Larry's Library

Because I’m one of those Fat (gun-toting) Americans I’ve managed to become Diabetic…or at least Pre-Diabetic. I was actually prescribed meds for this. But in addition to being a Fat American I’m also a somewhat Stubborn Hobbit. I decided to go strictly Low Carb and commit to riding my recumbent bike 30 minutes a day rather than take the meds.

I choose not to call this Low Carb thing a “diet” as in many people’s minds this implies some sort of temporary situation. I’m smart enough to know this must be the way I eat for the rest of my life. I’m NOT going full-blown “Keto” but I am staying around 50 grams of carbs a day (and usually a LOT less than that). This was no small thing. I did have to give up many of the finer things in life….IF you count consuming the following as some of the Finer Things:

Hamburgers with buns
Hot Dogs with buns
Pizza with a real flour based crust
Doritos
Corn Chips
Potatoes (of any kind – Fries, Baked, Chips, etc)
Croutons in Salads
Crackers in Chili
Popcorn
Pie

At first I was reading while riding the bike every morning. After a while I realized that reading was actually too distracting for me and I would SLOW down at times. This would cause me to fall short of the goals I had set for myself. Right now that is 30 minutes…and at least 6 miles with a level 5 resistance (the bike has a 1-8 scale). Once I start to reliably hit 7 miles I will increase the resistance another notch. As of this writing I can usually hit about 6.5 miles on average.

So since reading during this is out I started bringing my phone and watching some YouTube and this works pretty great. Except for figuring out how to prop it up for a good view. So I built this mount out of scrap cardboard and tape:

It’s ugly but it works well.

Now I’m actually considering getting a tablet for this…and constructing a better mount for it…perhaps out of thin/light wood. May go with an Amazon Fire Tablet. This would sort of give me a chance to dip my toes into Android (I know Amazon does their own thing over it..) as I am getting tired of some of Apple’s shenanigans and I may finally go with an Android smartphone in a couple of years. We shall see.