Dan York

Photo Set: Autumn 2010 in New Hampshire

For those of you who have not had a chance to experience the autumn foliage up in our part of the world, I uploaded this photo set to Flickr for you to get a glimpse of what we see:

This particular set was mostly taken on a drive along Route 101 near Dublin, NH, back in early October 2010.

I have more photos I took this fall that I need to upload, too... it is truly a glorious time to be living here in New Hampshire!

Giving Thanks - And Celebrating the Great American Pause Button

Flickr credit: D Sharon Pruitt

For those of us in the United States, today is our "Thanksgiving" - and it is among my favorite days of the year. Perhaps most because it is the one holiday that has thus far remained unsullied by our over-consumeristic society. (Which then makes up for that fact with the day after.)

Outside of the service industries (and some retail), almost all businesses are shut down.

Work... stops.

School... stops.

Activities in the community... stop.

The craziness of everyday life gets put on hold. There is a Great American Pause Button that gets pressed - and just for a moment - we all collectively stop what we do normally and, usually, gather together as families or groups of friends.

That isn't to say there isn't another kind of craziness at play on the actual day. Anyone who has hosted a gathering or driven long hours to one knows that. And certainly all our families aren't the peaceful romantic visions of Norman Rockwell yesteryear... and certainly there are many without families or homes for whom the day is a trying time.

But... just for a moment... we take a collective time-out.

And that in and of itself is a thing worth celebrating. A time to pause. A time for some to reflect. To celebrate. To play games. To watch games or movies together. To embrace the warmth of friends or family.

To simply... be.

It is a wonderful aspect of the day.

And as I reflect on the MANY things for which I am thankful, I do want to thank all of you who are reading this piece. Thank you for reading my writing over the past 10 years that I've been writing online... thank you for commenting... for asking questions... for challenging me... for linking to my posts... for pointing me to new ideas... thank you. You have enriched my life - and that means a great deal for me.

Whatever your traditions are on this day... or if it is just a "regular" day for you... I wish you the best of days!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Living Proof that 40-year-old Fat Men Can Get Up and Run!

Credit: Lori York

A week ago I ran my first public "5K" race. Well... it turned out the organizers goofed a bit and it was only 2.5 miles (instead of 3.1), but still, it was the first race I ever ran knowing the results would be posted on the Internet for all to see.

This morning I ran 4.2 miles over a local route I like to run. I ran 4 miles two days ago... 3.5 two days prior to that... and on and on...

Not bad for a 43-year-old guy who, only six months ago...

... couldn't run down to the end of our street without huffing and puffing and feeling like I was going to die!

I didn't set off with the goal of being a "runner". In fact, I've pretty much avoided running for most of my life. Historically I always had this bit of a smug attitude:

I'd consider running/jogging if I ever saw a runner smiling!

And so I would bike, hike, kayak/canoe, walk, ski and do many other forms of exercise... but never run or jog.

What happened to change me?

Back in the Spring I took a look at my physical health and realized I needed to make a change (which is a story for another time). As part of that, I wanted to introduce regular exercise into my daily routine. Sure, I hike and kayak and ski... but all of those are things you do occasionally... maybe once a week... maybe once a month... maybe once a season (kayaking this year for me, unfortunately). I needed to do something that I could do regularly.

At the end of May, on Memorial Day Weekend, to be precise, my wife and I kicked off a plan to go for a walk every day. With two young children in the house, we started a process where we'd take turns on weekdays... one of us would go first, then the other, leaving someone at home at all times for the morning routine with the kids. On the weekends, we tried to go on walks as a family... and generally, we stuck with it and walked most days except for those where it was pouring rain.

Over time, the walk started evolving a bit as I (and my wife) started incorporating a small bit of running. It was VERY incremental. I like to walk/run in a beautiful local cemetery that has a couple of miles of roads in it. At first my goal was to run from the entrance to a flagpole in a flat area... then from the entrance to this beautiful chapel up on a hill... then from from the entrance to the chapel and back... then to include the second attached cemetery (in parts)... then to run a continuous loop through both cemeteries and back to the street... and then to run the loop through both cemeteries twice... and now most recently my goal is to run all the side paths to come up with an even longer route inside the cemeteries...

Credit: Tri-state Racing

And so it continues... running every other day... and walking on the off days. Sometimes I might take a day off on the weekend (or walk twice) if I know my "every other day" routine is going to work better on certain days of a week... and admittedly, I don't run or walk when it's pouring rain out there... but I've been keeping at it... every... other... day...

It helps, naturally, that I have someone with whom to engage in light-hearted competition. My wife was the first to run 5K (3.1 miles) back in the summer... and she just raised the bar this past week to hit the 4-mile mark. I raised that a bit this morning... one of us will hit 4.5 miles soon... There are days when I don't want to go and do it, but the motivation of having someone else around helps.

Facebook, surprisingly, has also been a great motivator. A number of friends have been runners for a while - and a number of others are, like me, working on incorporating regular exercise into their lives. It has been motivating to see their runs and comments... and the comments from others on my runs have been motivating to me. Numerous folks have told me that my posting about runs has inspired them to get out there - which is a large part of why I continue posting there.

In any event... if you've thought about introducing regular exercise into your life, I'm living proof that it is possible to go from not being able to run down your street to being able to run a then-inconceivable distance of 4 miles!

You can do it!

How far am I going with running? I don't know... my first goal was to run a 5K and now I'm thinking that 5 miles is a good target. I don't see longer runs fitting into our lifestyle... but who knows... in the end it is all about priorities.

P.S. And, hey, along the way I've lost about 45 pounds so far... so I'm no longer the fat guy I used to be! (But exercise was not the only change I made... more on that in another story.)

P.P.S. I still haven't seen many runners smiling! :-)

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• subscribing to my email newsletter;
• following me on Twitter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed

---

The Chariot Jogging Stroller That Saved My Daughter's Life

This Wednesday, October 6, started out as a regular day for my wife. As she has hundreds of times before, she went for a morning walk on the streets of Keene, NH. Since the forecast called for rain, she decided not to pull our 17-month-old daughter around in her plastic red wagon but instead push her in our Chariot Cougar jogging stroller.

She could not have known how right that decision was.

Toward the end of her walk, with our daughter napping in the stroller, my wife started to cross an intersection in a crosswalk. She saw a car coming from the opposite direction and expected that, as usual, it would stop at the stop sign and wait for her to finish crossing. To her amazement the car did not come to a complete stop but rather slowed down and then turned left across the intersection and accelerated directly into my wife and our daughter!

The driver struck my wife in the legs and she sailed across the hood of the car and landed on the street. The car struck the wheel of the stroller and sent it flipping over three times. A neighbor came running out and dialed 911 when she saw the stroller flipping through the air.

Miraculously, our daughter was unhurt!

Both were checked at the scene by the ambulance crew and later at a doctor's office. My wife had x-rays and did not break anything - but is quite sore and stiff and will be for days. Amazingly, our daughter seems perfectly fine.

All we can do now is be incredibly thankful - and praise the construction of the Chariot stroller. Being designed to be a bike trailer, it has a rigid aluminum frame all around the seating area and solid straps for the passenger. We've had this particular Chariot for about 8 years now. We bought it up in Ottawa for our first daughter and have used it as a bike trailer, jogger and even skied with it a few times (there's a conversion kit).

It is not cheap. But it's been solid, reliable, very easy to push, and in this case... live-saving.

The wheel on this one is broken and we're not sure whether to trust a stroller that's been in an accident, so we've already ordered a new one. I think it's safe to say we will only be using that one for walks around the area.

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• subscribing to my email newsletter;
• following me on Twitter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed

---