(Security) Theater

Kirsten and I just went up to Seattle for a romantic weekend. It was the first time I have been through airport security with the new hip. The surgeon's office had just promised that I would set off the metal detector. I asked them about some sort of card to get me through and they just laughed. If cards worked the bad guys would just get cards so the security guys wouldn't care about them anyway.

I'm not a big fan of all the money we spend on airport security. It is still so porous that most of the security measures are to make the honest people feel good and the government look good. The pundits I like call it security theater. The new part of my theater is the glass box. It goes like this. Strip down to no jacket, belt or shoes. Run it all through then step through the metal detector that hesitates, then goes off. The agent asks if you have anything in your pockets like a cell phone and invites you to step through again. You say no but you have a hip. Never mind the step through again in that case, please step into this glass holding pen. They then call a male searcher. The searcher lets you out of a glass back door after you have stood there for awhile in your stocking feet, stupidly facing the wrong way, holding up your pants, watching folks watch you. The cage, I presume, is to keep a higher level suspect such as myself from bolting. The searcher comes with a wand and goes over you very thoroughly including a lot of pat downs and reaching behind waist bands. It doesn't take much longer.
Do take off your belt. I wore one without a metal buckle but the dude still had me take it off and wait while he ran it through the scanner. There is a slight alternative I didn't have a chance to try. I didn't use it, but Salt Lake has some optional scanners that see through clothing but, I'm told, don't have a metal scanner. With a hip they can see you don't have a weapon that way and you can skip the pat down. The Salt Lake pat down guy told me about it. Seattle didn't have one so I haven't had a chance to try that route.
Sitting for a while still stiffens up my hip. But once I'm up and moving I can cruise the airport, and Seattle downtown, without a limp. As expected, I have to report that I still get museum back when on my feet but not moving much. I had slight hopes for that with a fixed up hip, but I think I still need to work on the ol' core strength and flexibility, and maybe go ahead and rent that wheel chair . . . !

Expectations, 104 Days

November. Until yesterday I was thinking that I was right about hip progress flattening out. Slow, hard to measure progress is surely to be expected and with low, and reasonable, expectations a person is not likely to be disappointed. I have been content to keep the big picture in mind. To think long term. In that sense I had been completely satisfied with hip surgery results.

For the last six weeks I have been trying to augment this satisfying progress by losing weight. I'm 5'11", almost, and 200 lbs, not almost. For my height an ideal and still realistic weight would be maybe 175. I believe that weight loss would help dramatically in the daily pain level. For instance, I can feel the difference in discomfort when I climb up a few steps while carrying a couple bags of groceries. For 6 weeks I tried to be aware of what I was eating and to stay a little hungry. But I didn't lose weight. So 11 days ago ( but who's counting?) I found Livestrong.com and their amazing, and free, website. Under "My Plate" one can count calories both in rather precise terms of intake and in exertion. One can put in their weight, age and activity level and how fast they want to lose weight and Livestrong gives you a target daily calorie amount. For these 11 days I have been scrupulous about maintaining the site and I am, according to them, more than 10,000 calories ahead of maintenance level and over 3000 ahead of target. I still weigh 200 lbs however. This time I let myself expect that I had been eating more than I thought, that counting calories would help me smoke that fact out, and that if I hit or exceeded their targets I would lose weight. I admit I am disappointed. Counting calories should count for something for all kinds of reasons, the least of which is how damned tedious it is! Anyway . . . I'm not sure what to do about that. I'm not really willing to put a lot more share of mind into weight loss or to be a whole lot hungrier. I'll go another week and see. This time without expecting as much.

Last week it snowed in the valley for a few days but by yesterday it was sixty degrees again with bright, fall-blue, cloudless skies. I went out for a road bike ride with Kirsten and our neighbor, Nancy. Both women are lean and strong. Nancy hasn't been riding much of late but she is a natural, tiny like a jockey, and like I said, strong. Surgery had sort of evened things up for all three of us on the road and it was fun to ride for an hour or so with them. I've been riding some on my own, not a lot, but some. Yesterday, however, the girls could not keep up or even close. In fact, I was reeling in other riders, something that never used to happen, ever, even before surgery and even when I was all trained up for Ride the Rockies last June. Kirsten has maintained that my arthritic hip was holding me back a lot, even on the bike. I'm still a little skeptical about that, but yesterday, hey, an upside, unexpected surprise! Something feels different out there. Perhaps not only does my hip not hurt as much but my whole leg works better and is stronger. Now that's more than one might expect.