Getting plenty of exercise while federal court makes me hurry up and wait

The first week of my jury duty has come and gone, and I have yet to set foot in the courthouse.  Each evening I called the telephone number, entered my juror number, and got a recorded message informing me that I was not required to report the next day.

And so it goes: for the month of February I am living quite literally one day at a time.  It's not really how I prefer to live, but in some ways it's kind of nice.  Each time I'm told I don't have to go to court, the next day feels like a day off.

And so far this month, my training activities have suffered no interruption.  This past week I paddled Monday, did my indoor exercise routine Tuesday, did my outdoor routine Wednesday, paddled Thursday, did my indoor routine again Friday, and did my outdoor routine again yesterday.

My activities continue to be geared toward general fitness more than maximum canoe & kayak racing performance.  As I've noted recently, I'm not likely to line up for a race any sooner than May.  And my biggest event of this year is a trip through the Grand Canyon in August and September, and that will require not so much peak racing form as just a solid level of fitness.

The temperature was well above freezing all last week, but there was a lot of variety: sunny skies, overcast skies, quite a bit of wind, some chilly days, some freakishly warm days.  Yesterday was mostly cloudy and breezy with a temperature over 70 degrees Fahrenheit.  This morning it's still cloudy and breezy, but now the temperature has plummeted some 30 degrees.

I called the federal court's telephone number again Friday evening and learned that I do not have to report in tomorrow.  This jury duty is hard work, let me tell you.  I'm taking a rest day today, and right now my plan for tomorrow is to paddle even though it's supposed to be cloudy again and colder than 50 degrees.  It looks like there'll be lots of rain Tuesday and Wednesday, so those will be good days to stay indoors whether I have to go to court or not.  I really wish the court would go ahead and call me in, as the forecast is looking not so pleasant for the whole week.

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Monday photo feature

In August of 2016 I spent some time in the Hudson Valley of New York.  Here I'm paddling the Hudson River where it runs between the towns of Newburgh and Beacon, and it must have been a breezy day judging by all the water droplets on the camera lens.  That would be the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge that carries Interstate 84 over the river.

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By the seat of my pants, I'm keeping things going

It was another week of tailoring my workouts to the weather's whims.

On Monday I went down to the Greenbelt Park and did my outdoor dry-land routine that includes some running and some core exercises.

Tuesday's weather was a bit warmer and the wind wasn't so bad, so I paddled.  As I'm doing a lot this winter, I kept the stroke rate low and tried to take solid, precise strokes with good pelvic rotation.

I had a number of chores to do Wednesday, so I stayed home and did my indoor routine that focuses on my core and my legs.

Thursday was a rainy day.  But it was also quite warm, rising well above 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  So I went back to the river.  My paddling session mostly coincided with a break in the rain, but I got drizzled on a few times.  I went a mile or so up the Mississippi and pushed the pace coming back down.  The wind was picking up from the south-southeast and I found myself fighting a stiff headwind to get back into the harbor.

Friday turned out to be quite a physically active day in unorthodox ways.  My car was overdue for an oil change, so I started the day by taking my car over to the far side of Overton Park, where there's a garage I've used for years.  They had a couple of other cars to do ahead of mine, so I took off on a hike around the neighborhood.  My main objective was to visit several "Little Free Libraries" that I know about to see if they had any reading material I was interested in.  Getting by them all required that I make a circuit around a big swath of the area surrounding the garage.  Once that mission was complete I swung back by the garage and learned that it would be close to another hour before my car was ready, so I headed in another direction, toward the rental property I own.  One of the tenants had told me that a tree branch had fallen during Thursday's storm, and I figured it was a good time to have a look at that.

The branch was up on the roof of the two-story building, and it looked like I would need a saw to cut it into manageable pieces, so I decided not to put up the ladder and go up there just yet.  Instead I walked back to the garage, and when I was just a block away from it I got a text from the mechanic telling me my car was ready.  Perfect timing.

All told, I think I walked at least four miles Friday morning.  I drove back home and launched into my "official" workout for the day, another round of my indoor routine.

Friday afternoon I returned to the rental property with the tools I needed.  It looked as though the branch had fallen pretty flat on the roof and done no serious damage.  (If it had penciled down vertically, it likely would have poked a hole in the roof.  That once happened to a house I owned a couple of decades ago.)  So I cut the thing up and threw the pieces down into the front yard, and then returned to terra firma myself to tidy the place up.  That wrapped up a day of working my entire body while getting all kinds of chores done.

Yesterday I returned to the Greenbelt Park and did my outdoor routine again.

Now I begin my month-long adventure with the federal judicial system, and apparently the way it works is that I call a number each evening to learn whether I must report to the courthouse the next business day.  I called Friday evening and was informed that I need not report tomorrow; tomorrow evening I'll call again to see if I have to go in Tuesday.  So the good news is that I won't have to go in to court every day of February, while the bad news is that I can't really plan anything else in advance.  For example, I have my semiannual dentist appointment a week from this Thursday, and I think I will have to re-schedule it because even though it's possible I won't have to go to court that day, I won't know for sure until after 5 PM the day before.

It looks like the weather will be lovely and warm and sunny for the next couple of days.  I'm having a day off today for the first time in a week, and I reckon tomorrow I'll go get back in the boat.  After that, who knows?  I'll be taking it quite literally a day at a time, and that's not how I'm used to doing things.  Rather than tailor my activities to the weather's whims, I'll be tailoring them to the federal court's whims.

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