Killer Toast Or What Has Carbs Got To Do With Everything?

Image by Earthworm
Labeled as only 15 grams of carbohydrate, toast is 60% carbs as opposed to 40% when it’s bread which takes longer to digest. Toast spiked my blood sugar to 132 mg/dl which is more than ice cream at 105 mg/dl, but not as much as cooked steel cut oatmeal which tops all my readings at 155 mg/dl. (Normal is 85.) Why is this bad?

Here is the science as I have gleaned from my reading of "Good Calories, Bad Calories". I had to read parts of the book several times to keep from glossing over the technical details, but once I read slowly enough to visualize what each component of the metabolic system did, it became easier to understand.

So to begin, most food breaks down in the blood stream and becomes sugar. Sugar is already sugar so jumps right in there. Carbohydrates, especially refined, cooked carbs also turn to sugar very fast. Too much sugar in the blood registers as high blood sugar. High blood sugars are toxic to the body, wreaking havoc on kidneys and other organs.

The normal body takes care of these spikes from food by releasing insulin from the pancreas, which allows the blood sugars to be absorbed by various parts of the body i.e. muscle tissue, thus taking it out of the blood stream and converting it to fuel for the body. This is how the body regulates itself to survive during periods of no food whether for a few hours, or weeks, or months. Too much insulin and the body becomes insulin resistant; first the muscle tissue refuses to take in the sugars, so it goes to the fat tissue where it is stored indefinitely as fat.

A handful of hormones allows the energy stored as fat to be disassembled into fatty acids that go back into the blood stream where it can be used as fuel by other parts of the body. If there is too much insulin in the body, the hormones aren’t able to facilitate this transference and the fat stays locked down in the adipose tissue. (Note to my fellow organizers: one study showed that rats that had had their ovaries removed and thus were estrogen deprived, ate voraciously and stored food in their cages. Infusing estrogen back into these rats suppressed the food-hoarding. Sounds like something hoarding researchers should look into. See p. 373.)

It is possible to release fat from your body by starving yourself thus engaging one of the survival mechanisms of our bodies; this will make you hungry which is why restricting food (going on a diet) is rarely maintained and can cause psychological disorders such as depression. As food intake drops, thyroid hormone falls and metabolic rate is lowered. The starvation diet is telling the body there isn’t any food out there so stay quiet, hibernate. The longer this goes on, the more efficient the body gets at using fat sparingly.

Once the fuel is used up the body will want to replenish the lost reserves right away, at first. Being hungry serves the purpose of alerting us to find more food. The body can release fat with hard labor, but will do this sparingly, i.e., more slowly than when it made the fat in the first place, in case food supplies are really low. No food is better than a tiny morsel as far as satisfying hunger. No food tells the body to lie low, stay peaceful, maybe even die.

So calorie restriction and exercise is the hardest way to lose weight and may make you irritable on top of it. Which is why it’s so pathologically entertaining to watch all those fat people struggling on "The Biggest Loser". What the show doesn’t dwell on is that the participants are eating a comparatively high fat, low carb diet with no sodas permitted (no sandwiches, no cereals, half a tortilla, carbs mostly in veggies, etc), which would allow them to lose weight anyway. In fact it would probably be easier on them to lose much of the weight before undergoing the heart endangering marathon exercise regime, but of course, not as good TV. And thus that warning at the end about checking with your doctor before attempting this at home.

The easy way to lose weight is to eat fatty foods to satisfy appetite and restrict easily digestible carbs like toast, oatmeal, mashed potatoes, white rice, pasta—especially overcooked pasta and most of all anything with high fructose corn syrup. That stuff has a special feature; it doesn’t affect blood sugar so it gives the appearance of being healthier on the glycemic index, but the kicker is that it goes straight to the liver which converts the fructose directly to fat molecules—triglycerides to be precise. That which your doctor may point to, on your blood work, as heading into cardiac arrest territory.

Most of my peeps know to avoid sodas, but we have not yet learned about the carbohydrates, drives insulin, drives fat equation. At least I had not because I never had to care about weight loss. My problem seems to be more about the insulin resistance not allowing the muscles to build up and the fat tissues becoming insulin resistant before I could lay down any fat; this seems more typical of Type 1 diabetes. Practically speaking my blood sugars were perpetually high and I’m hypoglycemic after eating 3 Ritz crackers, knocked out as though hit by a drug.

But high blood sugars is not just about training the body to become diabetic or obese. It also weighs in on other health issues because everyone can be affected by levels of insulin and possibly become insulin resistant.

Hypertension for one. Here’s another one of those medical establishment myths debunked. No evidence has shown that eating salt results in salt in the blood, or only slightly for a short time. Reducing salt in your diet has only a marginal effect on salt in the body. However a carbohydrate rich diet prompts the kidneys to hold onto salt, rather than excrete it. The body retains water to keep the sodium concentrate constant which causes blood pressure to go up. So if you want to get off those antihypertensive drugs (a diuretic to make you pee both salt and water out) try reducing carb intake.

Heart disease: Once carbs flood the blood stream with glucose, the liver picks up some of it and transforms it into fat. This fat boat, called a triglyceride, floats around the body delivering bits of fat and shrinking as fat is dropped off. The more carbohydrates, the bigger and lighter and longer living the triglyceride boat which then becomes the small, dense artherogenic (plaque making) LDL—the bad cholesterol. If no carbs eaten, then smaller and heavier boat that ends up as large, fluffy benign LDL. Since these LDL twins are seen as one, triglyceride counts are a better indicator of heart disease.

As for Alzheimer patients. A healthy brain clears away amyloid proteins (which are made when a certain larger protein is split), but an insulin-filled brain is occupied with clearing out insulin and cannot also clear out amyloid proteins. It is these proteins that combine with glucose to form plaques called amyloid-plaque accumulation (AGEs) and that accumulation causes vascular damage in the brain.

And cancer. Fat does not cause cancer and being fat does not cause cancer, rather getting fat may be a result of cancer activity. Glucose intolerance seems to play a part in cancer. Cancerous cells are mutations that occur all the time when new cells are made, but they only become tumors once they can grow and they only grow in the presence of insulin. Cancer cells have more receptors for insulin which allows it to feed more readily on blood sugars than other cells which become insulin resistant over a short time. Cancer cells burn perhaps 30x more sugar than normal cells. Thus the "sugar feeds cancer" premise I’ve been hearing about. But no one mentioned carbs turning into sugar so quickly so I didn’t make the connection. Researches did not see the need to take into account that carbs were easily made into sugar because they were biased by the fat-leads-to-cholesterol theory so thought carbs were irrelevant.

(A note about environmental toxins was made in reference to a researcher attributing the causes of disease to external circumstances. He meant eating and lifestyle habits, but the public took it as an affirmation that the "toxic soup" we live in is a danger to us; scientists responded to this misinterpretation saying that there was no actual evidence for toxins causing disease. I believe we are subject to toxic impact as far as endocrine interrupters and birth defects, but that is not about disease.)

And tooth decay. Sugar intake parallels carb intake in baked goods, cereals, crackers, etc. So dental problems parallel these other diseases of civilization.

Longevity. The hypothesis is that he who has the most free radicals (caused by oxidation generated by cells burning fuel), is bogged down by glycation—the binding of sugars to proteins in a haphazard, plastic-in-the-ocean kind of way, attracting toxic sequelae—big word for stuff that causes infection. You can reduce free radicals by half starving yourself and burning less fuel, a strategy my 95 lb, super-active mother seems to have employed. However, reduced blood sugar and thus reduced insulin resistance leads to reduced oxidative stress and decrease in glycation. Researchers are also making a connection between insulin activity and a doubling of life span triggered by a mutation too complex for me to grok, but is about organisms waiting out a bad spell in food supply in order to stay young enough to reproduce when there is food available.

This whole story about the bodies ability to survive is not quite as romantic and action packed as the increasingly popular Paleo diet story about hunters constantly having to run down game (and then gorging on meat). From descriptions recorded by early naturalists, when there was game, it was there in such abundance that it had to be cleared away like so much underbrush by settlers trying to proceed. Running a lot and shooting off your bow and arrow makes good The Hunger Games, but is hard on your joints and may cause carpel tunnel syndrome. Better that the humans be walking together in community, from food source to food source setting traps and when the going gets tough, hunkering down in caves together communing with spirits. Life alternating between mobile mardi gras and Shamanic sheltering in place.

With agriculture came the enslavement of most humans to till the land, thus enabling some humans to develop civilization as we know it in all its material glory. Chronic disease may be the price we pay especially if we stick with conventional wisdom.

Enterprise!

Image by Chris Devers
Posted via email to ☛ HoloChromaCinePhotoRamaScope‽: cdevers.posterous.com/enterprise-0. See the full gallery on Posterous …

• • • • •

See more photos of this, and the Wikipedia article.

Details, quoting from Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum | Space Shuttle Enterprise:

Manufacturer:
Rockwell International Corporation

Country of Origin:
United States of America

Dimensions:
Overall: 57 ft. tall x 122 ft. long x 78 ft. wing span, 150,000 lb.
(1737.36 x 3718.57 x 2377.44cm, 68039.6kg)

Materials:
Aluminum airframe and body with some fiberglass features; payload bay doors are graphite epoxy composite; thermal tiles are simulated (polyurethane foam) except for test samples of actual tiles and thermal blankets.

The first Space Shuttle orbiter, "Enterprise," is a full-scale test vehicle used for flights in the atmosphere and tests on the ground; it is not equipped for spaceflight. Although the airframe and flight control elements are like those of the Shuttles flown in space, this vehicle has no propulsion system and only simulated thermal tiles because these features were not needed for atmospheric and ground tests. "Enterprise" was rolled out at Rockwell International’s assembly facility in Palmdale, California, in 1976. In 1977, it entered service for a nine-month-long approach-and-landing test flight program. Thereafter it was used for vibration tests and fit checks at NASA centers, and it also appeared in the 1983 Paris Air Show and the 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans. In 1985, NASA transferred "Enterprise" to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum.

Transferred from National Aeronautics and Space Administration

• • •

Quoting from Wikipedia | Space Shuttle Enterprise:

The Space Shuttle Enterprise (NASA Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-101) was the first Space Shuttle orbiter. It was built for NASA as part of the Space Shuttle program to perform test flights in the atmosphere. It was constructed without engines or a functional heat shield, and was therefore not capable of spaceflight.

Originally, Enterprise had been intended to be refitted for orbital flight, which would have made it the second space shuttle to fly after Columbia. However, during the construction of Columbia, details of the final design changed, particularly with regard to the weight of the fuselage and wings. Refitting Enterprise for spaceflight would have involved dismantling the orbiter and returning the sections to subcontractors across the country. As this was an expensive proposition, it was determined to be less costly to build Challenger around a body frame (STA-099) that had been created as a test article. Similarly, Enterprise was considered for refit to replace Challenger after the latter was destroyed, but Endeavour was built from structural spares instead.

Service

Construction began on the first orbiter on June 4, 1974. Designated OV-101, it was originally planned to be named Constitution and unveiled on Constitution Day, September 17, 1976. A write-in campaign by Trekkies to President Gerald Ford asked that the orbiter be named after the Starship Enterprise, featured on the television show Star Trek. Although Ford did not mention the campaign, the president—who during World War II had served on the aircraft carrier USS Monterey (CVL-26) that served with USS Enterprise (CV-6)—said that he was "partial to the name" and overrode NASA officials.

The design of OV-101 was not the same as that planned for OV-102, the first flight model; the tail was constructed differently, and it did not have the interfaces to mount OMS pods. A large number of subsystems—ranging from main engines to radar equipment—were not installed on this vehicle, but the capacity to add them in the future was retained. Instead of a thermal protection system, its surface was primarily fiberglass.

In mid-1976, the orbiter was used for ground vibration tests, allowing engineers to compare data from an actual flight vehicle with theoretical models.

On September 17, 1976, Enterprise was rolled out of Rockwell’s plant at Palmdale, California. In recognition of its fictional namesake, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and most of the principal cast of the original series of Star Trek were on hand at the dedication ceremony.

Approach and landing tests (ALT)

Main article: Approach and Landing Tests

On January 31, 1977, it was taken by road to Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, to begin operational testing.

While at NASA Dryden, Enterprise was used by NASA for a variety of ground and flight tests intended to validate aspects of the shuttle program. The initial nine-month testing period was referred to by the acronym ALT, for "Approach and Landing Test". These tests included a maiden "flight" on February 18, 1977 atop a Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) to measure structural loads and ground handling and braking characteristics of the mated system. Ground tests of all orbiter subsystems were carried out to verify functionality prior to atmospheric flight.

The mated Enterprise/SCA combination was then subjected to five test flights with Enterprise unmanned and unactivated. The purpose of these test flights was to measure the flight characteristics of the mated combination. These tests were followed with three test flights with Enterprise manned to test the shuttle flight control systems.

Enterprise underwent five free flights where the craft separated from the SCA and was landed under astronaut control. These tests verified the flight characteristics of the orbiter design and were carried out under several aerodynamic and weight configurations. On the fifth and final glider flight, pilot-induced oscillation problems were revealed, which had to be addressed before the first orbital launch occurred.

On August 12, 1977, the space shuttle Enterprise flew on its own for the first time.

Preparation for STS-1

Following the ALT program, Enterprise was ferried among several NASA facilities to configure the craft for vibration testing. In June 1979, it was mated with an external tank and solid rocket boosters (known as a boilerplate configuration) and tested in a launch configuration at Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39A.

Retirement

With the completion of critical testing, Enterprise was partially disassembled to allow certain components to be reused in other shuttles, then underwent an international tour visiting France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the U.S. states of California, Alabama, and Louisiana (during the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition). It was also used to fit-check the never-used shuttle launch pad at Vandenberg AFB, California. Finally, on November 18, 1985, Enterprise was ferried to Washington, D.C., where it became property of the Smithsonian Institution.

Post-Challenger

After the Challenger disaster, NASA considered using Enterprise as a replacement. However refitting the shuttle with all of the necessary equipment needed for it to be used in space was considered, but instead it was decided to use spares constructed at the same time as Discovery and Atlantis to build Endeavour.

Post-Columbia

In 2003, after the breakup of Columbia during re-entry, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board conducted tests at Southwest Research Institute, which used an air gun to shoot foam blocks of similar size, mass and speed to that which struck Columbia at a test structure which mechanically replicated the orbiter wing leading edge. They removed a fiberglass panel from Enterprise’s wing to perform analysis of the material and attached it to the test structure, then shot a foam block at it. While the panel was not broken as a result of the test, the impact was enough to permanently deform a seal. As the reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) panel on Columbia was 2.5 times weaker, this suggested that the RCC leading edge would have been shattered. Additional tests on the fiberglass were canceled in order not to risk damaging the test apparatus, and a panel from Discovery was tested to determine the effects of the foam on a similarly-aged RCC leading edge. On July 7, 2003, a foam impact test created a hole 41 cm by 42.5 cm (16.1 inches by 16.7 inches) in the protective RCC panel. The tests clearly demonstrated that a foam impact of the type Columbia sustained could seriously breach the protective RCC panels on the wing leading edge.

The board determined that the probable cause of the accident was that the foam impact caused a breach of a reinforced carbon-carbon panel along the leading edge of Columbia’s left wing, allowing hot gases generated during re-entry to enter the wing and cause structural collapse. This caused Columbia to spin out of control, breaking up with the loss of the entire crew.

Museum exhibit

Enterprise was stored at the Smithsonian’s hangar at Washington Dulles International Airport before it was restored and moved to the newly built Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum‘s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport, where it has been the centerpiece of the space collection. On April 12, 2011, NASA announced that Space Shuttle Discovery, the most traveled orbiter in the fleet, will be added to the collection once the Shuttle fleet is retired. When that happens, Enterprise will be moved to the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York City, to a newly constructed hangar adjacent to the museum. In preparation for the anticipated relocation, engineers evaluated the vehicle in early 2010 and determined that it was safe to fly on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft once again.

The post Killer Toast Or What Has Carbs Got To Do With Everything? first appeared on Weight Loss Motivation.

business travel

Image by buckshot.jones
A fresh faced college grad is interviewing for a job. The person conducting the interview mentions that the job requires a fair amount of travel. He explains that the travel requirement is 50- 75%. Our eager candidate thinks, that’s not so bad, a couple weeks per month, expense account, nice hotels and frequent traveler perks…how can I lose? So they take the job all excited about jetting into Chicago, New York or other glamorous places. Within 60 days the job and the travel start to feel like weight. The romance is gone the first time they sit through an eight hour delay in Kansas City International. Then one day, after five or more years on the road, they become resigned to the delays and hassles of business travel. At that point their emotions even out and they have become a true travel professional. They leave all the red- faced & red assed rants to the amateurs. They know travel is hell, no sense getting worked up over it.

Bonnie Fournier

Image by Renegade98
‘She stays alive in all of us’
Victim impact I Family members overcome by emotion as they remember their loved ones

Lori Culbert, Neal Hall and Jeff Lee
Vancouver Sun

Monday, December 10, 2007

Karin Joesbury looked up at the grey sky, tears running from her eyes, overcome by emotion upon hearing that Robert (Willie) Pickton had been convicted of the second-degree murder of her daughter Andrea.

Surrounded by relatives of the other five women Pickton was convicted of killing — and of another 20 he is accused of killing — Joesbury wept as the mournful lyrics of the song Missing played during a candlelight ceremony in front of the New Westminster Courthouse Sunday.

Andrea Joesbury’s grandfather, Jack Cummer, had asked Canadian poet Susan Musgrave to write the lyrics to the song, in memory of his granddaughter and the other missing women. Listening to the song seemed too much for Karin Joesbury to bear.

"I hope that her death doesn’t go in vain, and it will change the way we look at those most vulnerable in our society," said Joesbury, of Victoria, who described her daughter as creative and loving.

"I still have two other children who miss their sister very much …. It’s more the way she died. It’s hard to lose a child or loved one, but the way in which she was taken. I knew something was wrong but I didn’t have the money to come over and get her again [from the Downtown Eastside]. I came and got her three times. I wanted to come back but I couldn’t afford it."

Relatives and friends cried, trembled and held each other for support while listening to the song, which listed the names of 65 missing women, including the six Pickton was convicted Sunday of murdering: Joesbury, Mona Wilson, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin, Sereena Abotsway, and Marnie Frey.

"Never forgotten. You were never, ever forgotten today," Bonnie Fournier, a longtime nurse in the Downtown Eastside, cried out during the candlelight ceremony.

She later said the system failed these women, and there should have been more detox services and other resources to help them get off the street.

"The government has let them down desperately," Fournier said.

Fournier hugged a weeping Tory Boen, the emotional son of missing woman Yvonne Boen, telling him: "I loved your mom."

Cynthia Cardinal and her two sisters have been in the courthouse for the last week. They were hoping for a first-degree conviction in the death of their other sister Georgina Papin but are "satisfied" with a second-degree verdict.

"I feel a lot of weight lifted off our shoulders and we can finally try to get back to our normal lives now. This has been a long and hard ordeal for us," she said, tears welling in her eyes. "We’ve had an emotional roller-coaster ride … Georgina is happy today and I can feel her here. She’s all over the place here and she’s smiling again — she had the most beautiful smile. I love you, Georgina."

She said they are anxious to finally get Georgina’s remains so they can give her a proper burial, and give the family a place to mourn.

Bonnie Fowler, Georgina’s other sister, wept as she talked about the friends of Georgina she has met since coming to New Westminster to wait for the verdict. "I’d like to thank Georgia for sharing all the gifts she’s giving us while we were here …. She stays alive in all of us and nobody can take that away."

Patty Evans held up a medicine pouch, filled with healing stones, made by her mother Elaine and given to many of the relatives of the victims in honour of her sister, Brenda Wolfe.

"I still don’t have my sister, but we have justice on her behalf. She was a beautiful person, she was loved," Evans said.

Ada Wilson said she hoped Pickton could hear her speaking because she had waited a long time to say how she felt about the murder of her sister Mona.

"He’s taken a lot away from me, he’s got no idea. But now to me it doesn’t seem fair because he’s still alive and she’s not," Wilson said. "It’s really hard around Christmas time, because that was the best time for me and her and the family."

Rick Frey, father of Marnie Frey, questioned why police didn’t catch Pickton sooner or respond more quickly to the disappearance of women from the Downtown Eastside.

"This can’t go on. Go to the east end now and it’s still the same thing. It’s appalling … there’s still people suffering," said Frey, who added he would like to see a public inquiry into the case.

Frey said he was worried the jury wouldn’t return a guilty verdict on his daughter, who disappeared in 1997 and for whom police found the least amount of evidence on the farm.

"We’re extremely fortunate we got a guilty verdict out of that," Frey said.

Sereena Abotsway’s half-brother Jay Draayers was in court Sunday to hear the verdict, but declined to speak to the media.

Just minutes before a verdict was announced, relatives of the native victims invited non-native families to a healing ceremony outside the courthouse.

"A lot of us families have been kind of segregated and we all got together and that was it. And then the verdict is coming down. I don’t know, take it as a sign," said Marilyn Kraft, whose daughter is among the 20 women at the centre of Pickton’s second trial.

lculbert@png.canwest.com

This poem, read as victims’ families lit candles outside the courthouse on Sunday, was written by Betty Nordin, who knows some of the families and sex-trade workers.

NOBODY SEES HER

She’s sitting huddled in the corner of the building

Shivering in the cold

Nobody sees her

She’s standing on the street shivering in the rain

Nobody sees her

She’s sitting in the back of a greasy cafe

Hunched over a cup of coffee

Nobody sees her

She’s waiting for a john to pick her up

Nobody sees her

She’s sitting on a filthy floor covered with used

Points, garbage and empty beer bottles

Nobody sees her

She’s lying on the cold hard ground that some

John has dumped her on

Nobody sees her

She’s puking as she slaps and prods her veins so the rig

Can give her that moment of feeling good

Nobody sees her

She’s just a junkie people say;

She’s nothing

Nobody sees her

She’s a missing, forgotten and lost girl

Nobody sees her

But today, everybody sees her

She is found in an unmarked hole in the ground

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=48ff4036-f…

Paleo Bodybuilder – Paleolithic Diet Crossfit Fitness Caveman Primal Inuit Masai Mark Sisson Robb Wolf Freetheanimal Movnat Muscle Protein Info

Image by Paleo-Caveman-Omnivore-LowCarb-Meat-Diet-Info
Paleo Bodybuilder! – See Photo – Effects of the Paleo Diet on muscle mass.

The Paleo Diet is based upon what grok the Caveman did, and ate. Cross Fit applauds the Paleo Diet, which was ranked last by medical experts in USNEWS & WORLD REPORTS. If it wasn’t done by cavemen, then it shouldn’t be done by you.

This is why if you join crossfit, you don’t shower after working out and getting sweaty. Afterall, Cavemen didn’t have showers. Or soap. So in order to preserve the bacteria, you should wear it. Don’t worry, crossfit gyms have something called a "crossfit puke bucket" if either the smell of paleo B.O. or the horrible taste of raw organ meats makes you have to throw up.

Crossfit Fitness palaces have pukebuckets because the paleo diet is hard on the human body, and wrecks cardio and endurance, so even a light-weight workout of burpees often makes crossfitters throw up. Then lie on the floor full of sweat because they are mentally and athletically exhausted. Paleo and Crossfit make your muscle dwindle, because the paleo diet is catabolic. Without enough carbs, your body needs to cannibalize something else. First it’s fat. This is why those on lowcarb atkins paleo ketogenic diets often report losing weight, at first, but then these diets exhaust the fat and begin using protein as fuel. Yes, that means if you go on a Paleo diet, or lowcarb, or atkins, you’re essentially "teaching your body to eat away at your own muscle". By eating high protein, your body now thinks protein is fuel. What else is made of protein? Muscles. So you’ve taught your body to eat it’s own muscles, decreasing their mass. Paleo and lowcarb, deprivation of grains and carbs, is the opposite of what you want for bodybuilding. Picture african tribes, they’re all skinny and sinewy. Like the physique of a marathon runner, not a bodybuilder.

Thus the Paleo Diet and Crossfit have become the laughing-stock of the fitness world, akin to things like "The Shake Weight!" with so many testimonials of people saying how "it works!" and "It worked for me! I lost weight!". Of course if you believe anecdotes and before and afters and chat board commenters, then every infomercial and fitness contraption and diet plan are the "best" right? Because they ALL have pictures of before and after, and people absolutely VOWING up and down that it worked for them. Watch for people touting crossfit and paleo like this. You’ll see it. Meanwhile they’re teaching their bodies to deplete their muscle. It’s catabolic.

And with the estrogenic effects of the compounds now found in steak, including grassfed beef, and even organic meat, men who eat grassfed beef, especially barbequed, begin to grow more effeminate due to the effects of heterocyclic amines only found in meat, such as "PhIP". PhIP which is in grassfed meat and steak has effects like feminine estrogen on males. This is why Crossfit Paleo Diets lack the proper nutrients and come up deficient for bodybuilding and ranked last among diets in terms of human health.

The post business travel first appeared on Weight Loss Motivation.

New Yorkers would never have a car like this one

Image by Ed Yourdon
This photo was taken on 90th Street, between Broadway and West End Avenue.

One can only wonder whether every car and license plate in Arizona looks like this one …

Note: this photo was published in a Jul 21, 2013 WeightLoss Plans blog, with the same caption and detailed notes that I had written here on this Flickr page.

***************

This set of photos is based on a very simple concept: walk every block of Manhattan with a camera, and see what happens. To avoid missing anything, walk both sides of the street.

That’s all there is to it …

Of course, if you wanted to be more ambitious, you could also walk the streets of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx. But that’s more than I’m willing to commit to at this point, and I’ll leave the remaining boroughs of New York City to other, more adventurous photographers.

Oh, actually, there’s one more small detail: leave the photos alone for a month — unedited, untouched, and unviewed. By the time I actually focus on the first of these "every-block" photos, I will have taken more than 8,000 images on the nearby streets of the Upper West Side — plus another several thousand in Rome, Coney Island, and the various spots in NYC where I traditionally take photos. So I don’t expect to be emotionally attached to any of the "every-block" photos, and hope that I’ll be able to make an objective selection of the ones worth looking at.

As for the criteria that I’ve used to select the small subset of every-block photos that get uploaded to Flickr: there are three. First, I’ll upload any photo that I think is "great," and where I hope the reaction of my Flickr-friends will be, "I have no idea when or where that photo was taken, but it’s really a terrific picture!"

A second criterion has to do with place, and the third involves time. I’m hoping that I’ll take some photos that clearly say, "This is New York!" to anyone who looks at it. Obviously, certain landscape icons like the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty would satisfy that criterion; but I’m hoping that I’ll find other, more unexpected examples. I hope that I’ll be able to take some shots that will make a "local" viewer say, "Well, even if that’s not recognizable to someone from another part of the country, or another part of the world, I know that that’s New York!" And there might be some photos where a "non-local" viewer might say, "I had no idea that there was anyplace in New York City that was so interesting/beautiful/ugly/spectacular."

As for the sense of time: I remember wandering around my neighborhood in 2005, photographing various shops, stores, restaurants, and business establishments — and then casually looking at the photos about five years later, and being stunned by how much had changed. Little by little, store by store, day by day, things change … and when you’ve been around as long as I have, it’s even more amazing to go back and look at the photos you took thirty or forty years ago, and ask yourself, "Was it really like that back then? Seriously, did people really wear bell-bottom jeans?"

So, with the expectation that I’ll be looking at these every-block photos five or ten years from now (and maybe you will be, too), I’m going to be doing my best to capture scenes that convey the sense that they were taken in the year 2013 … or at least sometime in the decade of the 2010’s (I have no idea what we’re calling this decade yet). Or maybe they’ll just say to us, "This is what it was like a dozen years after 9-11".

Movie posters are a trivial example of such a time-specific image; I’ve already taken a bunch, and I don’t know if I’ll ultimately decide that they’re worth uploading. Women’s fashion/styles are another obvious example of a time-specific phenomenon; and even though I’m definitely not a fashion expert, I suspected that I’ll be able to look at some images ten years from now and mutter to myself, "Did we really wear shirts like that? Did women really wear those weird skirts that are short in the front, and long in the back? Did everyone in New York have a tattoo?"

Another example: I’m fascinated by the interactions that people have with their cellphones out on the street. It seems that everyone has one, which certainly wasn’t true a decade ago; and it seems that everyone walks down the street with their eyes and their entire conscious attention riveted on this little box-like gadget, utterly oblivious about anything else that might be going on (among other things, that makes it very easy for me to photograph them without their even noticing, particularly if they’ve also got earphones so they can listen to music or carry on a phone conversation). But I can’t help wondering whether this kind of social behavior will seem bizarre a decade from now … especially if our cellphones have become so miniaturized that they’re incorporated into the glasses we wear, or implanted directly into our eyeballs.

Oh, one last thing: I’ve created a customized Google Map to show the precise details of each day’s photo-walk. I’ll be updating it each day, and the most recent part of my every-block journey will be marked in red, to differentiate it from all of the older segments of the journey, which will be shown in blue. You can see the map, and peek at it each day to see where I’ve been, by clicking on this link

URL link to Ed’s every-block progress through Manhattan

If you have any suggestions about places that I should definitely visit to get some good photos, or if you’d like me to photograph you in your little corner of New York City, please let me know. You can send me a Flickr-mail message, or you can email me directly at ed-at-yourdon-dot-com

Stay tuned as the photo-walk continues, block by block …

How to make milk kefir

Image by Stephen Pearson
Milk kefir ingredients lowcarbalpha.com/how-to-make-milk-kefir/ , grains on a wooden spoon and finished recipe in a glass

The post New Yorkers would never have a car like this one first appeared on Weight Loss Motivation.

Norio in the Morning

Image by sjrankin
Norio this morning in Yubari. Naomi changed how she feeds medicine to him in an effort to get him to gain more weight. At his age, he loses weight quickly and easily, which is never good for cats.

The post Nice How To Lose Weight photos first appeared on Weight Loss Motivation.

weight changes July 1 to November 1

Image by Nemo’s great uncle
The data samples are 16 days apart—i.e., twice a month. (I was too lazy to type in all daily results.)

The peak was 90.5 kg. (July 17-21)

Losing 9 kg (10%) took two months. (September 14)
Losing 13.5 kg (10%) approximately 3.5 months. (November 1)

MY goal is 70 kg. How many more months will that take?

Temple, Red Sea

Image by Blue Hour Admiral
Underwater photography is very different than “normal” photography in the sense that as you descend in the water you start to lose colors from the color spectrum. The first to go is red, then orange, yellow, and finally green depending on how deep you go. There are a few things you can do to keep the colors vibrant. The easiest and most common is to use a flash or underwater strobes. The second is to use color filters on your camera. A lot of photographers will attach a red filter to their lens to help with the color loss. And finally, post production. This is what I use. I like to shoot with ambient light underwater, I find using strobes can give you very flat lighting and unflattering images. I can do all of my editing in Lightroom 4 which is nice and am compiling a list of presets that will be available for download sometime in the near future. As far as underwater housings go, there are many options out there. I use the Ewa-Marine U-B100 as it greatly cuts down on weight and portability issues while traveling and is a fraction of the cost of a heavy-duty housing such as the Ikelite housings.

The post Nice How To Lose Weight photos first appeared on Weight Loss Motivation.

Climbing THE BEAST

Image by Philerooski
Okay! It’s been a while. I typed this up a loooong time ago meaning to share it with you guys. A lot (one or two :P) people have complimented me on the interesting write ups I do for photos sometimes. So I decided to write a story about one very unique and exciting weekend in my life this past summer and put it on Flickr. Anyways, without any further ado…

If you’re the kind of person that comments on photos in their contacts photostreams and hopes they get a comment back on their latest flower macro shot, then I suggest you move on. But if you’re the kind of person who likes to hear stories full of action, adventure, near-death experiences, hot babes, and the like, then stay where you are and hear the story I have to tell! I believe it will be well worth your time

Me and two of my friends from the school cross country team, Taylor and Anthony, decided to organize our very own camping trip before the summer ended and the daily grind of school began. We came to the conclusion that Rimrock Lake in central Washington would be the perfect location for all the amazing adventures we were sure to have. We bought all our food, borrowed equipment from the parents, and headed out Friday morning in my ’98 Chevy with 40 dollars in each of our wallets to pay for gas and emergencies.

The first day we did the typical, set up camp, swam in the near freezing glacial stream, explored the forest, chopped down a couple of trees for LOLs, and some other things that I wouldn’t want my mother to know about

The sunset that night actually turned out to be really good, and since I had brought the tripod and my mom’s DSLR along, we were shooting up nature like there was no tomorrow. You can check out some of those photos below if you’d like… That night we stayed up in our tent till early morning talking about girls (OF COURSE, we’re three teenage guys for crying out loud!), and after we were certain that the noises we heard outside our tent weren’t the squirrel attack that we all feared, we slept until our stomachs woke us the next morning.

Saturday started out with Cocoa Puffs, Gatorade, and a two-mile hike upstream to brush our teeth. By then it was actually 1 in the afternoon because we had slept in for so long, so we headed back to camp to chow down on some more food and relax a little. We soon realized that we NEEDED some Lil Wayne (Well, they did. I could care less :P), and our stereo was in need of some batteries. Our trip to the local store gave us enough batteries to last us for an all-day Lil Weezy marathon and put a 15 dollar dent in our wallets.

Okay, now comes the interesting part.

As we were driving back from the store, we saw the huge rock face on the eastern side of the lake that we had driven by so many times before.

Taylor – “Dude, we should climb that and take photos of the sunset from the top, that would be sick.”

Anthony – “Are you kidding me?! That thing’s like sheer rock CLIFF. There’s no way we could climb that beast!”

Me – “Hold on, see that line of trees to the top? That means it’s not as steep as the rest of the mountain, maybe we could climb up along there. As long as we don’t go too far left where it starts to turn into cliff again…”

We knew that it would be a long climb to the top, because what we discovered when we started our climb is that it was roughly a 100% grade most of the way up. So even though it was only 4:30, we gathered our gear together (I was in charge of the towel, a flashlight, the camera, and the peanut butter), and stuffed it all into our spike bags. We parked our car off to the side of the tree line, slightly on the cliff side, so we could head up at an angle and know for sure that we’ll hit where we wanted to be on the mountain. And off we went on our journey, each of us sporting a t-shirt and sneakers; Anthony and Taylor had some basketball shorts on; I had on my swimsuit.

The first part started off in a huge ascent, way steeper than any trail I had ever hiked. This quickly plateaud, though, and we were back hiking on the flat. After 5 minutes of trailblazing, the plateau dropped down before it started the actual climb up the mountain. At the bottom of the drop was a road, which, needless to say, was a huge smack in the face for us. But it also confused us at the same time because we hadn’t seen the entrance from the main road. Without much of an alternative option, we headed down the road a bit towards the trees, thankful for the path, but still a little perplexed.

We came to a part of the hill that was slightly clearer than the rest, and decided to cut back into the mountain. The climb was even steeper than the beginning slope, and progress was slow. It was a half climb/crawl to the tree line, which made its beginnings near a rockslide. We decided to stick close to the edge of the rockslide and use the trees as support on our climb. Apparently some deer had had the same thought process as us, because we would often find trails that started a promising climb toward the top, before slowly dwindling away back into nothing. At last, after 30 minutes on the loose rocks, we reached the top of the rockslide. (A picture looking down from the rock slide in the comments below). We were about a quarter of the way there.

The next section of terrain was a mixture of loose rocks, saplings, and giant boulders, as we quickly yet carefully clambered our way step by step up the unforgiving slope. Another half hour passed, and we were starting to realize that maybe it wasn’t the climb that was going to give us the most difficulty, but the descent…

Putting that thought aside for now since we had already climbed so far, another 15 minutes found us at the top of the steep rise that most of the mountain consisted of, but we were far from done. The next section of mountain was made up of hundreds of dead and decomposing trees, an obstacle course of vegetation that had us hopping from log to log. Thousands of “white puffy things” as we liked to call them, surrounded us as we headed upwards. The ascent was now walkable, but the precarious nature of each footfall and handhold on the branches above kept us on our toes, sometimes literally. The climb seemed to never end, and we had thoughts of abandoning our sunset photoshoot for a safe climb back home. We even considered staying the night at the top, since we had brought warm clothes and a blanket and it was doubtful any animals lived at the top of this rock wall in the middle of the forest.

That’s when it happened, finally, at the edge of our patience, the sky opened up and we were at the top. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! we cried, joyful that we had accomplished our goal, and that we were still alive. We started walking towards the other side of the mountain because we knew that was where the rock cliff (and the awesome view) was. Then we saw it, to the left, jutting out from the mountain towards the heavens, was a knoll that stood above everything else in the forest. The sight was comparable to seeing the edge of Pride Rock, and knowing that on the other side was an amazing view of the Pride Lands. In reckless abandon, we sprinted over to this unbelievable sight and climbed the final 20 meters to the top.

The view was incredible. Giant rock formations that had towered over us down at camp now looked like small cutouts from the mountain ranges that surrounded us. Rimrock Lake, which had taken us 30 minutes just to drive around, was easily all within view; and Clear Lake five miles away could be seen as well. We could hardly believe our eyes; we had never before seen anything more amazing then what lay before us at that moment. The American flag colored kite we found hidden among the rocks only made the location even more mystical.

Despite the incredible view, it was freezing at the top with the wind, and the temperature had started to drop for nightfall. I was impervious to the cold, I was in THE ZONE. I had the tripod out and I was using every exposure trick I knew in order to get sharp, properly exposed photos. Anthony and Taylor weren’t as tolerant as I was. We had saved our location on Taylor’s Garmin Forerunner 405 watch as we left the truck, but now that we had turned the watch back on to get us back home the right way, the arrow was telling us to make a beeline straight for the cliff, and instant death.

I could hear them in the background moaning about how our lives were over and how we’re never going to get off this mountain alive (although I knew they were just kidding). At last, the message that no photographer wants to see popped up on my screen: Memory Card Full. I had gotten what I had came here for, though, and we started heading back down the mountain, certain that no sane person would wait around for sunset and then attempt to climb back down in the dark.

There was a trail leading off to our right, so we followed it back down into the dense vegetation. The side of the hill shielded us from the wind, and we quickly warmed back up zigzagging through the trees down the mountain. Eventually the enclosure of the forest opened up to a meadow and gave us a sense of where we were. To our right and ahead of us, was sheer cliff. We had gone too far right, and were now on the part of the mountain where the only way down was a 300 foot vertical drop.

We cut back into the forest at a 45 degree angle, hoping to reach a part of the descent that was more manageable. After a while, the slow climb of the forest ended and we were back on our butts crawling down the mountain.

At first, there were lots of trees to use as handholds and progress was steady. But after a while, the foliage started to dwindle away, and we were left with a steep hillside of loose rocks. We did what we could, and crawled down the steep decline with the utmost of caution. Sometimes, our vigilance would fail us, and we would send a large rock rolling down towards the person below us. Cries of “Rock!” and “Heads!” could be heard every couple of minutes. Sometimes the rock would roll away, or stop. Other times the person below wasn’t so lucky…

We weren’t entirely certain where we were, or what we were heading for, but we knew that each step brought us closer to the flat ground below. After an hour of descending, we heard a cry from Anthony, who was in the lead.

“What is it?” we asked

“Oh, you don’t want to know…” came the reply.

Shifting his weight to one side, Anthony picked up a stone and hurled it down below us.

“1, 2, 3, 4, 5…” we counted.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, we heard the distant sound of rock hitting rock. This instantly told us that when we thought we were climbing down to safety, we were actually climbing straight into the mouth of the cliff. My thoughts raced. I knew that the right side of the mountain was entirely cliff, as was the backside. Our only hope to make it back down the mountain in one piece was to either backtrack to the forest on top, or shimmy left along the beginnings of the cliff towards climbable terrain. Unfortunately, time was against us, sunset had started; and although we couldn’t see where the sun was in the sky, the clouds had started to burst into color. I made an executive decision and sent us left, thinking that we had to traverse the ravine that I had seen from above and, earlier that day, below. That would put us in a more favorable position then the life-threatening one we were in now.

Shimmying along the steep slope was slow and tedious work. Fatigue had been getting to us for a while, and we grew more and more weary as the day wore on. Lucky for us, we were 3 teens who had been running once to twice a day everyday for the past 12 weeks, and not a bunch of fat nerds who wanted to climb a mountain to lose weight.

Nerves were high, and every exclamation, good or bad, had a strong effect on our emotions. We worked together to figure out climbing patterns and hand holds. At last, we had crossed over the ravine and were looking over to the other side.

What we saw was not pleasant, though. Instead of the familiar tree line and rockslide that we had expected, we saw another ravine; and this one even closer to the vertical drop of the cliff. Climbing up was not an option, the crossover to whatever lay on the other side only grew steeper the farther up the eye followed it. With no other choice, we climbed whichever way we could in order to get left.

Our side-stepping process brought us dangerously close to the edge, but sheer determination and adrenaline kept us going. Eventually, we reached the point where we had to pick a route to crossover to the other side of the ravine (and hopefully safety). After clinging to the side of the cliff for life that was now very dear to us, we had reached a point that we had all worked so hard to get to. Only one undermining obstacle lay in front of us now, we could not spot a safe place to crossover, we were stuck.

Anthony, had been our main trailblazer for most of the trip, and he saw no way that we would be able to clamber across without freestyle rock climbing, and putting our lives on the line with each step. I couldn’t believe it. There HAD to be a way. Let me give it a shot, I told Anthony. He solemnly stepped aside in order to let me pass. I climbed over towards a promising looking rock and groped around on the other side. Below me, and one step to the right, was a fall that would have certainly ended my life without a second thought. Wind whipped us around, and the forest at the base of the mountain could be seen 200 feet below. The trees looked smaller from up above then they did on flat ground, it looked so far down that I wasn’t sure if we would even be able to make it off the steep part of the mountain before dark.

The rock was mostly smooth and you couldn’t see its other side. I reached over, but couldn’t find any obvious handholds on its upper half. I reached below mid-waist, but its contours didn’t change. That’s when my hand slipped into a single handhold close to the side I was on. If you have ever went rock climbing at the gym and grabbed on to one of those rocks that were so obviously made just for your fingers to grip, then you know what this handhold felt like. It was seemingly a helping hand from God himself, it was so perfect.

Staying as close as possible to the rock, and making sure I had a secure grip on the handhold, I “swung” myself across the gap, and over to the other side of the precarious cliff. After finding a secure place to camp for a couple of minutes, I instructed Anthony and Taylor how to best approach the rock and swing themselves over to the other side too. Anthony had been put in charge of the largest bag, and needed me to reach over the gap and grab hold of it so its momentum didn’t swing him off the cliff. When Anthony had safely crossed over, Taylor took his turn. After a few minutes of effort to find a comfortable position to swing over, he made it across as well.

The other side was closer to what we wanted to see. Although there were still a few technical drops that we had to maneuver down, we could see that the rocks flattened out all the way to the bottom. If I remember correctly, we had to grab a strong sapling and drop down to a small foot ledge. After that, we grabbed onto a rock hold and chiseled our feet into the side of the cliff, next to a very sturdy sapling, and made a mini “faith-drop” to another ledge below us. Finally, after swinging around another strong, young tree to the rocks below, we were on relatively safe ground.

Just in time too, as daylight had nearly faded and the blue hour was taking over. Five minutes of climbing on our butts got us to a part that was actually hikeable. We broke out the flashlights and the emotions all flooded out. Never before could I ever remember feeling so relieved, and such a strong feeling of companionship with my fellow teammates. I was so thankful for every little thing they had done, and what we had just been through was heavy on my mind. It was a strange feeling, full of pride, relief, confidence, and immeasurable trust.

When we reached the truck, we saw that the campers in the RVs we had parked near were all gathered around a campfire, despite the burn ban. We decided to go into their camp and ask for some water. Secretly, we actually had plenty of water left, and just wanted to brag of our adventures and maybe show off some pictures. Although we accidentally surprised the party of campers at first, they were more than happy to hear our story and give us each a large Albertsons water bottle for the road. We discovered that the campers were actually local, and lived in the Tri-Cities as well.

The drive back to camp was nearly surreal. We had been through so much ever since that afternoon. Each of us felt as if we were whole new people, changed by our experiences and the challenges we had been through. After gulping down some food, we quickly found our way back to the tent, and despite the hard ground, I was out cold within minutes of my head hitting the pillow. Taylor, I’m sure, stayed awake for a while, thinking of everything we had been through, before dozing off. Anthony couldn’t fall asleep for 2 more hours, the events of the day running through his mind over and over until exhaustion overtook him and he too fell asleep.

The next day we packed up our belongings and headed back home; unsure of what the “real world” would bring us after what we had done. But one thing we knew for sure, whatever it was, we could handle it. Together.

The post Nice How To Lose Weight photos first appeared on Weight Loss Motivation.

The post Sara-Jane Ladums | Weight loss coach, Menopause Coach, Fitness Coach, Nutrition coach, Peri-menopause coach – FIT PRODUCTIVE MUM | Lose Weight and Balance your hormones | Menopause, Weight loss, Quick fitness, simple nutrition, Lose We first appeared on Weight Loss Motivation.

Walking and driving around Barrie Ontario Canada

Image by antefixus21
I forced myself to go outside using my walked as a form of exercise. Over the past few years being mostly bedridden my leg muscles have atrophied. I’m trying to build them up again. Muscles weigh more than fat so my 105 lb. Weight loss and my goal to lose another 30-50 lb. will be difficult, but my dream is that my spinal pain will be reduced to a point that my life will be of better quality, the pain will be reduced allowing us to travel to Mexico or elsewhere as we have accumulated a substabpntial number of AirMiles and Aeroplan miles to allow business class on any Asian long haul flights. I only put 6,500 km on our most recent Honda Odyssey during its first three years. Our Honda Barrie dealer salivated when assessing that vehicle stating that it was still in show room condition so they offered to buy out the fourth year of our lease and to offer us cash and other perks towards whatever vehicle that we choose. The new vehicle has a heated steering wheel but not front seats which blow cool air on our bottoms on particularly hot summer days.

We settled on a Honda C-RV Touring which we took possession of in Dec. 2021. To date we have only had to fill up our gas tank twice when the gas level had just dropped below less than 50%. We added a sign to the back of our CE-V as driving the 10 km. from the dealership by the back roads resulted in impatient drivers yelling at me, giving me the finger and honking as I had dropped my speed as low as 35 km in 50 km zones. The sign has resulted in many drivers dropping by my parked car taking a photo of the sign and expressing how much they like my sign. After explaining the story behind the sign they liked the sign even more. A retired CSIS officer shared that his son who had worked a couple decades in the Toronto Police Services transferred to the Barrie Police and that their officers had noted my vehicle and its sign but they had guessed that it would draw a lot of negative attention from impatient Barrie drivers. I confirmed that that harassment had immediately dropped off with many drivers smiling and giving me an encouraging thumbs up rather than the previous middle finger bird. The sign had drawn their attention and has been a source of gossip in their ranks. I don’t remember any Barrie Police vehicles around me but they obviously keep their eyes open for unusual vehicles. I only learned to drive in the rural countryside east of Highland Creek, east of Scarborough. He added a ‘Beware! Student driver’ to the back of my VW bug which allowed the few rural cars to keep their distance. During my 50 years of driving I only had one accident which is when the brakes on my Odyssey failed when I was exiting our underground parking. My insurance covered everything with the exception of paying the full replacement cost of my front bumper as some mice or squirrels had gnawed along the underside of that bumper in the hope of accessing a warm and dry space during bad seasonal weather.

The post Nice How To Lose Weight photos first appeared on Weight Loss Motivation.

Thanks Mom!

Image by jurvetson
Since my parents have also gone through the 23andMe DNA analysis, we can compare genes.

Thanks for the endurance mom! For those who know her, this is a strong point. =)

The genome-wide comparison above covers almost a million SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms), which are point letter mutations (like A → G or T → C swaps) that have accumulated in relatively recent generations and vary across the peoples of the planet.

For each of the traits, I added a note with explanatory text from 23andMe. For example, the 135 SNPs related to endurance cover “genes that have been associated with different endurance phenotypes, including VO2max (your maximum capacity to transport and utilize oxygen), running distance, exercise time, and power output.”

Immune System Compatibility is also pretty interesting as it is almost entirely genetic, and relates to organ transplant potential and mate preference (we have a natural aversion to people with immune systems too similar to our own). Whew!

The analysis above is on the 22 autosomal chromosomes which are a blend from mom and dad. To look at a segment of DNA that we know only came from Mom, we look at the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) which is outside the nucleus and resident in each of the mitochondria, or “power plants” of our cells. When you were a single cell, that cell came from mom. Dad’s genetic contribution went straight to the nucleus. And as that cell proceeded to divide, the mtDNA was copied as well, now replicated in all of the cells of your body, and entirely derived from mom. The sperm’s mitochondria are mainly in the tail, and the egg cell destroys any that might make it across. And it is abundant. Your liver cells, for example, have about 1500 mitochondria and about 10 thousand copies of mom’s mtDNA per cell.

By the way, this snippet of code is a clue to the endosymbiosis of the distant past where our cells engulfed energetic bacteria to power our much larger cells. The mtDNA forms a circle, instead of a strand, as found in viruses, bacteria and archaea. It also has a high mutation rate, like bacteria, which makes it useful for genetic archaeology.

So, for Mother’s Day, it seemed appropriate to look at my mom and all of the moms in her maternal line. Our mtDNA pegs us as Maternal Haplogroup H11a, which is common to Nicolaus Copernicus and Marie Antoinette. =)

23andMe summarizes: "H originated in the Near East and then expanded after the peak of the Ice Age into Europe, where it is the most prevalent haplogroup today. It is present in about half of the Scandinavian population…

H originated about 40,000 years ago in the Near East, where favorable climate conditions allowed it to flourish. About 10,000 years later it spread westward all the way to the Atlantic coast and east into central Asia as far as the Altay Mountains.

About 21,000 years ago an intensification of Ice Age conditions blanketed much of Eurasia with mile-thick glaciers and squeezed people into a handful of ice-free refuges in Iberia, Italy, the Balkans and the Caucasus. Several branches of haplogroup H arose during that time, and after the glaciers began receding about 15,000 years ago most of them played a prominent role in the repopulation of the continent.

Haplogroup H achieved an even wider distribution later on with the spread of agriculture and the rise of organized military campaigns.

Recent research indicates Haplogroup H made its way into the deserts of northern Africa via the Strait of Gibraltar."

And for those wondering how we know Copernicus’ mtDNA, we turn to The Spittoon: "Even though DNA begins degrading immediately following death, the genetic material is often preserved in the teeth for hundreds or thousands of years. Scientists studying ancient DNA (aDNA) usually focus on the type of DNA that has the greatest chance of surviving: mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is passed exclusively from mother to children. The sheer abundance of mtDNA makes it much more likely to survive; each cell contains hundreds of copies."

How to make milk kefir

Image by Stephen Pearson
Milk kefir ingredients, lowcarbalpha.com/milk-kefir/ grains on a wooden spoon and finished recipe in a glass, and how to make it

Okay, I have spent all morning agonizing about the Zone.

Image by Malingering
The Zone and diets and Ultrametabolism and weight loss and insulin levels and fats as fuel and carbs as fuel and glycogen and eicosanoids and calories and exercise.

I am getting nowhere.

I’ve spent all morning on damn PubMed and I still don’t know anything. Low carb diets work, but apparently not for the insulin regulation reasons that people initially thought, and they can sensitize people so they produce more insulin in relation to the sugars they eat. Some studies show low carb diets to be more effective than high carb diets, and some show the opposite. One study suggests cognitive slowing with low carb diets. One shows an increase in C-reactive protein with low carb diets. One shows a decrease in inflammation with low carb diets. One showed that carb consumption is directly correlated to the expression of a fatty acid desaturase. One study shows that in a comparison of diets over 1 year, the Zone diet fared less favorably in terms of weight loss than the high carb diet. One showed that low carb diets don’t provide sufficient energy for endurance athletes. One showed that a high carb diet was beneficial in people with insulin resistance. Another showed that increasing whole grains (hard to do on a low carb diet) decreases metabolic syndrome by 32% and cardiovascular disease by 25%. A big 12-year study in Sweden showed low carb diets increased mortality by 6%. Then a study in the US showed there was no difference. A 10-year study in Greece backed up the Sweden study and showed a 22% increase in cardiovascular mortality.

All of the studies have flaws, of course. And I don’t know how to apply them to ME. The only consistent thing throughout all of these articles is that weight loss = lower blood sugar, lower cholesterol and all that. No shit. So what do I eat? Tofu, spinach and oatmeal? And what about all of the anti-soy people?

Thing is, I’m not particularly trying to lose weight. I’m okay where I am. I just want to live a healthier lifestyle. And I can’t even figure out how to do this.

So I ate this brownie sundae. Now I feel much better.

The post Cool How To Lose Weight images first appeared on Weight Loss Motivation.

Earliest Picture of Yuba

Image by sjrankin
Earliest picture I have of Yuba after losing about ten months of pictures on a hard disk crash over ten years ago. (Now, I have multiple back-ups scattered about.) He’s in the cat run at our house in California in October of 2007, several months after we adopted him. He’s still a kitten here – he now is a very robust 10kg (22 pounds) and refuses to lose weight no matter how often we make him watch exercise shows on TV.

Norm Rapp’s Dad 1923

Image by clamshack
Paul Weisel
10h ·
In May of 2018 I was headed west for my annual visit with Don Edmunds, but took a few side trips before showing up in Oregon. After stopping at the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in Knoxville, IA to deliver a supply of Don Edmunds’ books, I veered north to I-90 and my first visit to Mount Rushmore. An early Friday morning arrival made a stop at the speedway in Sheridan, WY an easy addition to my route. On Saturday I said a final goodbye to Rocky Mountain Raceway in Salt Lake City and chalked up both their figure 8 course and the infield course used by their 4-cylinder division. As I cruised across Nevada, a Sunday afternoon event at the Winnemucca Regional Raceway was the cherry on top of four new tracks in the western states.
Monday was spent chasing vintage sprint car tires for our low-bar Edmunds sprinter project around the Ukiah, CA area and the slow day allowed me catch my breath for a first ever visit to San Francisco. On Tuesday morning I headed south on CA-101 to cross the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco. ‘Why in the world would you want to drive into San Francisco?’ you ask. There’s only one reason – Norm Rapp. Norm was 91 years young, a midget racer of note, a multi-time winner indoors at the Oakland Coliseum, a purveyor of race car parts for at least the past 60 plus years, and a recent inductee into the National Midget Hall of Fame. Norm has been instrumental in finding parts for several of our midget restorations, I’ve spoken to him numerous times on the phone, but we’d never met! Upon my arrival at 5 Cordova Street, Norm Rapp Racing’s World Headquarters, Norm jumped into my van and we went for breakfast at the Bayside Cafe, where it appeared Norm was revered as their favorite patron. Great view of the bay and I was able to cruise past the Cow Palace on the way back to Norm Rapp Racing. After an afternoon of spending money with Norm (he even had a used Goodyear pavement sprint car right rear tire), I headed north, hoping to escape the San Francisco traffic mess before things really got sporty at rush hour.
Unfortunately, Norm left us on December 28, 2019 at age 92 and I will be eternally grateful I took the time to visit with him at his place of business and spend some quality time with a true icon of the sport of midget racing. When the phone rang at Norm’s business, a former grocery store on Cordova Street where Norm ran his business since 1961, you never had to wonder if Norm was ‘in’. If the guy on the other end of the phone answered with, ‘Zoom, zoom!’, you were talking to Norm.
We both sold Firestone tires, so we always had something in common and we’d talk once, maybe twice, a year – always phone time well spent. When I needed a Casale rear end for the restoration of Don Edmunds’ personal Kurtis-Kraft, I called Norm. Shockingly, he said he had two! He asked if I was familiar with the term ‘butted’ (indoor racers in particular often shortened the rear axles of their cars – narrow holes, narrow cars) and I replied, ‘Yes, it means I want to hear about rear end #2.’ The second rear was built in October, 1947 and was perfect for a midget built by Kurtis in 1948. Always the kidder, Norm added, ‘I hear you drove race cars back east, so I’d better shim the ring and pinion and put it together for you before we ship it. Edmunds always said, ‘Race drivers have to be smart enough to operate a race car —- and just dumb enough to climb in it.’ So, I took Norm up on his gracious offer and the rear arrived in two pieces. All I had to do was to was put the axle and ring gear into the rear and tighten the side plates. Everything was shimmed to perfection. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to impress my good pal, Ronnie Dunstan, I told him I had just assembled this Casale rear (and I had) and asked if he’d stop by to check the lash and see if everything was OK. Dunstan was impressed when he worked the axle back and forth – the rear was right and tight! If he’s been walking around the last few years thinking I might have some mechanical ability – good! Norm even had a laugh when I told him about it.
A few days ago I read an interview with Norm by Saroyan Humphrey for Rust Magazine and Rust Media and thought it was the perfect insight to Norm Rapp. Photos included from the article are identified and I’d like to find a few more articles and interviews from these folks.
Rust Magazine, Q&A w. Norm ‘Zoom Zoom’ Rapp, 91 year-old racer and businessman remembers driving, wrenching with George Bignotti, and growing up in San Francisco.
TEXT – PHOTOS SAROYAN HUMPHREY
Feature: Norm Rapp has been inactive as a midget driver since 1967, but has owned and managed his racing supply business since he started it from the basement of his house in 1953. Until recently he was still selling vintage midget and sprint car parts, including tires and wheels. Along with parts, Rapp also supplied Northern California speedways with racing fuel for decades.
Norm was born in 1927 in San Francisco and was raised across the street from what would become his current race shop. Rapp’s father, Gene, was also involved in automobiles, mechanics and racing. Several years before Norm was born, Gene raced a big car – a flathead ‘T’ – at San Jose and San Luis Obispo. He found success, winning a main event that summer at the .625-mile San Jose Fairgrounds track, but a crash, where he was knocked unconscious for over a week, ended his career in 1923. Still, it didn’t end his enthusiasm for racing and the automobile, as he continued to attend races in the Bay Area with his infant son, Norm, in tow. In 1936 the elder Rapp also opened a Nash dealership in San Francisco’s Mission District, a place Norm would work as a mechanic a few years later.
After World War II, as midget racing continued to grow in popularity across the United States, Norm began driving a Drake (Harley Davidson-powered) midget in training races in 1948 at the long-gone Bayshore Stadium in South San Francisco. In ’49, Rapp competed in his first full season of professional competition, and by ’51, the driver won his first main event at a quarter-mile dirt track in Marysville, Calif. Norm continued to hone his driving skills and would eventually win 40 main events—on both dirt and pavement—during his driving career. Competing with the BCRA (Bay Cities Racing Association) mostly, Norm also raced at special events across the West Coast and Midwest, often traveling with his father.
In commemoration of his lasting racing career, Norm has been inducted into six halls of fame. From the National Midget Hall of Fame, to Balboa High School in San Francisco, where he shares the honor with George Bignotti, another San Franciscan who graduated from the same school a few years earlier. Besides being neighbors, Bignotti and Rapp became racing comrades, competing in BCRA events early in their careers. Rapp was also part of Bignotti’s Indy team in 1956 and helped build the ’57 Bowes Seal Fast Specials that went on to finish sixth and 22nd with drivers Johnny Boyd and Fred Agabashian.
Laid-back and still a big kid at heart, Rapp spent a few hours talking about his career and his life as a racer/businessman.
You’re one of the few lifetime honorary members of the BCRA. Rapp: Yeah, there’s only about six of us. It’s quite an honor. There’s Johnny Boyd, Fred Agabashian, Boots Archer, Johnny Soares, Sr., and also Floyd Busby. He’s the present scorer. Years ago, his father was the scorer when I first started in 1947.
And you were inducted to the National Midget Hall of Fame. Rapp: Yeah, three years ago. They inducted eight of us altogether that day. It was an enjoyable situation. Bobby Unser was there. It was a great day. It was something that I’ll always remember. That’s my biggest highlight. I’m in there with names like A.J. Foyt, Tony Stewart and all the rest of ’em.
Is being inducted to the halls of fame the best part of getting older? Rapp: Well, yeah; I gotta say, aging is not for sissies.
You were born and grew up here in San Francisco. Rapp: Yeah, in Crocker-Amazon, right next to the Excelsior District, off of Geneva Avenue.
And your dad was a racer? Rapp: Yeah, I’d been going to the races since I was two years old. Before I was born, he was racing. In those days they called them big cars, where now you call ’em sprint cars. He just raced for a couple of years and then he got hurt really bad at San Jose Fairgrounds in 1923. So, when he recuperated from the skull fracture, my mother, who then was his girlfriend, sail, “Well, Gene, you have to make the decision, racing, or me….” So he raced once more after that and then retired from racing, but we went to the races to watch and I always begged him to go in the pits and look at the race cars after the race.
In those days racing was so much more dangerous. Rapp: In 1923 they killed six guys at the track (San Jose) in one season. There’s a story about how my dad was in the hospital and there was a memorial race for a close friend of his and he came out to the track with a bandaged head and was part of the ceremony.
What other local tracks do you remember going to? Rapp: We used to go to San Francisco Motordrome, which was down on Army Street. I was a young kid, before World War II, I went to Alameda (Neptune Speedway). He took me over there a few times. In those days, you had to take a ferry boat to go across the bay. There was no Bay Bridge (laughing). And there was a mile track over there on Hesperian Boulevard (Oakland Speedway) in Hayward. It was well-known in those days, before World War II. And then during the war, somebody lit the grandstand on fire, or something, and the property became valuable.
You raced a soap-box derby car when you were a kid. What do you remember about that? Rapp: When I was 11 and 12 years old. That’s what I called the start of my career. In my day we didn’t have any go-karts, quarter midgets, and things like that. There just the full midget. I raced at Treasure Island (during the World Exposition) in 1940. Chevrolet built this ramp about 75 feet high and you’d tow the car up the ramp. I was fine going down the hill, but when I hit the flat, I didn’t have the weight to carry me and so, I lost the heat race by a couple of inches.
Your dad also had a Nash dealership, right? Rapp: Right, from 1936 to 1946. It was between 18th and 19th on Valencia (Street), 740 Valencia. He had a shop as well as sales for the cars. In 1937, he sold 97 Nashes. That was a real good year for Nash. I had a ’37 Nash. That was my first car!
Did you work in the shop? Rapp: When I was 14 or 15 years old, after the soap-box derbies. I was working for him, yeah. It was a small business and I was doing the parts work, as well as the lubrication. We had a rack there that we’d put car up on.
You joined the Army Air Corps after high school, right? Rapp: Yeah, when I graduated (in 1944) everybody was patriotic, much more than anytime in my life. So everybody enlisted in one form of service or another. I chose the Army Air Corps because I wanted to fly and the Army was a little easier to get into that the Navy. So, I went down to Market Street and signed up. It took 110 points to go to officer training and I got 125. Since I was still 17 years old, they didn’t want to send me to an army specialized training program, so they sent me to Stanford (University) for two terms. After that I went to Biloxi, Miss. To Kessler Field and then to Lowry Field and Buckley Field in Denver, That’s how I spent my 28 months total.
What do you remember about living in San Francisco during that time, after Pearl Harbor? Rapp: Neighborhoods were blacked out and the San Francisco Seals used to play baseball only in day games. Everybody had black curtains on their windows; everything was blacked out. We had wardens also, and every block was checked to make sure the windows were sealed. There are still bulkheads out here close to the hospital (points west toward the Pacific Ocean).
How did you get your start driving midgets? Rapp: After I got out of the Army Air Corps, a friend of my dad’s got me a job at Pan American Airways (as a mechanic) and one of the mechanics there owned a Drake midget. His name was Larry Christensen and he had Lyle Johnson and some other prominent guys driving for him. He won a feature in ’46 or ’47. He lived nearby. We got to be good friends and I went to his shop every night, almost, and helped him work on the Drake and in the pits. (George) Bignotti’s shop was about a half mile away, too.
I bought a Drake midget in ’48 and I had Earl Motter, Dick Strickland, all prominent veteran drivers, drive the car. The way I did it was I let those prominent guys run the car in the program and usually they would have warm-ups and I’d go out and run the first warm-up and they’d run the second warm-up and qualify and race the car. In the middle of the program, they’d have training races and I ran those. I ran 20 training races. In ’49, when I first started driving, I turned 10th fastest at Bayshore Stadium and made the main event. After that, I progressed over the years.
I was really hot for the Drake engine and it was the main event winner at different times with Jerry Piper and Bob Barkhimer. It was a Drake engine like Billy Vukovich, Sr. always ran. It accelerated really good. It could beat the Ford V8-60s and it was a cheaper car.
Where was the Bayshore Stadium? Rapp: There used to be a track right next to the Cow Palace that was built in 1934 by some gamblers from Chicago. People don’t know about it anymore. The story there is that these gamblers came out here and were going to run greyhound races. So they established this track next to the Cow Palace as well as the one down in Belmont and another across the bay. They had four of them and then (the State of) California says, “We don’t want dog racing” for humane reasons. So there was a quarter mile dirt track and along comes December 7th (1941), and the government took over the Cow Palace and all the surrounding area, including the race track, and put all their tanks and trucks and everything else in there. Then after the war, all the vehicles disappeared and left the track. So, in 1946 BCRA came in and ran programs there until 1950, every Friday night. It was called Bayshore Stadium and it had a covered grandstand.
And you expanded your mechanical knowledge at Pan American? Rapp: I worked at Pan American for 10 years altogether, in different shops. I first started out in the wheel and tire shop. Then I was in engine buildup for three years. We’d put the engine on a test stand before they put it in the aircraft. And then I had a chance to go to the parts department, which I enjoyed quite a bit. I spent six years there.
How did you meet George Bignotti? Rapp: George was running the BCRA circuit in 1947, and when I started going to the races with Larry Christensen, I met George. He had a shop at Geneva and Mission and he ran two midgets with Fred Agabashian and Ed Normi driving, running seven days a week (laughs). BCRA was running eight days a week back then (big grin).
Do you remember your first man event victory? Rapp: Yeah, it was at Marysville in 1950. It was a different track than the one that we see now. It was a quarter mile. I started outside front row and Jerry Hill was on the pole. It was a hard, dry track, and there were a lot of prominent drivers there like (Johnny) Boyd, (Johnny) Baldwin and Edgar Elder. Edgar had fast time in a Drake. So, I got a jump on Jerry on the start and I held the lead for 25 laps and won it. Elder had fast time and he was tangling with Boyd and Baldwin and it hit one of ’em and ended up going out through the open pit gate and he just drove right up onto his trailer. He was a great guy.
Was your dad a part of your racing? Rapp: He followed me, but didn’t help me. Then after about a year, he said, “I see you’re serious, and I’m going to see about buying this Kurtis Ford.” Johnny Smith had driven it to sixth place in (BCRA) point stands the year before in 1947. It was a one year-old car, a Kurtis V8-60, with a spare engine and everything else for ,000. So he bought it and I sold the Drake. I ran the Ford for three years and I kept paying him off and I owned the car when we got done. That was #16. It was really a good way for me to get started.
You traveled to the Midwest to race in ’52. You must’ve been feeling confident with your driving and equipment. Rapp: I hadn’t been driving for very long. The story there is, I was kinda depressed because my grandmother, who used to live with us, died. She had taken care of my brother and me when we were young kids, when my mother and father were running the auto shop. It was tough times. And my girlfriend, who later became my wife (Dorothea), decided she didn’t want to see me anymore. So I was kinda depressed. I thought, “Heck with it. I’d just like to go the the Midwest and race.” I went by myself, Bignotti tuned my V8-60 and it was outstanding. I didn’t have a spare engine, just some extra tires and wheels. But the good thing about the Midwest was that it taught me a lot. I really had to get down to the nitty fritty and learn how to race against those guys and I was running different tracks all the time. Day race, night race……
Midget racing was a big deal at that time. Rapp: It was pretty big, but in ’52 back out here, it tapered off a lot. NASCAR came in and Barkhimer was running a lot of (stock car) races at San Jose Speedway and he had a whole bunch of tracks that he was supervising…
Did you like the pavement, or dirt? Rapp: When I first started out, I liked the dirt. You got it sideways, but sometimes I got in trouble, too. But after about 1953, I started learning how to drive better on pavement and be smooth. I got to be quite accomplished. I got second to Parnell Jones at San Jose Speedway in ’64, and I’d win a feature here and there. Then I had a good Offy and we really made it perform. For six nights in a row, I had fast time at three different tracks. Two at San Jose, two at Kearney Bowl in Fresno, and two at Stockton. I think I won one, got four seconds and a third. In those days we’d start 18 (in the main event), so, I was coming from last.
The car was #10 and that’s why #10 is my favorite number now. It set a mark for me. I put #10 on my recently restored Offy. It was red and yellow. The current car is the same paint job, more or less. It’s in my store, ready to run. It’s worth 35 grand. It’s a Jimmy Davies car. He only built six cars; mine and one in Chicago are the only ones that I know of. It’s a historic car. It was just a bunch of parts when I got it, and I put it together gradually over five years. I put a lot of new parts into it, torsion bars and everything else.
You must’ve had some close calls in your driving days. Rapp: I only spent one night in the hospital. I flipped three and a half times at Sacramento (West Capital Raceway) on the half mile in 1955. I hit a rut. I woke up in the ambulance with my dad. I felt that flip for six months, in different ways. In those days, we didn’t have a shoulder harness, we just ran the lap belt and it held me in. In fact, the car was upside down and Walt Faulkner was running fast time in an Offy and he had the high groove and he hit my tail right next to my head in the turn and moved the car a couple feet. It just wasn’t my time to go (laughs)…..a lot of guys got killed at Capital Speedway.
You weren’t spooked? Rapp: No, I was ready to go again. But I remember one guy who crashed at Bayshore Stadium, he hit the light pole outside the track and he never showed up again. In that era, right after World War II, Bay Cities used to lose about two guys a season, plus injuries….Yeah, it was tough, really tough. You had to watch what you were doing.
Tell me about the leather face masks that you developed as a safety device in the 1950s. Rapp: Speedway Motors used to buy 100 at a time. I must’ve sold four or five hundred. When I first started out, guys used to put a bandana around their neck, but that wouldn’t help with the dirt and the rocks. You’d get hit. At first I made my own and developed it from there. There was a lady who was a seamstress at Pan American Airways and she helped.
I made a lot of different models before I produced the one that you see now. For different reasons it had to be improved. I had a company on 9th Street in San Francisco that was a leather company and I had them make ’em for me. They made some dies and they’d punch out the product with the die and sew ’em together per my instructions. It was a beautiful piece. I’ve seen used ones sell for 0 today (laughs).
You worked for Bignotti in ’56 and ’57. What do you remember from that time? Rapp: Oh, it was a real exciting experience. I had been to the (Indianapolis Motor) Speedway before it 1949 as a spectator. (In 1957) I was working for the Bowes Seal Fast Specials that Bignotti and Bob Bowes were partners in. I was a mechanic, doing everything. In the first day (of qualifying) Fred (Agabashian) was fourth fastest; (Johnny) Boyd was fifth fastest. They started side by side in the second row. Agabashian might have won the ‘500’, but the fuel tank split. In those days we didn’t have bladders and the tank wore and cracked. Agabashian was a really shrewd, great driver. He never acquired the achievements that he could’ve.
Bignotti was a good friend. I was helping him put the cars together in San Francisco. I was getting parts from Pan American. Pan American was a sponsor, but they didn’t know it (laughs). Bolts and nuts, whatever we needed for the Indy cars. Bowes got the cars from Kurtis (-Kraft) and we modified them. That was a good deal. They were beautiful cars for those days. Frank Kurtis was a great craftsman. Bignotti just worked out of his basement, just about a half mile from me.
George was the greatest wrench out of a toolbox. That’s the way I put it. Nowadays they have all this tech stuff. It’s altogether different. He was the chief mechanic on seven Indy winners with different drivers. Can you imagine? (A.J.) Foyt, (Al) Unser, (Tom) Sneva, (ed. note: also Graham Hill and Gordon Johncock). He made ’em all perform. Nowadays it’s so costly.
After Indy, I had to make a big decision in my life: whether I should stay back there (Midwest) and race. My wife said, “We can stay back here, I can get a job anyplace. Don’t worry about me.” Bignotti was going to run one of the Seal Fast cars over there at Monza in Italy on the high banks, and I could’ve gone over there with him. Or I could come home and continue with my part-time business. I had been making a couple hundred a week, or something like that. Not big monoey, but I decided to come home and I made the right decision. In those days there weren’t many dealers like there are now.
For seven years I worked out of my basement, and about five or seven others in the neighborhood. I was walking back and forth between all the places all day long. So I decided in 1961 that I should get everything in one place. That’s when I acquired the building that I’m in now at 5 Cordova. I leased it for 16 years and bought it for ,000 (in 1977). It’s 3,300 square feet.
It was orifinally a grocery store, right? Rapp: It used to be the independent grocer. The Safeway moved down to Mission Street where they are now with a big parking lot, and the independent moved from my building to the corner. And that’s where they still are today with different owners. It’s Cordova Market.
It was set up so I could back my truck and trailer in there after a race, with a big, wide doorway and everything else. And that’s the way it is today….been there all these years. The house where I was born and raised is right across the street from my store, 329 Rolph. I live up the hill, a half mile, in Southern Hills. My wife and I bought the house there brand new. She died 32 years ago, from cancer. She was a great part of my life, as far as career goes.
Did she go to the races: Rapp: Before we had kids, she went to the races all the time. But I’ll tell you, it was 1966 or 1967; I was driving for Emery Graham with a Chevy II. The kids were young and sometimes she’d stay home. So, I came home and the next morning she asks, “How’d you do last night?” And I said, “I did good in the heat race; I got up to second and in the main I got on my head. (She said) “You got on your head?” I hadn’t been on my head in like 10 years. So she asked, “What happened?” I said, “Well, a guy screwed up ahead of me and I got over him and hit the fence and bent the car up.”
She wanted to know what I was going to do now and I said, “Well, a bunch of guys are working on the car right now to straighten it out so we can run tonight in Sacramento on the half mile, a 100-lapper.” So, we got a fifth in the 100-lapper (laughs). It thrilled me.
It must’ve been difficult to run a business and drive at the same time. Rapp: Yeah, I used to look at J.C. Agajanian. He was an owner and a promoter. It was pretty tough. My dad was helping in the shop, at the house, going to all the races and pumping fuel. My wife was doing the books. She was a really sharp bookkeeper. She could take care of anything.
It seems like the 1960s was your peak as a driver. Rapp: I kept winning races into the ’60s. I retired in ’67. The last main event I won was indoors in ’66 in Oakland. I won about 40 main events altogether. Gary Koster and I won the most indoor (BCRA) races. We each won 12.
Did you miss driving when you retired? Rapp: Not too much, because I was still going to the track with my fuel and tire truck. I was busy. I kept going to the track until the last couple of years. I just retired a couple of years ago.
You were dedicated to your job as a supplier. Rapp: At Calistoga I got a hall of fame and it wasn’t because I had great achievements there. I got third in the main there one night. I got some other fifth, sixth places, stuff like that. The big thing was I had been hauling fuel and tires there for about 45 years (laughs). We’d bring 15 barrels of fuel for a weekend. Louis (Vermeil) said to me way back in ’53, “I’d like you to bring a barrel of fuel with you,” and that’s how it got started. I gradually built it up. I had a 1,000 gallon tank and then a 6,000 gallon tank in South San Francisco. A friend of my dad’s had an oil company there and they had all these tanks, so I bought a tank. You got a better price when you took big quantities. One year I sold nearly 22,000 gallons of fuel.
To what do you attribute your longevity? Rapp: Take care of the body by eating the right kinds of food and don’t eat any junk foods. Stay healthy. When I was running a 50- or 100-lapper, I would exercise every other night before I went to bed. That gave me stamiina.
Racing has been my life. And as the saying goes, “Would you like to live your life over again?” I would. Some people wouldn”t, but I would.

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