TnT's Workout Blog

We took them some Finn crisps with cured salmon spread for appetizers and Tomi made Karelian pies (or pasties) for breakfast. Dave cooked us roasted salmon with fennel and orange slaw for dinner.

On our way there we spotted some wild strawberries by the roadside. Today, Sunday is really hot and humid --- it was +26C already at 9am. We sweat profusely when riding back home.

The ride was nice; we conquered a couple challenging hills, but after riding here for seven years, there are no real obstacles anymore (but the Boltinghouse hill --- I'll pedal that up some day before leaving Bloomington, which is not that far ahead).

We were at the market earlier than usual, and found some strawberries, rhubarb, tomatoes, new potatoes, radishes, lettuce heads and freshly milled wholewheat flour. And let us not forget the Louisiana shrimp that was sold in the booth just outside of the market; only local farmers, dairy farms and ranches are allowed to sell their products at the market.

We also used weights in training the upper back and biceps. We did some back but not much abdominals. Christy's classes are enjoyable: she does not rush from one exercise to the next, and she pays a lot of attention to the form.

We trained each major muscle group at a time; we started with squats and lunges, then truly exhausted the shoulders and arms with weights and the resistance band. We finished the session doing some ab work on the ball, and some outer thighs on the mat. We also did some isometric and planks.

I miss running. Although I am not going to rush it since I don't want the destiny of Jasper Newton "Jack" Daniel; being mad at the safe, he kicked it and hurt his toe. The toe got infected and a few months later he died to the infection. I guess the toe was amputated at some point, too. We saw the safe when visiting the Jack Daniel distillery earlier this month.

IU's outdoor pool is going to host Summer deep water and shallow water sessions starting in June. These session use many more equipments than just buoyance belts and gloves. I am looking forward to exercising under the stars in the hot (and humid) Bloomington nights!

A nice thing about today's session was that she interleaved exercises targeted to different muscle groups, so we did not exhaust our feet first and then went on to kill our abs, but we alternated between arms and legs and abs. The session was probably harder than usual, since some people walked out prematurely.

Tomi ran to and from HPER.

We trained shoulders and upper body extensively and biceps and triceps and quads some --- I could not really do all the squats because of my toe. We finished with just little ab exercise. Tomi ran to and from HPER.

Going South we had significant head wind, and homeward some tail wind even if the wind had turned a bit. We saw a flock of four or five huge vultures grazing a roadkill, probably a coyote. Ugly animals.

We picked some green onions at the Farmer's market on our way home. This was quite a chilly morning.

After a wet day in the Walls, we have a sunny and warm morning to visit the Jack Daniel Hollow. The tour is free and it does not include any tasting --- we are in a dry county!

Few words about the pictures below: In the first picture with Tomi are the wooden ricks that are burned into charcoal through which the Jack Daniel's whisky is filtered to mellow it down. There are 50 something barrel houses on the premises, which each host some 20K barrels, except the oldests one which only has about 6K. The water used in the Jack comes from the spring shown in the third picture; the water makes a huge difference in the whisky as I've learned in Scotch tastings.

Even if they want to keep everything the same as it was when Jack Daniels took care of things, I don't think he monitored the process on flat screens. They were bottling Single barrel Silver Select at the time of our visit. Curiously, most of the people working at the bottling line were women, while the "real" guys in the distillery were men. The short movie about the distillery shown us before the tour did not feature a single woman. Probably, testosterone is as essential component in tasting and making whiskey as it is in making and tasting beer? On the other hand, there were an equal number of men and women attending the tour, and even one child ...