The scale read 190.5 and I knew that it was time to act…

The scale read 190.5 and I knew that it was time to act…

Earlier that morning:

It was Sunday Nov 14th and I woke to the sounds of traffic and bustle on the streets of Arusha. Lying in the small concrete room I could feel the first hint of the heat of the day rising over the city. Outside was quieter than usual, less yelling and honking than the morning before, but that is Sunday in Tanzania. A majority of people were already in church replacing the shouting, honking and hawking with strains of praise and jubilance. The tradeoff in price for the hostel we were staying in was found in the toilet/shower stalls in the communal bathroom, the kind of place you picture picking up some horrid foot fungus, or perhaps something crawling up out of the shower drain to surprise you. Later that day we would be arriving in Moshi and settling into our house; a house with proper showers, clean and unlikely to infect me with some flesh eating disease. With this in mind I chose to disdain the morning shower in favor of later comforts.

Fast forward 8 hours, 5+ km of walking, a 2 hour bus ride, 1 zombie dog, another 1.5 km walk and we arrived home. I was hot, sweaty, dirty, and desperately in need of a nice cool shower. I briefly considered instead going for a run, something I had been promising myself I would begin doing regularly once we arrived in Moshi, but the fancy was fleeting, giving way instead to the allure of cool water cascading from above. Entering the bathroom I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was not only appointed with a clean tiled shower but also contained a digital scale.

One of my ‘goals’ in moving here was that it would provide an excellent framework, under which to lose weight. It is not like I was morbidly obese or terribly out of shape prior to coming, but let’s just say that there was significant room for improvement after a year of riding a school desk. My theory was that between the inevitable change in diet, the inevitable profuse sweating, a little more exercise in the form of regular walking and the occasional run, and finally a couple of bouts of Giardia, the weight would practically lose itself.

As I exited the shower and eyed the scale, I had been in Tanzania for 2 weeks, sufficient time to affect at least a slight favorable course correction in my girth. Curious to see how those weeks had affected me I zeroed the scale and stepped on. The digital display spun for a couple of seconds building suspense and then offered up its take on my situation. 190.5 lbs it read. 190.5?!! I was averaging around 186-187 before I left! Confused and frustrated I stepped off and re-zeroed the scale. Stepping back on I tried to think ‘light’ thoughts, pictures of clouds and balloons floating in front of my eyes. Again the display spun, taking its time, in no hurry to assuage my tension. 190.5 lbs. The scale could not be confused by my mental trickery and held steadfastly to its position.

I considered my current state. Yes I had just arrived after a long day of walking and travel. Yes I had just showered and was feeling clean for the first time in a few days. Yes I was tired and just wanted to sit down, maybe read a book. Yes it was still pushing 30 C outside. But most importantly: yes, I did in fact weigh in at 190.5.

“Son of a bitch…” I muttered under my breath and stalked out of the bathroom.

45 minutes, 4~km, a couple buckets of sweat, and another shower later I was standing in the same spot looking down at my new nemesis. 4 km of running isn’t really all that much and logically ought not to have much overall effect on my body. There is, however, a strange near addictive quality to scales, it is nearly impossible not to check them whenever they are present. I had no real expectation of measurable accomplishment after that first run, but that seemed an irrelevant piece of information as I stepped back onto the scale. It simply had to be checked. The display spun it its already familiar way and read: 189.0. This time I was shocked in a different way. 1.5 lbs in 4 km? I know that I am a pretty sweaty guy when I exercise, and I know that that 1.5 lbs lost is really just retained water… but 1.5 lbs!!

A little context: picture a 500ml bottle of water. Got it? That bottle weighs basically 1 lb. Now picture 1.5 of those bottles full of water. That is how much sweat you have to produce to lose 1.5 lbs in retained water!! Now I don’t know about you but to me that seems like a lot of sweating.

Since then I have been increasing the frequency and distance on my runs. Two weeks later and I am now running almost every day and have my distance up to about 7 km over 40 min. I am aiming for 10km by the end of the week. I usually run in the evening when the heat of the day has dissipated a little and the sun is not so strong in the sky. A few times, however, I have run at midday and the difference in my endurance and the weight lost over the run changes significantly. My average 7 km run in the evening is good for about 2-2.5 lbs. That same run at midday yields upwards of 4lbs and makes me feel like a big ol bag of crap by the end. The good news is that at least some of that weight is staying off. The morning after my first run, unsurprisingly, I weighed back in at 190.5 lbs. This morning, however, I weighed in at only 183.0 and I have seen my weight as low as 181.5 on Sunday after another midday excursion.

Moral of the story? If you are feeling fat go running? I don’t know, why does there have to be a moral?

Grandpa Skullet

Grandpa Skullet

Have you every seen someone who, despite knowing deep down inside that they are a human being, that they deserve a certain modicum of respect, that they have feelings too, you just couldn’t help staring and laughing in disbelief?

That was the case with Grandpa Skullet. I wish that I had a picture to share with you as it would really make this whole description a whole lot easier to give, much like the zombie dog, but in this case cameras were not present and simple words will have to suffice.

Grandpa Skullet (GS) stands about 5’6” and weighs at least 250 lbs. A conservative estimate would place 150 of those pounds centered in his impressive beer belly, which distends from his mid section like some kind of male pregnancy parody. 60 or so years old GS sports a receding hairline which has rendered him shiny bald across the entire front of his head. Draw a line from one ear directly over your head to the other and imagine everything in front of that line bald. From that line backwards, however, GS’ hair flows back in a righteous mane, slicked back with sweat, and likely some manner of petroleum jelly, to fall in cascading waves to his shoulders. Dressed in a safari vest over t-shirt, the vest is incapable of containing his massive girth and splits just below the button to perfectly frame his massive belly.

GS enters the courtyard of the expat nightclub where we have settled in to enjoy a drink, something predatory in his eyes. He takes up residence at a table adjacent to the door into the club, from where he has a perfect vantage point to observe his prey’s comings and goings. Ordering a Fanta, drink of choice of predators (refreshing and hydrating without inhibiting reaction time or other functions), he ‘casually’ surveys the assortment of prey, which has come to refresh themselves at the watering hole. A flock of young women alight upon a nearby table and GS’ eyes shine as he licks his chops. GS begins his hunt, throwing off ‘vibes’ in the direction of the flock, hoping to lure one or two away from the group. Sadly, today is not a good hunting day for GS, the flock appears immune to his charms. Soon recognizing defeat this magnificent predator slinks away in search of easier game.

Zombie Dogs

Zombie Dogs:

I think for the most part the picture says it all, but if a picture on its own is worth a thousand words then my assumption is that for every word associated with a picture the formula ought to be:

Picture X # of words = Total description value

Thus if you pair a picture with 200 words then the equation would read:

1000 X 200 = 200,000

This may of course be inaccurate, as at some point the number of words will stop adding to the descriptive value. However, I have yet to properly determine what that number is, as I believe that it varies picture to picture and context to context. Perhaps some day a man or women of greater mathematical intellect than I will waste a significant portion of their lives designing a matrix, which will answer this question… Until then:

This story takes place on a hot and sunny afternoon in the town of Arusha. Having just walked clear across town to purchase shuttle tickets to Moshi for later that afternoon, we backtracked a short distance in search of lunch. Along the side of the road there are usually some kind of dirt paths, be they the shoulder of the road or separate. This particular path was elevated and away from the road a slight distance and led us under the pleasant shade of several trees. Tanzanians seem to be quite excellent at collecting the random detritus along the roadside into neat piles, presumably to either burn, decompose, or at some unknown future date be collected and taken away. You tend to grow quite used to these piles quite quickly, not really paying them heed and often simply walking over them without a second glance. This day Amy made the mistake of taking a second glance.

Despite being quite decomposed in some areas this beastly cadaver somehow managed to retain a significantly lifelike appearance. The eyes were intact, and the face held such an expression; something feral, dark and angry, as though he were crying out in anger against the evil that had felled him. It was so easy to picture him stirring from his repose and rising in his skeletal state to take awful revenge against the world that had robbed him of his life.

Amy screamed and jumped about like a girl and in a perfectly scripted show of gender solidarity Carmen joined her. Being the stoic gentleman I am, I approached the situation with all of the somber detachment one would expect from a coroner or mortician. Ok actually I laughed at them, no one is perfect. The whole experience and mental picture of the corpse reanimating itself brought to mind an interesting query, however. In today’s world there are few who are not educated on least basic zombie survival techniques. The number of movies, books and television shows dealing with the topic, is only surpassed by the recent rash of ‘art’, which has managed to romanticize vampires. Man but the vamps must be loving that. I mean talk about easy prey, girls all over the world practically begging to be bitten… but I digress. The point is that while many of us have a good handle on the basics of surviving the eventual zombie apocalypse when it comes to human zombies, I think we are woefully underprepared for animal zombies. I mean think about it. Undead humans aren’t all that well suited to biting you and yet still pose formidable foes. But at least they are large, generally slow moving targets with small mouth to head ratios. Dogs and other animals, however, are practically all mouth; mouths with big nasty sharp teeth. And to make matters worse they move faster and they are closer to ground making it harder for us to fight them. I mean think about it. Would you rather be attacked by a normal human or a normal dog… assuming no weapons or advanced combat training, and assuming we are not talking about a corky or some other tiny excuse for a dog that ought to be put down regardless of its undead status? I personally would rather fight the human any day. Now just imagine that same scenario but with zombies…

One more thought. Zombie Mosquitoes!! Good luck with that one…