebook and one of the richest people in the world (also holding special shares of stock that makes him unaccountable) just banned the President of the United States from the biggest social platform in the world, with very good reason. These are very odd times.
My daughter gave me this great workout shirt for my birthday and my Fit By Fifty project. I absolutely love it. 🤩 One year to go!
