Poking around with the sword

At James' class today, bumbled through the lao jia and the Chen sword. Good crew there, about 8 students in all. Nice day for once, so we cracked open the doors for a bit of breeze. Off to youtube now to look for Chen Zheng Lei performing the sword form for reference.

Probably shopping tomorrow (a wedding next weekend, so want to look decent), so I put in a longish run (1:20) this evening. Then back to HQ to catch the last of Wimbledon in between cooking operations.

Cycling in London

I've been waiting for ages for my folding bike to arrive. At last, here it is:



I'm really pleased with this. It can be folded in under a minute, and I can carry it round the block without my fingers going numb. The purpose of this is to whizz up from my mainline station in town to where I work. This could be a 25 minute tube journey or a fairly random amount of time on the bus. It's 10-15 minutes on the new toy.

I've found cycling in London perversely a lot easier than in Surrey. There are more paths and stop areas, and most drivers have by now seen a cyclist, and understand why we sometimes do odd things. We like to keep moving, and out of harm's way, so we don't always keep to the left where we can get squashed. So the taxis and buses all nod me through. Contrast this to leafy Surrey, where the 4x4 crowd think they have every right to blare their horns if I so much as think about using the road creatively.

Although Mayor Bozza is (was?) a cyclist, I fear that we have to fight for our space. So I was up there again for the weekend's naked bike ride, as reported in Londonist. This is partly a pro-cycle jamboree, but also somewhat an anti-petrol patrol and a little bit plain old naturist party. At least a couple of my hobbies represented then.



I took a small number of photos, but not as much as the gleeful spectators or some of the other riders. Have a look at the other Flickr WNBR groups (e.g. here and here) if you want confirmation of just how beautiful and funny the human race can be when it gets naked on a bike!

Obvious warning: depictions of nudity, blah, blah.

Back to it

Quick report on last week. Lots of gym, a run OUTSIDE, bit of swimming.

James' saturday tai chi. Great to be back in class. Bumbled through the lao jia (manageable with others. totally impossible on my tod). Bit of push hands. No I don't remember any of the two-hand push hands patterns. Got introduced to Chen style sword (jian). Interesting!

Mandarin classes started up again. The momentum seems to be building there, more conversations. I think our teacher should force us to speak autonomously a bit more, we can handle it. I've tried to be systematic in the week, in terms of pushing the vocab and han zi (i.e. characters). Lost track of cpod though.

This week wasn't so great. Missed lots of gym "slots" due to random social gatherings and late working. I should just have a Rule. Six o clock, down tools, phones, pens, mice.

Ploddy re-start

I'm quite glad not to be running London today. Just saw the finish of the elite Women and elite men, and sure enough, it was chucking it down. Same thing 30 miles away, rain, hail everything.

An hour before, during the day's spell of nice weather, I went out for what, in the usual scheme of things, would be my 1-2 hour easy run. This time it was 45 minutes of slow stiff plodding. My legs felt unwilling and the shoes felt tired too. Effects of yesterday's gym? Unused to the feel of pavement? I tried to remember last time I did any outdoor running. The scenery was beautiful though. Along the Wey path, I was chased along by a pair of geese being chased by a swan. So the birds are getting their routines together too.

Gym card useful at last

Two visits to local exercise facilities this weekend, but no running, and only reading about tai chi rather than doing it.

Along with doing fiddly painting jobs around the house, and sporadic bass-playing (both good for knotting up muscles) I managed to get two uses out of my scandalously expensive gym membership card.

To the local leisure centre for some weights/rowing/treadmill on Saturday. Pretty good, but no heroic achievements.

Yesterday evening, I went along to Alton Leisure centre's weekly naturist swim (handy for sauna, steam room and jacuzzi too). (Every Sunday, 730 - 930 pm, GU34 1ST, Tel: 01420 540040). Both these leisure centres are run by the same company, so I got a little discount on entry to Alton, which offset the travel costs.

I've been meaning to go along to this session for some time. To date, I've been a naturist on beaches (UK and foreign) and open spaces only, and haven't been to clubs or swims. I'm glad I did, but regret not being able to persuade Mrs. Monkey on this occasion. It was relatively quiet by all accounts, less than twenty users I'd guess, and only a couple of women. Because it was uncrowded, and people seemed to know each other, there was a nice village pump vibe.

In my ideal world, every swimming pool would be clothing optional, all the time, not to mention all the beaches. As it is, it's increasingly hard, i.e. they are being discontinued, to find an open (not club-based) session in the UK (Netherlands, Germany, Austria are more like the ideal) so this session is worth supporting.

I put in about half an hour of solid swimming, and a few iterations of the hot stuff. Result: Mentally energised by the occasion of being an official UK naturist facility user for the first time, and bodily de-knotted.