AndyJ's Body Enhancement Thread

The weather report is showing 60% chance of rain on Saturday. The flyer for the 5K said it would be canceled if it rains.

If that happens I’ll go to the gym and knock off 5K on the treadmill or lapping the indoor track.

I found the park and the ‘nature trail’ yesterday, parked, and walked the trail. It’s very nice, with bridges over creeks and over the spillway of an old dam, and some mild elevation changes. Much less boring than the treadmill, but it’s only half a mile long, and there’s not really anywhere else suitable for walking. Either they’ll run six laps or so to make 5K, or they’ll have to run part of it along the road, which is a four-lane through an industrial park. If it’s not canceled I’ll find out.

It rained off and on all night. At 0720 it was a fine mist, 58F, and half-dark. I figured the run would be called off. I got dressed to go to the gym. What the hell, I drove past it and on down to the park where the run was supposed to be.

Well, what do you know, they didn’t cancel it. But I’m there half an hour early, in a T-shirt, and literally everyone else is wearing puffy padded coats or some sort. I could stay in my car until the last moment so I wouldn’t freeze, but… they’d also moved the parking from the park itself to another parking lot at a nearby business, which was already mostly full of cars, and waaaaayyy too many people milling about. With adequate preparation I can manage going into a store, but people in a store have a common task and almost zero interaction. The "milling about" thing is hard for me to deal with. I would have given it a try anyway, since the route would take my by my car twice and I could bail out if I had to, but the new parking location was more than a quarter of a mile from the Start/Finish line. 3.1 miles is right at the edge of what I can do. Adding another half mile or more, probably not.

Well, okay. I drove to the gym to implement Plan A, 5K on the indoor track. The gym was locked and dark. They open at 0700 in the mornings… except not on weekends, apparently. The sign said they wouldn’t open until 0800. Screw it, I’ll come back later.

edit: I went back to the gym after it opened and did 5K on the treadmill at 2.5mph. It took 77 minutes. My legs did fine; my main problem is boredom, even with the MP3 player.

The nature trail I walked last week was half a mile. It was very nice.

Today I walked a different trail, part of the "Community Sports Complex." There were two trails, buried behind immaculately-manicured sportsball parks. One trail circled a lake, marked as 0.7 miles. It was rough and potholed, with broken-off tree limbs laying on the path, and a considerable amount of trash; some of it quite old, judging by the weathering. It was thoroughly depressing. It was clear that the park’s main purpose was sportsball.

I had to drive around the park to find the sign for the other trail. I parked at the trailhead and walked maybe fifty yards down a straight paved trail through a swampy area, ending in a graveled area surrounded by standing water. It looked like an outtake from "Deliverance." Ooo-kay. I walked back to the car and drove through the rest of the park; if there were any other trails, I didn’t find them.

While I was gone, the blood bank called, presumably to verify my appointment for the 21st. Mrs. Andy volunteered to call them back, and immediately connected with Andyland. They had apparently merged my record with someone else of the same name, but in a different state, somehow connecting his address to my phone number. Then it turned out they had no record of me having an 0930 appointment on the 21st. I dug out the printout from the December visit, with the date and time for the next appointment on it. They had a slot open for that time, so they set me up for that.

So far, more than half of *every* medical-related appointment I’ve had in the last year has turned into this sort of thing.

What’s strange is, I can’t remember this sort of thing ever happening (to me personally, anyway) until just a few years ago, and now it has come to the point where it’s more the rule than the exception.

Walking is boring. Sometimes, I listen to podcasts. But I prefer to have all of my senses on high alert, not hampered.

The gym is mainly senior citizens and overweight, middle-aged women. Neither high on my threat level. Outdoors, so far, I’ve either been alone or nobody close enough to worry about.

The ear buds don’t block that much sound, and it’s a lot easier to listen around an audiobook than it is to hear anything past music.

Overall I’m not too worried about danger; it’s not "Mayberry" here any more, but it’s a long way from what larger cities have to put up with. I’m far more likely to encounter a feral dog than a feral human.
Someone could still sneak up and attack from behind, but that’s the same background threat level you face at the store or a parking lot. You don’t have to be in Condition Yellow all the time, just have a reasonable awareness of your general vicinity.

If the great slot machine of life comes up lemons, well, someone is going to have a really bad day. Hopefully, not me.

It turns out there are a bunch of hiking trails within a reasonable drive. Some of them are paved. Mrs. Andy isn’t very mobile any more, so I suggested getting a wheelchair. She could walk as far as she could, and then I could push her the rest of the way.

She was agreeable, and called various pawn shops and goodwill stores to see what was out there. It seems there was a run on wheelchairs a couple of weeks ago; everyone is out. I was scoping out the price of a new one when she suggested getting a bicycle instead. I did some more webbing and found many of the hiking trails are "dual use" and permit bicycles. She was pretty enthusiastic about the idea, but I was more concerned about her running out of gas and then I’d have to somehow get her and two bicycles back to the trailhead.

While poking around I found the price of electric bicycles has come way down. Hmm. I found one on sale for 80% off, with a seat height down where she could put her feet on the ground. It should show up some time this week.

I’ll let her zip along and wait for me to catch up on foot. I’ll buy myself a regular bike in a couple of weeks. It’s not what I want, but it will do for now. When the weather gets too hot to futz around on a bicycle, I might drag it into my workshop and do horrible things to it, like the crazy people on lowracer.de

If I’m going to join the ranks of the bicycle assholes, I might as well go all the way.

Bicycles are strange. It turns out "seat height" for a bicycle is in relation to the pedals, not the ground. Mrs. Andy can’t even come close to touching the ground on her new bike. She wants to try riding it anyway, but I don’t think the 30-day return policy applies if she crashes it.

I’ve been making fairly rapid progress extending my walking range. I’ve bumped the treadmill up 0.1 miles per week. Each week gets easier. That will taper off eventually, but I don’t see any point in going past 10K. Hopefully I can work up to that.

I was oh-so-close to 8-1/8 inches BPEL before I took a decon. I dropped back to 7.25 inches as it wasn’t cemented. I expected that, but it was still disappointing. I’m back up to 7.75 inches as of this morning. All I’ve done since decon has been pumping. Now that it has warmed up some I need to go back to the vacuum hanger and extender. Girth is still a bit over 6. EQ is noticeably down now that I’ve stepped up to 6"Hg. It took more than two years to work up to 4", but only a few months from that to 5" and then 6", though the 5-to-6 step has been entirely with the breast bump (which pulses) and the earlier stuff was with the aquarium pump.

Just run it down to where she can reach, make it harder to pedal and she won’t get away from ya so fast. :-P

That still packs a whallup, AndyJ. It’s coming back easily at least.

EQ has a very fine line, I’ve found. It almost seems to make up it’s own mind. For all the different things I’ve tried, 5hg is still the best all around vacuum. 6hg is my upper boundary. Extremes, up into the 10’s and such, never got me anything but a discolored and turtled up donut.

I don’t see any use in going beyond 6hg, and I have plenty of times. Even when I was conditioned for it, I think I was needlessly punishing myself for little or no gain more than if I’d been reasonable about it.

Cheers to getting back into traction!

-Stay safe

I’ve been able go to 6"Hg if I only pump once or twice a day, but more often than that, 5" is the limit without petechiae.

Gains were good at 5", but you know how it is, there’s always the urge to push for the limit.

" there’s always the urge to push for the limit."

It’s shocking to me how many times I’ve banged my head against that wall. Like a moth to the flame.

I think we all do that, in my mind it’s one of the definitions of being a man. Everytime I start a routine I always plan to take it easy, a few months down the line and I always have pushed it harder than I wanted to and I have to rein myself in.

Raining and windy outside, but okay on the treadmill at the gym. I notched up another .1 mile, to 3.5 miles. My hips don’t like that much. Oddly, my knees get a little stiff, but not painful. A year ago, not even hydrocodone could have helped much.

I dug out the vacuum cap and sleeve and did an hour at 1/2 pound and two hours at two pounds, straight out. No problem. I went about town commando, with the cap and a heavy bolt-together ring, including the walk on the treadmill.

I’m finally seeing some consistent results from the ball stretching and pumping. Still a long way from what I consider normal, but now I’ll sometimes have to make an adjustment when sitting down, like when I was in my 20s.

I was going to observe at a three-gun event today, but it’s raining, and the weather report for where the event is, seventy miles away, says it’s raining there, too. Even if they’re shooting, the temperature is in the 40s, it’s raining, windy, and will probably be muddy, too. I’m going to wimp out and stay home.

The vacuum bell I mentioned earlier is the largest one in the Total Man set; 43mm. My glans isn’t anywhere near that big, but my shaft is, and the smaller bell got to where it pinched badly at the opening. I still get a bit of a pinch with the 43mm bell, but it’s okay for now.

After some hanging a few days ago, I did a short hanging session Saturday night, when left the bell and sleeve on until I had to pee, which was about six hours. The glans stayed at its pumped size for quite some time, but when it finally shrank down it developed a bunch of longitudinal wrinkles. Those went away Sunday, but I’m almost two days from that session and I still have some edema in the part of the shaft that went into the bell. Not much, but it hasn’t gone down much either. Odd. I was able to do long ADS or bell-and-sleeve sessions (basically just staying extended, not doing any real stretching) without problem before, even when stepping up to the next bell size. This last one was a big jump, though, and it looks like I’m going to have to back off and work up.

On the flip side, no petechiae, blisters, white spots, or other problems, so I’m happy about that.

The plan is to ramp the duration of bell-and-sleeve and light hanging up before increasing the hanging weight. I’ll go to taping when (not if, alas) the blisters come back. Or try the water thing.