Quitting smoking hurts your legs

I gave up smoking just over a year ago. One year and 4 days ago, to be exact.

It's been a pretty cool year. Despite putting on a little weight, I've felt a surge in my sense of health and well-being which you would naturally expect to result from stopping the routine and willful poisoning of your body.

The quitting, however, did have a natural flow-on affect on my sense of overall health. I realised pretty quickly that smoking was just a crutch to excuse quite a lot of unhealthy life choices in recent years: poor diet, lack of exercise, horrible sleeping patterns, binge drinking and regular intoxication by other substances. I'd actively resisted attempting to fix those other things by hiding behind the fact that I was smoking at least a packet of cigarettes a day: it didn't matter how fit I became, or how balanced my diet was, I was ruining any positives by that rather large negative - was my thinking. Without the cigarettes, I know longer had a convenient bunker to hide behind.

So I joined a gym, I focused my attention on my diet and I sought to remove some aspects of my personal habits which were doing me damage. I also bought a bike. I rediscovered this machine as a relatively exhilarating way to exercise and commute. I vigorously explored the city bike paths on weekends, and often found myself wanting more. A lot more. And so it was in this frame of mind that I accepted workmate Mick's invitation to go actual mountain biking last weekend. My gym sessions were going very well, my bike had been recently serviced and I was feeling relatively invincible. And, since my mountain bike hadn't yet actually tasted anything near a mountain in its life, I figured this would be a great way to celebrate my one year no-smoking anniversary.

We trekked down to Daisy Hill on Brisbane's southside and quickly got into the rhythm of things. The first 10-15kms was relatively polite, as I traversed muddy tracks, craggy paths and pot-holed speckled firetrails. It was great to be in the outdoors and I could feel my confidence beginning to soar with every narrow miss, with every drop negotiated and with every rock ridden over without it resulting in my face assisting in my breaking. It was in this spirit that Mick suggested a final trail - more of a "technical route" that a "fast and scary". Sounded fine, I reasoned, and so we made the way up the red-mud clad hill to the top. "See you at the bottom" he called, as we begun the descent down the very narrow muddy trail.

The track was very narrow, with trees and rocks closing in on both sides. Often the trail was only big enough for your tires, not allowing any room for error. A steep hill fell away on the left for a lot of the trip. I traversed a few tricky corners and crags, and my confidence was reaching its zenith. Rounding a rather fast corner, I spied a deviation in the trail ahead - a purpose-laid path of relatively flat stones was gouged away on the left hand side by hundreds of bike tires slipping off. As is often the case, I focused on where I did not want to go - the sharp edge of a stone which dropped off steeply on one side. The focus did nothing but guide me into it. With both hands squeezing the brakes for dear life, I had no option and closed off my mind as the sickening thud of the tire on the sharp rock signaled a spiraling entanglement of my body and bike. The result was a bruised knee-cap and graze on my left knee, and rather deep scrapes on both thighs. These scrapes have manifested itself into two pretty impressive blue/yellow bruises:



Shut up! This camera sucks and it doesn't really do them justice. They're huge bruises! Certainly the most impressive I'd had as a result of physical exertion for some years (as opposed to bruises gained from sheer clumsiness or the like, which are relatively common). Bruises aside, it was a pretty bloody darned fun way to celebrate such a milestone and I can't wait to do it all over again. I think I'm hooked to this exercise-y stuff.

One of those funks

Commenting over at a friend's blog just now made me realise something - I've been a little bit out of the blogging loop. And I promised this one would not become another of those started, not continued numbers. Plus, I should really get back into the rhythm of writing again.

It's not that I haven't had much to talk about. In fact, life's pretty 'interesting' right now. And my head is teaming with a swirling soup of fantastic ideas which may simply be blog stories in the future, but may also be the seedlings of something larger.



I've completely changed my way of living in the past couple of months. Part of this whole 30s/looking after myself/being healthy thing which began about 10 months ago with giving up smoking. I've joined a gym (and still regularly attend!), I've had some personal training and am keeping a food diary. I have no burning need to lose heaps of weight (although some would be nice), but I do have this strong internal feeling that I haven't really been all that healthy for the past 30 or so years, and it's time to turn that around.

That in itself is pretty monumental. By nature I'm a fairly sedentary creature, so being fit and active is a 180-degree turn. But that hasn't been the be-all and end-all of my activity lately. There's an edgy feeling around my workplace at the moment, with whispers and rumours flying everywhere. Suffice to say, with 5 years under my belt at this workplace, I'm a little excited and a little apprehensive about what the future may hold in that regard.

Add to that a renewed musical activity, which is keeping me busy at least 2 nights a week. Nothing too ambitious or thrilling - just a loose collective of 4 mates with a semi-decent grasp of their instruments getting together to belt out a few numbers after work and on weekends. It's been good to get that creative outlet up and running again.

It's been a pretty cool couple of months, actually. A sort of rediscovery of myself in a way. For the past couple of years, my life's focus has been on the complicated and time-consuming elements of conducting a long-distance relationship, then the visa hassles, then the wedding drama and then just settling into coupledom life (can't believe our first wedding anniversary is this Monday!). It's been really enlightening to spend the past few weeks turning a little bit inward again and finding the joy and passion with those purely "me" things again.

And now tapping back into that writing vein... wonder what this will bring. Hopefully not a heap of boring diary entries like this one. But thanks for indulging if you got this far.

Right now, I'm intrigued by shuffle on my iPod. It's really loving Alex Lloyd tonight. Strange.

For the love of God: Don't Look Down!

It's amazing how quickly you can get immersed in the intricacies of a culture, isn't it? At the beginning, you take your cues from the status quo - observing the accepted behaviours and mimicking them in an effort to be accepted. Yet, you (and doubtlessly most others) don't know why the "norms" were established, by whom and for what purpose. Yet we strictly, almost religiously observe them... why?

Take the gym, for example. Having lived the "rock n roll" lifestyle for most of my teens and 20s, the introduction to the 30s (and marriage) brought on the Great Girth of Contentment. So much so, that I took the drastic measure a few weeks back to join the local gym. I've never been to a gym outside of a feeble attempt with the sticky-floored "gym" at high school. And, somehow, I don't think it's ancient, rusting bench presses and dumbells really qualified.

With gusto I take on this new role of gym-junky and I quickly get into the rhythm of the place. I barely acknowledge the door bitch as she swipes my card and unlocks the turnstyle to grant me access. I go about my workout with great pride and regimented discipline - wiping down the machines with disinfectant (for the "comfort of other patrons", you see?); taking the weights off the machines after I've finished (for the "convenience of other patrons", you see?); and I carry my sweat towel and water bottle like my life depends on them. Oh, and I am constantly aware of my "own body odour" for the "comfort of other patrons" (which I find weird, because if I'm being asked to be aware of my own body odour, then surely it's just for my benefit??).

It's back into the locker room at the end of the workout where the real social rules kick in. I learned early on, through trial and error, that your eyes need to stare resolutely forward at all times. Your head must be tilted at the precise angle to make it clear that in no way are you even glimpsing, even out of the farthest corners of your eyes, that naked butt or floppy wang just over the way. Your intent must be kept firmly on your own task at hand, even if that means intently concentrating on the precise tying of your shoes into a neat double bow. Anything to stop your eyes from being drawn to the chiseled crack of an ass just to the right of your head.

Now, anyone who knows me will agree that I'm in no way a prude. I'll take any opportunity to oggle a nice willy, as much as a nice bouncy cleavage. And, with my gym being smack bang in the middle of a predominantly gay part of town, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the social mores may have been relaxed slightly in the locker room? Not so, and I find myself plunged back into high school and the outright fear of being caught catching a glimpse at some other boy's tools and then being singled out as a "fag!".

You can imagine my surprise, then, when a guy opened a conversation with me in the locker room tonight. Even though we were both fully dressed, I was mortified that this dufus had broken the golden rule and had started an actual conversation! How dare he? Did he want to get us both labelled as "homos"??!?! My horror, however, quickly turned to disgust at myself, as I realised how quickly I'd succumbed to the enforced social mores of such a stuffy place. Any other part of the world, and this gent's openness and genuine interest in his fellow being would have been endearing, and yet here I was silently condemning him.

It got me to thinking how quickly one can be swayed by the social mores around them. Sure, a gym is probably an intense microcosm of peer pressure and rules, but I can count at least 4-5 other social situations in my day in which my natural way of thinking is overruled by the social rules of the place. On the train on the way to work. At the line up in the 7-11. At the toilet block at work. And here I was thinking I was a strong-willed individual...