Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Coming off the Bench

This has been the longest stint on the PUP list I've ever had, never mind the DL. 28 days of nothing requiring lung action beyond walking twenty feet at a time! Lungs are still a bit on the bubbly side, but after the month of respiratory crap following several months of limited lifting thanks to a bum shoulder and bum elbow (Aging: It Sucks), I am hobbling into the gym tomorrow afternoon and giving the trainer free rein to make me cry.

The fantasies of transforming back into the stud I was at 19 or even the approximation of an athlete I was a few years ago may remain safely in my head. Or, hell, maybe I'll get a step back or be able to return to outlifting at. I got spiffy new running shoes, anyway.

Day One. Comeback Day. Tomorrow. I'm stoked.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sorry to hear you had such a bad case of H1N1 ... watching it close here in Phoenix .. I had swine flu in the 70's .. it was bad enough to keep me down a couple of weeks. My wife scares me with dead and dying stories of H1N1 every week ... she's a nurse.

So you are an Archeologist and a labrat .. how so? I am a Geologist and a former labrat. I have 15 years in an analytical lab running samples and submitting numbers .. damn good numbers too .. but I chucked it to walk away from the idiot management. Less of a Geologist, Chemist, Technician, Analyst every day I am away. I love History and wanted to study Archeology so do me a favor if you feel inclined to share some insight ... what is a good source, a good read for a novice like myself on the paleo cultures of the Southwest and Mexico. Is there something good in the last ten years from someone of vision that explains the origin, flourish and eventual decline or evolution of these cultures? Was that way too much to ask? I'm hoping there is a lecturing scholar on the Southwest and Mexico like a Grant or a Wood is to Classical Greek studies or a technical genius Archeologist like Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza on Diversity and Evolution. Do you know anybody like this working and writing about MesoAmerican Archeology?

You like Chert? Chert found at kill sites, hunter camps, blade production centers. Hmm? Do you know Signal Road near Burrow Canyon on AZ 93 going North between Wickenburg and Wikiup? Go East on the dirt road opposite from Signal Road, five miles or so and you will be paralleling a canyon on the left that will end in a significant box canyon cut into the rhyolite. Above this box canyon on the road there is a obvious modern ranch staging area with water trough, big turn around just before the road climbs through the cleft in the mountains by this dry stream with the dead end box canyon. This area around this canyon is the chert field for a paleo culture, nodules were collected here from the rhyolite, blades seem to be the style rather than points. No pottery. Too old maybe for pottery? People must have camped here above the box canyon where a big hunt could have trapped the game by driving it up into the canyon beyond the point of escape up the too steep sides of the cliffs. It's funny that the modern ranchers are using the same natural topography for their roundups.

There are small garnets in the rhyolite here too in the vugs, very pretty, that's the geologist and rockhound in me!

So what do you think about a simple blade technology as opposed to the well recognized arrowhead chipped point? I think I see blades being made from cores to be fitted to arrows or spears rather than simply the discarded blanks of arrow point producion. There seems to be another center for just blades in the upper Verde River canyons near Hell Canyon North of Chino Valley. There seems to be no pottery or arrowheads, just blades which most people would just discount as trash from core production and working. Maybe this is a blade technology similar to Siberia rather than the knapped point.

My Dad found a few small pipestone carvings that bewildered me and made me suggest somebody got them from a Circus long ago as trinkets out near Palden North of Chino Valley. Idiot that I was I failed to see the animal associations ... they were Elephant, Camel, Pig and Eagle as I remember, maybe Bear too. What if the first was a mammoth instead of an elephant? It did no occur to me for a few years.

Boltgirl you should be excited about Archeology, there may be a Human/ Mammoth, Camel, paleo-Pig or Bear site in your future!

Do you do the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show? I usually go to the main event but have always wanted to get to the side shows where they have the bones.

Take Care ... maybe I'll see you at an event, i I don't o down to the H1N1 before then.