Oura Ring - First Impressions - and Booster Update

I woke up this morning to 3 degrees/feels like -7 (Fahrenheit) and all animals were alive and seemingly o.k. We ended up having only a dusting of snow but thankfully a ton of rain but not so thankfully it had frozen before turning to snow so conditions yesterday were a bit treacherous. Lily, one of my mama cows, decided to play head butt games with the other mama just as the sun was going down and the temperature really dropping last night and she ended up walking around lifting one foot because of the cold snow on her feet, just like the dogs do. Except unlike the dogs I had no idea what to do for her. Eventually she went in her dry loafing shed but was soon back out in the snow again. Worrying but she's big and has a mind of her own. She seemed fine before I went to bed and she seems fine today. Angus cows are so very hardy. As are the chickens who weathered everything o.k. 

I was bracing for a poor reaction to my booster shot. I had bad, long term dizziness/fatigue/brain fog from the first two shots. Even though it's Moderna so just a half dose for the booster, Jonny had a worse reaction to his booster than he did to his original doses. Just one extra day, but still, I certainly wasn't expecting it to go well for me. So far, it's been something of a nothing burger. No fatigue, dizziness, or brain fog. I didn't even have a day of feverish symptoms. My temperature went up to 99 degrees at its worst and this wasn't enough to give me any sort of noticeable symptoms other than being a bit warmer than usual which was fine with this cold snap.

My Oura Ring, Gen. 3, arrived November 18th so I have a couple few weeks of data now. Overall initial impression is that I'm really pleased with it. It picked up on my vaccine symptoms right away and suggested I turn on 'Rest Mode' if I'm feeling under the weather. The triggers were an elevated overnight resting heart rate, decrease in heart rate variability (HRV) and a 2 degree increase in average body temperature. It also showed an elevated respiration rate though I'm not terribly familiar with that metric and it's significance. HRV in particular was super low (high is better) and is what you'd expect if you were ill so I was pleased the ring had picked that up. Physically I felt fine and if I'd been left to my own devices probably would have tried to start training again which is why I suspect I had such a poor reaction the first go around because getting back to training was exactly what I did. This time around I decided to treat the booster like a race that would require both tapering and recovery. So I've had four days so far of mostly rest with just walking. I had the shot on a Tuesday and Wednesday morning's walk felt a bit difficult and slow, felt like my heart rate was too easily elevated. But Thursday felt fine. Yesterday I couldn't walk much more than a mile because conditions were treacherous, ie icy sidewalks with a mix of pavement and ice which is often the worse combination. Today things should melt off and hopefully I can go a bit farther.

The only noticeable symptoms were the standard dull pain/ache at the injection site, and this was very minimal, and swollen lymph nodes under my armpit. It was a bit sore for a day or so but the swelling was huge, like the size of an avocado. Yesterday the swelling went down to about half an avocado and remains at 1/4-1/2 an avocado today but no soreness to speak of. I was hoping to ease back to training with light weight lifting but I'm not sure about this with the swelling. On the other hand, Professor Google says this swelling could last for weeks or months and I can't take that long off. So today I'm introducing some mobility stuff and in the next few days I'll introduce super light weights and longer sessions. Hopefully the movement will help the nodes drain. I also remember when I got my Kangoo Jump Boots and was taking classes that used them, the instructor said the jumping was good for lymph node drainage. I thought this sounded hokey but I'm going to bust them out and give it a try. We'll put this bit of wives tale/hokery to the test.

Today my biomarkers are improved, I turned off Rest Mode and Oura has assigned me some reasonable amount of activity for today. But HRV is still low at 22 and I'd like to see it more in the 30s. Just for laughs I checked HRV with my Garmin and it was 100 which is the highest and worst possible score on Garmin's scale (Garmin uses a scale where a higher score is worse). So today still needs to be easy. I'm going to continue to use the Oura ring to monitor and guide recovery so hopefully I won't end up in that bad fatigue/dizzy place.

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A couple more days have gone by, today is Tuesday or one week post injection, and still no ill effects from the booster. The swelling in my lymph node has gone down considerably and can best be described as some puffiness. I can see my armpit again and neither the lymph node nor injection site are sore or tender to the touch. No dizziness, fatigue, brain fog. So happy with this.

On Sunday the 'Readiness' on my Oura app said this:

Which seems a bit passive aggressive. Why not just tell me, 'You've had enough rest lady, get off the couch and move your lazy ass!'. The sun was shining so I went up to Boggy Draw for some snowshoeing. Word on the street was that there was a foot of fresh powder and when I got up there, conditions did not disappoint.

I was out for around 2 miles and 1 1/4 hours. I kept my heart rate nice and low, around 110 bpm, kept the pace nice and slow and stopped for photos and moments of whimsy. It felt so good to be back outside and moving through the world again. I'd been walking every day for the past 5 days but hadn't done much else. This was just the right amount of activity because I had an excellent night's sleep and woke up to this 'Readiness' score on Monday morning:

I was planning on no running for another week but the sun was shining and it was perfect running weather yesterday, Monday, so I hit the trails. I kept my heart rate to an average of 118 bpm so I was super slow and my Garmin watch wasn't pleased with this pace. I went for around 50 minutes, 2.75 miles, SO slow. But I felt great afterwards, exactly what I was hoping for. I'm hoping that if I keep my heart rate nice and low for the next week or so that I won't trigger a vaccine reaction. 

This morning the Oura ring suggested that my recovery was going well but since I'd done 'a lot' yesterday maybe I could take it easy today if I wanted. So wishy washy. These daily messages make me laugh whether they're supposed to or not. Anyway, today will be getting back to weight lifting. I did about 10 minutes of light weights yesterday and some of it was fine, some a little twinge-y. My injection side arm apparently wasn't back to 100%. We'll see how it goes today. 

I Flee to Decemberunderground

If there's anything more glorious than a Bluebird winter day in the San Juans I truly don't know what it is.

My Garmin watch says I need 65 hours of recovery and my training was 'unproductive'. Which is exactly why we need to start telling all the gizmos to go screw themselves. Because I'm fleeing there again tomorrow and the day after that and again until my legs won't turn the pedals anymore. I'm going to make stupid Garmin weep.

Adventures in Crazy Dog Lady House Hunting

At around 5:30 Wednesday night a week ago a perfect sounding house came on the market so I called the realtor and next thing I knew, Jonny and I were packing to leave first thing in the morning for a 7 1/2 hour drive to Mancos.  Coincidentally he already had the day off and I didn't have clients scheduled since we were going to go for a hike.  It seemed like a sign that we were meant to go and that this would finally be the place.  The land looked a bit too sloping from the pictures but the realtor was familiar with the house and thought there was some flat land somewhere.

It was 42 degrees and raining on Wolf Creek Pass.  Summer monsoon season is in full swing.

The house turned out to be near perfect - a remodeled farmhouse, 1800 s.f. which is a bit big but reasonable for us.  4 1/2 acres of land with great water rights and a big ass barn.

That came complete with a big ass barn owl.

And some big ass cliffs.

And a big ass view.

We were all set to make an offer on it when we found out that the land in the photo above would not be ours.  The owner was splitting the lot in half and building their new house on this part of the land which also happened to be the only piece of flat land big enough for an agility field.  Our piece of land would be mostly cliffs, a big ass orchard and a big ass barn with some slope-y bits of land between.  Plus a pond that the owners would retain rights to access even though it was on our piece of land so their dogs could swim across the pond and get on our land.  Plus we'd have to live next to construction noise for a year or two or who knows how long, who knows what they would build?  And they have kids and dogs and we already live next door to kids and dogs and we're so looking forward to getting away from other people's kids and dogs.

So disappointing.

We looked at a couple of other places that didn't seem promising but thought we should look as long as we were down there.  They weren't promising.  We did look at a perfect piece of land - great location and water rights and in great condition - but we'd have to build something on it and find somewhere to live while we were building.  Buy a used RV and travel the country until it's built?  And what to build?  Conventional, straw bale, rammed earth, something else?  There are many alternative building methods and materials out there.  It's all very overwhelming and not an attractive option.  Plus it's too late to buiy something and build before the snow start flying so a potential land purchase will have to wait until spring.  Ah well, the right place will come along.  I wish that drive wasn't 7 1/2 hours long.

We took the dogs and stayed with some friends outside of Durango.

Travel Buddies

Sunset over the La Platas

 Most places give you a mint on your pillow.  We got this.

Since we didn't have that many houses to look at, we had a lot of time on Friday to explore.  We decided to go up to Boggy Draw for a hike and when we drove through Dolores we came upon this.

I knew there was a trial over the weekend but didn't realize it was 3 days.  We stopped to take advantage of a socialization opportunity for Tess.  I saw a few people I knew, including a woman who just sold her place in the country outside of Durango and is moving to Moab in the city.  She helped a lot with Tess, fed her treats and brought her own friendly BC out to say hi.  Sadly Tess wasn't interested but at least she wasn't terrified.  Tess did freeze when a Cattle Dog started barking and lunging at someone else walking by from an x-pen that was pretty far away.  I turned her around and walked the other way, no point subjecting either one of them to each other.  And there was no way she was moving one more step closer anyway.  I was so sure we were past the freezing thing.  But otherwise she did o.k. walking through the hub bub of the shade canopies and people.  I may have shoved some kibble into a complete strangers hand and asked her to feed my dog when she showed the slightest bit of interest in us.  I wish I had had better treats but they were sitting back at the house, I wasn't planning on a socialization opportunity.  Must be better prepared.  And yeah, if you so much as make eye contact with me when I have Tess I'll probably shove kibble or chicken or hot dogs in your hand and ask you to feed my dog.  It's funny, guys want to make her sit or do something and I'm all, 'Just give it to her for being brave enough to go up to you'.  And they won't.  They end up handing me back my treats.  But the women get it, they give all the treats if Tess will go up and take them.  I've not been working a lot with 'Sit' or any other inhibitive behaviors because I want Tess being brave and offering behaviors, not inhibiting them which is her default.  Though at this point I think I need to start working with Sit, Down, and Stay in different locations with both dogs.  But not with strangers asking for them at a busy agility trial.  Sheesh.

We did go up to Boggy Draw for a short hike.  Tess still shouldn't go too far and she'd already been walking around the trial for a bit.  We were out around 45 minutes and the terrain was fairly flat and easy.

When we got back to our friends' house that night, Jonny realized we had a flat tire (slow leak so it was low, not all the way flat).  So we had a delayed departure in the morning since our friend had to take Jonny and the tire to Durango for a repair.  It's a new tire and under warranty so at least the repair was free and Discount Tire took care of it quickly.  We didn't get too late of a start and were home for dinner.

Ruby sez, 'Are we there yet?'

Kind of a fun trip but also emotionally draining.  We were so sure this house would be the one.  I'm a bit burnt out on Crazy Dog Lady House Hunting.  Something really perfect will have to come up to drag me down there again, I've had enough driving to last me until spring.

Adventures in Trumpland

The morning after the election I woke up bright and early so I could get the dogs out before hitting the road for Trumpland, ie rural Colorado.  Because Colorado may be blue now (it was purple when I moved here in 1990) but once you get about an hour or so west of Denver on US285 you start seeing the Trump signs.  And if you unwittingly stop in the mountain town of Bailey because the internets told you there was a coffee shop there and you were expecting a breve latte at said 'coffee shop' you'll be sorely disappointed.  In fact if you even try asking for a latte they'll look at you like you just pulled down your pants and took a big dump in the middle of the grubby cafe.  And you get to wait 25 minutes for a simple cheese, egg, potato breakfast burrito while an old guy with a long grey beard and a limp is positively giddy about the election.  'His first 100 days in office he's going to get rid of Obamacare and lower taxes and fix the economy'.  And if you're me you don't know if you should burst out laughing or crying.  Because you're not sure how a racist, misogynistic, ignorant, bellowing orangutan stuffing the White House full of white supremacists and Goldman Sachs vampires is going to be good for anybody except racist misogynist billionaires  but you're already hoping no bodily fluids end up in your breakfast burrito because of the snooty coffee request so I kept my mouth shut.

Anyway, I was on my way to Cortez/Mancos/Dolores to meet a realtor and look at houses mostly because Jonny and I had had our eyes on this little ranch that came on the market, went under contract, came back on the market, went back under contract and we made a deal that if it came back on the market a third time it was fate and we had to go see it. And it came back on the market so off I went.  On my lonesome because we still have Lola and she still can't travel.  So I packed up the GoPro and camera and braved the 7 hour journey to Trumpland.  Because for the last 6 of the 7 hours I didn't see a single Hilary sign.  Though to be fair I didn't see asstons of Trump signs either but they were the only signs I saw.  At one point I saw a small Hillary sticker on a lamp post in Mancos and I though maybe there was a glimmer of hope but it turned out it actually said, 'Jail Hillary'.  Not that I'm a Hillary fan but I'm for sure a not-racist, misogynist, fascist bellowing sex offender orangutan fan.  Between a rock and an impossible to even contemplate place.

But that area, it's so beautiful.  I left super early Wednesday morning so I could get to Phil's World in time to meet a friend who'd just closed on a place in Cortez right before we met.  We only had time for a 1 1/4 hour ride before dusk but it was magic.

Then I went to see his new house and then went for Indian food and by the time I'd driven back to the motel in Mancos and talked to Jonny I was too tired for anything else so I missed all the Not Fun Election stuff on Facebook and everywhere else for that matter.  The next two days were solidly full of looking at houses and hiking and more biking and then another full day of driving to get home and I know you're probably thinking how can I enjoy myself during all the horrorshow  of End of Days and all and you're sort of right.  Except here's the thing.  We can't go around in a state of fear with the expectation that the sky is falling because then that's exactly what will happen.  The fear puts us in a sort of hypnosis and all the bad suggestions of the internets panic of End of Days get in and we accept that racism, fascism, bigotry, sexism, white supremacists in the White House is now the new normal.  And we can't let that happen.  We have to be strong and adopt the attitude that No This Bullshit Will Not Stand.  There have already been post-election racist and anti-LGBT attacks in Denver and we can't let this happen, we can't let this become the new normal, we can't accept that this is normal.  We have to have each others' backs.  Zero tolerance of this bullshit.  Or next thing we know Trump is firing up the ovens and I don't really care how alarmist that sounds because we should be alarmed.  But not wallowing in fear and sadness alarmed.  Strong and thinking What Are We Gonna Do Now alarmed.  And heck yeah I'm gonna ride my bike in the woods because that's when I do my best thinking.  And if it comes to it and the world is going down in flames, well, I may as well enjoy what's left of it.

Phew.  So the ranch we had our eye on was not as perfect in person which happens more often than not in real estate.  The land was too sloping and the house was smaller than advertised and not laid out all that great.  Plus a west facing exposure meant no morning sun when you want it and hot blasting afternoon sun when you don't.  I saw a bunch more houses, maybe a dozen or so in all, and only 2 were reasonable possibilities and only one of those was practical.  The other was a super nice house but 5 minutes on a hilly dirt road to get down to the main road which doesn't sound that bad but was a bit more excitement than what we're looking for.  Plus the house was super fancy, way more fancy than we need.  Paying for fancy is not a good value because after a month or two you don't notice the fancy but you do notice the drive down the hilly dirt road, especially in the winter.  The other house was a great location and perfect size house in good condition but not super fancy or expensive.  Land was sloping though and I'd like some flat land for an agility/dog yard.  Wasn't so sloping though that I couldn't maybe pay to have some of it leveled and the house was cheap enough.  But a long driveway and something I hadn't thought about rural living is the cost of maintaining private dirt roads.  I'd done the math on the snow removal but hadn't thought about the expense and hassle of general maintenance.  It's on the 'maybe' list anyway.  We're in no hurry, trying to move several mountain passes away in the winter is not a good plan.  But maybe by spring the right house comes up and Google opens their Boulder office so we sell our house quickly and hopefully the Goldman Sachs vampires haven't totally pillaged what's left of the economy by then.

After looking at houses on Thursday I had some daylight left and the realtor suggested the Chicken Creek Cross Country Ski Area for a hike.  It didn't disappoint.  Though I didn't have a trail map and there were so many trails branching off of trails that I got a bit turned around but I found my way out before dark.

On Friday the realtor couldn't meet until the afternoon so I took advantage of the time to myself and rode Bean Canyon up in the Boggy Draw trail system outside of Dolores.  I was out there 2 1/2 hours or so and saw 2 women riding with a dog.  That was it.  When I got back to the parking lot there were a couple of guys unloading their bikes but they were going on a different trail.  They'd come all the way down from Telluride to ride at Boggy Draw, maybe 1 1/2 hour drive or so.  It was beautiful, even in shoulder season.

On the way home I stopped at a friend's place outside of Durango.  She had come down with me on my trip last Jan. and when she and her husband went back a couple months later they bought a house.  It was a fixer upper and they were still in the throes of fixing it up.  They'd had to re-do the septic too and had drainage issues with the land sloping towards the house.  It all looked a bit overwhelming.  I'm hoping we don't end up with those types of issues but who knows.  It'll be an adventure anyway.

It's Where You Live

The weekend before last Jonny and I took an unplanned last minute trip down to the Southwest part of the state to check out Dolores, Cortez and Mancos.  I'd been down a month ago but this was his first time and my first chance to see the area in greater detail.  When I went down with my friend last month we only spent a half day in the area because our trip got cut short by an incoming snowstorm.  This time we had 2 full days.

We had the dogs with us which limited our choices of places to stay but I found a cool little 'Casita' in Mancos on VRBO for a reasonable price.  It turned out to be awesome, everything was brand new, we were only the third group of people to stay there.  We had a beautiful view of Mesa Verde National Park from our deck.

Was so awesome waking up to that every morning.  The Casita was on 10 acres so it was very peaceful and private.  There was a main house and a little bit of issue having to navigate the owners' dogs at first but it worked out fine in the end.  We even had a friendly cat come visit us at night.  I miss having a cat but it's too hard to keep the dogs from snacking out of a litter box and that grosses me out to no end.  And OMG the stars at night!!!  So spectacular.

Hanging out in the Casita

Mancos, Dolores and Cortez are about 15-20 minutes from each other and form a triangle of sorts around a rural piece of land, some of it flat, some of it hilly.  I had my eye on a 35 acre piece of land with a 'cabin' and the 2 parcels of 35 acres on either side for sale as a whole if you want.  Imagine having 100 acres all to yourself!  And for significantly cheaper than I can sell my Boulder shack.  But the drive to get there had a short but steep hill on a dirt road and some twisty bits.  Just a 10-15 minute drive from the main highway and mostly not too bad but still not something we want to have to do on a daily basis, especially in winter.  Plus the ugly power lines at the boundary of the property.  Lots of other possibilities in the area though.  And while driving around the dirt roads I spotted this:

And there was a sign up at the fairgrounds saying there was an agility trial that weekend put on by Vision Agility.  Some internet searching reveals that this is a commercial operation but unfortunately for me it's NADAC style/distance handling.  Not my cup of tea.  But nice to know there are fellow agility enthusiasts in them thar hills.

We checked out some houses that were for sale to get an idea of what we could afford and there were plenty of options, the biggest issue being the size of the places.  So huge.  Like this:

And 7 acres of land with water rights.  Plus super nice on the inside.  But sheesh, so big, 2400 square feet.  The thought of heating such a monstrosity and taking care of it is overwhelming, our current house is about 1100 square feet.  But so tempting with views like this:

And only 10 minutes from the grocery store, 20 minutes from trails at Boggy Draw, 6 minutes to Phil's World which is an amazing mountain bike mecca of awesomeness.  All easy driving.  Plus a pond on the property for dog swimming and a reservoir just down the road.

Boggy Draw

I know, what am I still doing here in Boulder?  The woman I traveled with last month went back to Durango with her husband 2 weeks ago and came home with a house.  Jonny and I joked that we had to resist the temptation to do the same.  But we need to work out the financials of how we'll survive there first and it seems real estate prices are continuing to rise here in Boulder and fall over there so it makes sense to wait things out a bit. 

And there are concerns - oil and drilling/fracking in the area and water rights are my main concerns.  I talked to a friend who lives near Durango and she stressed the importance of hiring a real estate lawyer who's also an expert in water and mineral rights.  There's a downturn in oil at the moment (which is probably why real estate prices are falling over there) and a contraction in oil operations for now but who knows what the future holds and the BLM is trying to open up almost all our public land to drilling/fracking and this includes areas next to Mesa Verde National Park and Phil's World.  So there are concerns and I want to see how these issues play out in the next year.

Abandoned Sinclair station on Hwy 160 between Mesa Verde and Mancos. 

On the other hand, Weld County which is next to Boulder County has by far the most amount of fracking and drilling in the whole state and Boulder has its own brown cloud so whatever is going on over there is probably not nearly as bad as here.

I've got a bunch more photos from Mesa Verde and Canyon of the Ancients but I'll do another post for those.