Punching things for fun and profit

Okay, so the profit goes entirely to Chaska Krav Maga, but the fun is all mine! Mine, I say! Last night was my tenth class, though it feels like I've been doing it for longer. Vacations and floods and random canceled classes intervened, but I'm mostly on a twice-per-week schedule.

I never knew how fun defending chokes and punching things could be. If I had, you can bet I would have signed up for this years ago. I was a bit skeptical at first. I mean, doing martial arts for the first time at age 30? Turns out to be an idea of legend. Tuxette started it; it's all her fault that I've found a physical activity that it actually enjoyable to supplement my biking. 

Like made of carbon compounds?

This is an organic pepper that I grew; it's organic because I didn't care enough to do anything to it.

As a chemist (sort of), the word organic has a very specific meaning: relating or belonging to the class of chemical compounds having a carbon basis. So, I'm organic. You're organic. Your dog is organic. And pretty much all foodstuffs are organic.

To the USDA, organic has a different meaning: foods that are grown without antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, irradiation or bioengineering. That's it. It does not mean that the food is healthier than foods that do not bear the apparent gleaming gilded halo of a sticker that says "Organic." It has no relationship to processing. You can process the bejeezus out of ingredients that were grown without pesticides.

If you had a batch of organic corn, you could make organic high fructose corn syrup, and I think we can all agree that's just as bad as regular high fructose corn syrup. There are organic toaster pastries, but I can assure you that regular old oatmeal would be a better choice.

Organic can mean a lot of things, but it is not a synonym for healthy.

30 Days of Biking

We've had a rather snowy winter relative to last year, so I was not able to get any biking time in March. Last year, I had been biking for about 3 weeks by this time, but the snow finally melted off of the trails in time for April and the 30 Days of Biking challenge, which I am doing because I otherwise wouldn't push myself hard enough this month. There are only 2 months until the MS 150 and I hope to get at least 350 miles in before then.

It's still a bit cold and some of the trails are closed due to being at the bottom of the Mississippi River, but biking season is officially on! (Yes, I know, the really hardcore people don't observe biking season, but I was too busy drinking hot cocoa and being cold in January to bother shivering through a bike ride and/or nervously waiting for hilarity to ensue in the game of bike vs. ice.)