The weekend was full of discoveries. This was the longest motorcycle ride hubby and I have been on so far. We discovered that 450 miles is too long to ride in one day comfortably. I discovered my feet were really swollen after riding for all that time. We stopped every 1-1/2 to 2 hours to stretch and stuff, but by the time we got to where we were going, we were pretty pooped and achy. We discovered some new friends. Most of the folks there were single guys, or if they weren’t single, they didn’t bring their wives. There were just five women and about 25 men. We hooked up with another couple for our Saturday ride. We only did 200 miles that day and rode along the northern California coast and through the Redwood Forest. It was just beautiful. And those trees! They are so huge! We even saw a brown bear lumbering across four lanes of Highway 101. Deer and raccoons I was expecting. Not a bear! We also discovered a gravel trail for about four miles. That was pretty dicey riding, especially on our big touring bikes. It was definitely a dirt bike kind of trail. But we made it okay due to the amazing skills of our husbands. We dreaded the long ride back on Sunday. It took just the same amount of time to come back the 450 miles as it did to get there. But it was fun. The weather couldn’t have been better, either.

I didn’t do too badly on the food issues. Snacked on jerky, fruit and Boomibars on the way down. The restaurants, once we got to Crescent City, were really bad. I think they all used the same distributor. You couldn’t order a piece of fish that wasn’t breaded. The first night I had sturgeon with a horrible raspberry sauce, salad bar and vegetables. I scraped off the sauce and breading and ate the fish. At least it wasn’t over-cooked. The motel we were staying at gave free breakfast with the price of the room. I stuck with the scrambled eggs, half a little sausage and just a tiny dip into the hash browns. Lunch was a spinach salad. And for dinner I ordered a prime rib instead of breaded fish again. The only avoids I ate were a piece of bread and a cup of clam chowder. We may have had a bit more to drink Saturday night than usual, but it was such good company and fun!

So, now I’m waiting for my poor feet to get back to normal. Hopefully by tomorrow most of the fluid will have moved on out. I’m drinking lots of lemon water to help it along.

Hubby and I are getting ready for a long weekend trip. We’re going to motorcycle down to Crescent City tomorrow and meet up with some other BMW enthusiasts from this part of the country. We’ll probably do some riding around the Redwoods on Saturday. Then we’ll ride back home on Sunday. Mapquest says that it will be 442 miles to Crescent city and it will take a little over seven hours to get there. We haven’t taken long rides like that for a long time. I hope I can stay awake. I tend to doze off sometimes on the back.

Of course, along with a change in routine will be all the eating challenges that go with it. I bought some beef jerky and cherries to take along. I also will take some Boomibars. If I can graze on those, then hopefully when we get to restaurants I will be able to make sensible food choices. There won’t be any chance for exercise while riding on the back of a motorcycle, so I’ll want to watch my portion intake.

These are my plans......I can’t promise that I’m going to follow through with them, though.

I’ll get over it.

It’s my turn to sit at home and do the “wait for the repairman” duty. Our cable internet access goes down between about 11:00 am every morning till about 4:00 or 5:00 PM every day. Then it is fine for the rest of the evening. It is very annoying if I am trying to do stuff at home. It annoys the rest of the family, too. It went down at 10 am today. The repair guys were supposed to be here between noon and 4:00 PM. I had to cancel my Pilates session. So, I got a call that said they weren’t going to make it till after 4. So, here it is, 4:30 PM and guess what…. I have internet access! They are going to get here and there isn’t going to be any problem. They’ll think I’m some batty old woman who needs attention from cable repairmen.

Played golf three days in a row this weekend. It is definitely the weather to drop everything and get out there to hit the links as much as possible. My scores are not coming down. I must be patient. I must use my core more while swinging. I need to stop thinking I can do things that the pros can do!

The anti-inflammatory herbs seem to be doing the trick on the hip. The pain is much less today, even after three days of golf. I’m icing a lot and stretching a lot, too. I’m thinking the warm weather is also helping.

No new thoughts about foods right now. I’m still maintaining a good semblance of compliance. I did indulge in a couple of vodka tonics yesterday (corn syrup in the tonic – avoid). Warm weather demands that sort of thing.

The weather has finally turned! Yesterday I was able to leave the house in the morning without wearing a jacket. It is supposed to be 85 degrees today. Hurray! I have to write this blog from the store, as my home computer is in the upper story of the house, and it will be too hot up there to enjoy computing. But not too hot to enjoy sitting on the back porch and enjoying a refreshing beverage. (Reminder to self: try to find tonic water without avoids!)

Anyway, when I visited the chiropractor on Monday, she said that all my symptoms point to an inflammation in my hip. Things like, the more I exercise, the more it hurts. And she could feel the fluid pockets around the painful area. So, I’m putting ice on it as much as I can. Okay, that was three days ago. It wasn’t until this morning I had the “Doh!” moment. I finally remembered my BTD Encyclopedia that has all the protocols for conditions in it. So, I looked up the anti-inflammatory protocols. Naturally, I didn’t have any of the remedies on hand. But, I jotted down all the remedies for the B type and was able to find every one of them at my local HFS. I also bought a bottle of bromelein with quercertin that was in the 75% off bin. I can’t wait to get home and open the bottles up!

I’m still hanging in there on the compliance train. I did take a quick pit stop on Friday, though. We had a restaurant meal, and the oysters were calling to me so loudly that I succumbed. Only ate half of them, though. Every once in awhile I need an oyster fix. The rest of the meal was compliant. On Saturday I played a rare early morning round of golf with the girls. I hate early morning golf….but someone talked me into it. I hope I’m stronger and can refuse the next time. I live farther away than most of my golfing buddies, so I have to get up earlier. I played like $%$$##@#. I’m really struggling with the game right now. It’s really hard to stop and take one shot at a time. It’s kind of like BTD. You have to slow down and choose your foods/golf shots wisely, or you get yourself into big time trouble. I think I do better at the BTD than golf.

Today I had an aerobic workout on the rebounder and treadmill. I haven’t been as good about aerobics lately. I like to use my glitchy hip as an excuse. Will see the chiropractor again tomorrow to see if she can lessen the pain a bit. I can’t wait for my acupuncturist to come back to work. She’ll be able to help a lot, I’m sure. Hopefully she’ll find some time for me in the next few weeks. She’s been on a sabbatical, trying to clear some personal stuff up.

The rest of the day I have been catching up on computer work. Business and personal things. Anyway, looks like hubby is cooking up a gourmet and compliant meal for Sunday dinner. Beef, mushrooms and asparagus are among the items I found in the grocery bag he brought in. I am spoiled by his willingness to take over most of the meal planning and cooking.

Ah, but I get to do the laundry!!

I’ve been good this week. Very, very good. I have attended all three Pilates sessions. I also played a round of golf on Tuesday. Other than the rather large piece of beef I ate last night, I have been doing pretty well on portion control. I’ve been sticking to low-fat cottage cheese and non-fat yogurt during the day. Had salmon and salad one night. Had halibut and vegetables and salad the next night. Then it was sautéed mixed vegetables with the gorgeous steak last night. Tonight it is lamb chops with a tomato, mozzarella and basil salad. For snack, I take a handful of compliant nuts. Round that out with a glass of bourbon and/or wine, and that is pretty much how I normally eat. It all comes down to portion control, I guess. I ought to think about doing something about that!

Have had a very busy and fun past three days. And along with busy and fun, of course, comes the consumption of avoids. Friday was a game of golf with the girls. My scores are slowly coming down. Hopefully in a month (or less) I’ll be hitting mostly acceptable scores. It was a hot, muggy day, so we cheated and rode carts for the second half of the round. I feel I’m old enough now to actually listen to my body and not argue with it about overdoing things. I drank a beer after the golf. Actually, beer is neutral for me, but I generally try not to drink it because of the calories. I don’t drink “lite” beers. It has to be a meaty micro-brew or nothing at all. Then the family went to dinner at one of the daughter’s favorite restaurants called the Sushi Boat. They make excellent sushi, and I can usually be good about not eating avoids. They served a salad that had sesame oil avoid) in it. Then they served miso soup (avoid). I think I did okay with my sushi order. I did use the soy sauce, though (avoid). After dinner I took daughter to a live improvisation performance from the cast of Whose Line Is It Anyway? It was really good. Very funny. Didn’t get home till 11:30pm.

Had to get to bed really quick because I had meet some friends at the park ‘n’ ride early in the morning to go to a barbershop workshop about 40 miles north. But before getting up, I had a really rotten night’s sleep. I’m sure all the avoids kept me awake. I was absolutely starving in the middle of the night. And I never get hungry at night. I’m sure I dozed on and off. But it was a very long night. In the morning my stomach was making such obnoxious noises! I ate a couple ounces of leftover steak to calm it down before I took off for the workshop. I should have taken my own lunch, because they served sandwiches with chips and cookies at the break in the workshop. I ate it all. After the lunch, everybody practically fell asleep during the afternoon’s presentation. I could tell it was the bread that put us all to sleep. Dinner was compliant. Beef and coleslaw.

Today was the second half of the workshop, and I decided to just go ahead and blow the whole weekend. Had another sandwich. Then indulged in some homemade brownies one of the other participants had brought. The workshops were great. Learned a lot of stuff.

So, tomorrow will be penance day. A new week to start it all over again. I don’t see any eating challenges ahead of me for a couple of weeks. I will do my best to get back into control.

The weekend wasn’t quite as compliant as I had envisioned. Hubby decided that Memorial Day was going to be a designated “carb” day for him. So, that meant that we had yummy designer french bread with dinner, which was a pot of my famous chili (all totally compliant). And then I made a strawberry shortcake to die for. Northwest strawberries are ripe two weeks early this year. These strawberries are so sweet you really don’t need to add any sweetener or anything to them. They are perfect all by themselves. But anyway, back to the dessert. It was a recipe hubby found on one of those internet cooking sites. Had lots of heavy cream and some sugar, and of course the dreaded shortcake part. Ah! It was divine. Both of us woke up this morning just starving! And our stomachs were rumbling up a storm. That always happens when we have “carb” days. So, that will do it for him for awhile, and any of my poor food choices will by all my doing. At least I could blame yesterday on him.

On another note, I was musing yesterday about the different food choices between secretors and non-secretors. I spent the first year and a half on the diet as a secretor, because it was before the book Live Right for Your Type was published. I was allowed potatoes, but not tomatoes. Now I can eat tomatoes, but not potatoes. I like it better this way. As a secretor coffee was neutral, now it is an avoid. It is something I haven’t stopped, though. I still have one cup in the morning. I think what I like best about being a non-secretor is that bourbon is neutral. It is avoid for secretors. The hard part about being a non-secretor is that the beneficial food list seems so short. So many of the beneficial foods for secretors, like bananas and common fish varieties are just neutral for non-secretors. A lot of the dairy that we B’s love is beneficial for secretors, but becomes neutral for non-secretors. It’s not very easy to eat mostly beneficials. And of course living with a family that thinks the diet is all bunk, anyway, is pretty hard, too. But I didn’t start this paragraph to get all depressed about what I can’t have. I enjoy the foods that are good for me. And I’m very grateful to be a “B”.