I was not looking for an elliptical trainer, as I am not really heavily into cardio, but one popped up curbside, so I brought it home. The Thane Orbitrek elliptical trainer needed a lot of work in order to function. Thankfully it all turned out well and I now have another option for cardio to add to rope skipping and a stationary bike.
Bird Muskoka folding bicycle, right side, made in China, Photo01 by Don Tai
A neighbour discarded this Bird Muskoka folding bicycle with 20″ wheels 7 speed, so I picked it up for review and tune up. I enjoy anything about bicycles and love to see how they are manufactured and how they ride. This is a Bird Muskoka folding bicycle, the paint job, including the Canadian flag, seemingly tailored to the Canadian market. Even more fitting is that I did most of the repairs on 2024 July 01, Canada Day. Fitting.
Commercial exercise handles for strength training cable machines or exercise bands are quite easy to make yourself.
If you strength train using a cable machine, or use resistance bands, you will probably need exercise handles. These plastic and nylon webbing handle attachments clip to the cable with a carabiner, allowing you to more comfortably pull as well as allowing your wrist and arm to rotate in a more natural position. This rotation is much easier on your joints and greatly adds to your comfort. Conversely straight and rigid attachments such as a lat pulldown bar usually offer no flexibility of wrist angle, which is harder on your joints. A neutral grip for rowing is easier on the wrists, and therefore better for long-term use.
My bicycle is from the 1970s, and is quite old. It even has a label that says “Made in Canada”, it is that old. Triumph brand. Yet its steel frame, heavy but strong, lives on. I make it live with maintenance. As with most of my bicycles, this one was used and abused by a Chinese neighbour, and then left for dead, rusted and in terrible shape. I took pity on it.
Any exercise is better than no exercise. That said, for cardio exercise there are nuances that can affect you. HIIT is quick and stressing, and moderate cardio is slow and time consuming but gentle. Are the results the same for both?
High intensity interval training HIIT requires you to go all out in your cardio workout, but for extremely short periods of time, such as one minute. You then rest for a couple of minutes and repeat. A couple of cycles of this, and three times a week, and you’re done. You may not even do cardio for an hour per week, cumulatively. Maybe you do this for only 15 minutes a week.
Car bicycle crash in Scarborough, Toronto, Canada 2017 Oct 20 11:40am. The driver of the minivan did stop at the red light but did not look for pedestrians or cyclists, and hit an old Chinese lady on a bicycle.
Today was not a good day for the old lady cyclist in front of me. She trusted that the right-turning driver of the minivan would wait for her to cross, and he hit her, 2017 Oct 20, 11:40am, Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. While it might have been unintentional, thankfully the crash was very low speed, the car driver stopped, and no one was hurt. While I believe the car driver was at fault, we all need to pay much more attention, especially when vehicles are concerned. That old lady could have been a mother and baby in stroller.
Bicycle path over highway overpass, Xiamen, Fujian province, Feb 9, 2017. The overpass looks long, but the length allows a gradual ascent and decent for cyclists, improving safety
Back in the late 1980s there were more bicycles than cars in Beijing. I thought it was heavenly. People were healthy, Bikes were like a swarm of insects, clustering together, and riding was safe for everyone. While the air during spring had sand swept down from the Gobi desert (风沙), the air was relatively clean most of the year. Fast forward to a 2008 trip where Beijing’s air pollution was terrible and cars choked the city. There was a yellowish haze present in the air even when looking at the building across the street. Terrible air, terrible for your health, and preventable. Xiamen has built a bicycle path that looks very enlghtened. At 7.5km long it includes a highway overpass. If you could use it I think your life would be much better.
The way we choose to live goes a long way to determining how long and how well we will eventually live. More troubling is that our choices are observed and learned by our kids, who then take on very similar choices and lifestyle. While kids theoretically have a choice, in reality they follow their parents, for better or for worse. This study from Active Healthy Kids Canada is really troubling, in that it points to what I call “Rich Country” disease, where here in Canada we have lots of organized sport activities, lots of proper environment and equipment, but not a lot of actual physical exercise. It would be more appropriate to have the best of organized sport, with great facilities, that results in the fittest, most healthy kids on the planet. This is certainly not the case.
Beto bicycle floor pump V1, early version, bought at MEC in Toronto. The pin in the valve head broke. Photo By Don Tai
Bought from MEC a decade ago for $25CAD, this pump has served me well pumping up kids schrader low pressure tires, as well as the odd presta style. A litle bit of inattention from the Big Weed and she broke the valve head. Specifically the plastic pin that holds down the valve head to the valve. A repair was in order.
Sometimes you search on the internet and simply do not find the info you need to solve your problem. Bummer. You then need to think about it yourself and figure out a solution. I think this is what people did before Google and the encyclopedic internet came along. I wanted to learn to ride a bicycle backwards and possibly fab up a giraffe uni, but did not have the money. Central to both endeavours is the fixed rear hub, one that when you pedal backwards it goes backwards, and when you pedal forwards it goes forwards. This is how I converted a 20″ bmx bicycle freewheel hub into a fixie hub.
