Living Well With Diabetes

I was nearly home and done with my daily commute by bicycle. In front of me was the last hill to ride up before the half-mile downhill coast to my front door.

It wasn’t a big or long hill, but it was a challenge. It rose steeply and then leveled off each time it approached one of the five intersections that lay between me and the summit. I had just passed the point at which the ride up the hill starts to feel like real work. I unzipped my jacket. It had seemed so necessary when I put it on at the start of my commute. Now it seemed so unnecessary.

I passed the corner house where a mother and daughter were out in the yard raking leaves. Well, mom was raking and daughter seemed to be supervising. I shifted down in preparation for the upcoming steep incline to the next intersection.

That’s when I overheard the daughter ask “Would you rather be a movie star or a doctor?” Her tone of voice suggested that all other possible career paths weren’t even worth considering. Movie star or doctor. Those are your choices. What’s it going to be?

I kept riding even though I really wanted to stop and hear the answer. It put a smile on my face to think about the question and what the answer might be.

That’s one of the great pleasures of cycling. No, I’m not talking about eavesdropping. I’m talking about how it gives me some time to think about my own questions and what the answers might be. But first, you have to be able to hear the questions. The slow, silent pace of cycling allows you to actually hear the questions. And, apparently, not just my own questions.

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Grandeur Peak is an 8300-foot peak in the Wasatch Mountains just east of Salt Lake City. In fact, you can look east from our front porch and get a glorious view of Grandeur Peak. Even better, I can walk out my front door and within three hours, be at the summit of Grandeur Peak.

Because it’s so close, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the last ten years hiking on Grandeur Peak. Today’s version of hiking on Grandeur Peak was motivated by a look at the weather report for the weekend: rain and snow. Today, on the other hand, was about as nice a fall day as you could ask for: clear air, blue skies and temperatures in the sixties. If I didn’t already live here, today would be as good a reason to move to Salt Lake City as any.

After I finished work today, I gathered my camera and our dog Pearl and headed for the trail heading up Grandeur Peak. Some of the photos I took turned out well enough that I thought I would share them here. Enjoy!

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I returned home last night after a visit with family in Minnesota. It was a nice trip during which I did some sightseeing, but mostly spent time with my parents in St. Peter and my brother and his family in the twin cities. I had two “experiences” during my visit that I feel are worth mentioning here.

During my visit, I drove with my parents to Mankato, Minnesota where we had lunch at local favorite restaurant of theirs. My mother said I had to experience the classic hamburger served at this restaurant. It was something ominously called the Butter Burger. Or maybe it was called the Butter Ball Burger, I’m not sure. Anyway, it was something involving butter. After a large dinner the night before, my instinct was to go for a nice, moderately-sized salad, but in the end, I gave in to the complete experience and ordered the Ball of Butter Burger or whatever it was called. Not the “Single” either; I went with the “Double”. And, of course, since I was giving in to the experience, I had to have the total, complete experience, so I had the “Deluxe” and fries.

As soon as I placed my order, I regretted it. I wasn’t that hungry. I would have been entirely happy with a salad or, at least, a single instead of a double patty Butter Burger. Oh well.

As it turned out, the burger whose name involves butter was aptly titled. I felt like if I lived to the point of paying the bill, I would probably survive the experience.

I was glad to be wearing my continuous glucose monitor so I could keep a close eye on my blood sugars. I suspected this meal was higher in fat (and protein) than my usual lunchtime meals, so I programmed a combination bolus instead of a standard bolus. The combination bolus would split the total bolus amount 60/40 – Sixty percent would be delivered immediately and 40 percent would be delivered steadily across the next two and a half hours. I don’t do combination boluses very often so this was nothing more than a guess, but it turned out to be pretty close. My BG got as high as 149 about an hour after eating and then dropped gradually over the next two hours.

My other “experience” happened yesterday morning. I headed to one of the local coffee shops in St. Peter, Minnesota. Waldo’s Coffee Company is located in a building in downtown St. Peter that was Stensby’s Dry Cleaners while I was growing up. Yesterday, I sat in a wire deck chair in roughly the location of the Stensby’s Dry Cleaners cash register. I enjoyed a glass beer mug full of an excellent dark roast of coffee. Now that was an experience!

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