WOW!!! Time to catch up AGAIN!!!

Whew! What a trip it’s been!!! So last week I had business travels that carried me to the upper central portion of the U.S. & luckily timing worked out so that Suz was able to join in the fun! Monday morning I pulled out of my drive at 4AM in order to meet a couple time based objectives; (1) meet Suz as close to “on time” as possible when her flight arrived in Chicago around 1:30 PM & (2) catch the Harley-Davidson museum in time for a quick tour before they closed at 6PM! Given the Midwest has 2 seasons; football season & road construction season I was about 30 minutes late meeting Suz but given the 575 miles between points A & B that wasn’t TOO bad! We then battled Chicago & Milwaukee construction & had a great time in the Harley museum followed by a yummy healthy dinner at their onsite restaurant.

Worked all day Tuesday training suppliers, running a bit late since the afternoon supplier is midstream building a brand new factory that they wanted me to tour after the training, but Suz & I still managed to find Milwaukee’s Planet Fitness where we tore up a great leg day although I could tell it drove her nuts taking turns going through each workout. She’s used to her home gym & just cranking along but I wanted to take this opportunity to hopefully learn from each other so we each blasted our individual sets then watched & cheered each other’s. She suggested a different foot placement on a couple stations that definitely seemed to improve their effectiveness while reducing the knee & back pain! Afterwards we found a hole in the wall Roadhouse for a kinda late fajita dinner that turned out to be awesome!

Suz had found info regarding a nearby Milwaukee conservatory which was 3 huge geodesic domes, each housing a different ecosystem, she wished to visit & knowing we only had about 390 miles to cover to Minneapolis taking the scenic route Wednesday we slept in a little then headed over there for her to capture some really cool pictures. The first dome we hit was the “Tropical” dome & OMG!!! It lived up to its name!!! It was hot & humid in there WHEW!!! Next we hit the desert dome & what a relief!!! It was a “dry heat” LOL! The final dome is one they change all the time & while we were there it had a European floral flavor complete with a Dutch windmill in the center.  After she got done shooting the domes we cruised downtown to the Lake Michigan shore line & grabbed a yummy late lunch at The Harbor House & enjoyed a nice breeze then beat feet trying to escape Milwaukee just before rush hour. Stopped at an old fashioned A&W Root Beer stand along the way, just before sunset and grabbed dinner & given events of the day rolled into the Minneapolis hotel right at Midnight LOL!

Rolled through Thursday’s training without any hiccups then decided to pre-feed before hitting the Minneapolis Planet Fitness to save a couple wardrobe changes. Bad idea!!! I had selected an Osaka Japanese hibachi grille just up the street from the hotel for dinner believing that to be a fairly healthy choice but apparently something just didn’t settle well =( By the time we returned to the hotel the internal pressure was horrendous & I felt absolutely miserable!!! I’ve had hibachi MANY times & have NEVER had such an experience although this was the first time I’d had salmon at one. Spent the entire evening miserable & dreading the 18ish hour drive home coming Friday so we opted out of Thursdays UBWO & crashed early to help make the 3AM rise Friday more tolerable. Although long the drive back wasn’t too bad. There was a WICKED storm over Chicago as we approached which delayed Suz’s flight home about 20 minutes but overall I shaved about an hour off the Minneapolis – Chicago leg & 90 minutes off the Chicago – Memphis leg arriving home about 19 hours after the day began.

Hit Helga’s house of pain Saturday for a righteous UBWO slaying making up for Thursday’s miss then Monday shifted to evening workouts for the week since the side job is on Holiday shutdown this week & tore up UBWO again but this time utilizing the free weights instead of machine stations like I usually have which was a real eye opener!!! I’ve always known free weights require additional stabilizing effort over the machines but WOW! Did that ever tax my whiney shoulder! Anyway, the work got done along with a full 9 minute HIIT session both before & another after as “warmup & cool down”!

Tuesday night I tore into a vicious LBWO at Helga’s jumping back on the hack squat sled that I herniated my lumbar disk on, trying Suz’s recommended foot placement. I got up pto 540 LBs before things began to twinge but being I was easing back into it I was running double reps to the FiCX format, 16, 12, 12 & 8. All said & done I just exceeded 80,000 LBs in volume which I paid a bit for Wednesday morning LOL! Spent Wednesday morning going through LKs back care yoga stretches getting my whiney lumbar happified but it was worth it to hit those numbers again!

Getting ready to head back up for another weekend in Suz’s world which was already planned before we knew about last week’s travels so we’re getting a little spoiled but that’s okay! ;-)

Rock on pals! Gotta keep working on the COMPLIANCE part of FiCX to get the progress needle cranking up!