Day Seventy-Two: Vacated

I missed you guys! I'm looking forward to reading everyone's blogs later today. But first: vacation summary, in the form of a report card.

(View from a little boat on the Li River.)

Exercise: A+

Got all the exercises in, with my poor husband covering his ears and trying to catch another hour of sleep while I hopped, panted, and sweated my way around our room. At his suggestion, I jumped without the rope for the last two days in the interest of reducing noise--he tells me that the great Sugar Ray Robinson just swung the rope next to him on each side and didn't bother jumping over it. Major benefit: when pantomiming, there are no trips and no sneaky little 2-second breaks while recovering. It turns out that my jumping at home with the rope again today was much more smooth, too. Final score: 18 minutes of jumping, 1 minute of rest, and one solitary trip in the last set!

On the second day we rented bikes and went tooling around the Chinese countryside. Guilin is famous for its beautiful and oddly-shaped mountains and we got some spectacular views. Left the hotel at 9:30, returned at 4:30, stopped several times in the middle to float down the river, grab lunch, and hike up a hill. The hike was a personal triumph for me--more than 800 steps, and I didn't stop once on the way up to catch my breath. The guys only waited at the top of Moon Hill for a couple of minutes before I hove into view.

(On top of Moon Hill. Wish my arms had more definition already.)

It would be even more exciting except that there were a dozen little old wrinkled Chinese women climbing up almost as fast, toting styrofoam coolers with water and soft drinks for sale, and fanning tourists with one hand as they did. We really admired how hard they worked for a few kuai, but it was tough to get rid of them if you didn't need their services. As we came down off the trail, an ElderHostel group had just arrived and there were ladies trotting toward them from all directions, looking hopeful that this group would spend more freely than we had.

The major negative of all that bike riding: combined with jump rope the next morning, it gave me a major calf cramp that's still a tough little knot down there. On the last day, we spent several hours walking around the city of Guilin, but we went really slow and I was limping.

(But calf cramps don't stop you from using weird public exercise equipment!)

Eating: C-

A passing grade, but barely. I packed all my breakfasts and fruit snacks, but the rooms did not have refrigerators as advertised, so the fruit fermented quickly and my breakfast carbs were nasty by the last day. Dairy in general is pretty scarce, and I managed about 2/3 of my yogurt and dairy component. For fruit, I just ate whole small oranges, apples, a slice of watermelon, etc.

As for lunch and dinner. Well. Sometimes in China you order eggplant and you get peeled, steamed eggplant covered in minced garlic, with no salt and very little oil. Sometimes, you get eggplant that's been sliced, deep fried, and then covered in a thick pork-MSG sauce. (I had both, though I only took a few bites of the fried eggplant after shaking off most of the lovely sauce.) Often you order greens with "xiao you, xiao yan" (small oil, small salt), and you get a plate swimming in salty oil anyway. I confess that I didn't even try hard with ordering the meats--just ate the chicken without the skin, and the fish without dredging it first in the sauce. There was some pork in there, too. For two nights, I ate uninspired dinner salads without dressing. Overall, the first day was sort of transgressive fun to be forced to eat off plan (I did have a bite of fried egg scallion pancake and it was overwhelming and delicious), and the rest were just annoying.

(Catfish that was living 10 minutes before this photo was taken--tasty and pretty PCP-compliant, too.
Oh, and I'd like to point out that there's nothing but tea in my cup on the left.
Aside from a single sip of a great Belgian beer, I avoided the temptations of alcohol.)

Sleep: B

Mostly full nights. Since we went for the cheap flights, there was much arriving after midnight. Got home this morning just past three am, slept 7 broken hours, worked out, and managed a first bite of food around noon.

(A panorama from near the end of the bike trip.)

Overall, a solid B for the trip. It was good to try taking these principles on the road, but I'm happy to be reunited with my scale and with food I have total control over. I don't know if I made any fat-burning progress this week, but the muscles, at least, are still growing.