How To Experience A More Relaxed Workout In Trekking Class

How To Experience A More Relaxed Workout In Trekking Class

I am over 70 years of age and have a rare form of blood disease that is not curable and I sometimes don’t have a lot of energy.  I must work out every day as a personal ideal but I do like to throttle back my exercise depending upon how I feel.  The problem taking a fitness club trekking class is the instructor takes a look at you and seems to make a snap judgement as to what level you can perform in their class.   Thus, there is this constant battle of my trying to arrange my own workout intensity against the perceived wishes of the trainer.   Over the years I have devised a list my own rather devious methods for managing my trainer and my workout.

  • Join a class. Do not receive individual instruction.  In a class, you can better hide from the trainer and do what you want for speed and incline.
  • Always show up late so you can take a spot away from the trainer.  You really want to be to the far right or left side of a trainer that faces the treadmills.  The most deadly spot is taking a treadmill right in front of the trainer.  Showing up late also shaves off total class time.
  • Tell the instructor you need to warm up, thus you can typically use much lower settings of incline and speed for a while.  Almost all trainers understand that a person arriving late must warm up.
  • Keep doing your warm up until the instructor spots the fact that you have been warming up for the past half hour.
  • When the instructor tells you to go up to a high speed, don’t if you don’t want too.  To hide this fact, just appear to run faster by taking shorter strides.  If the instructor likes to walk around to spot speed and incline, put a towel over the display panel to hide the readouts.
  • Try not to take a spot next to the student who follows exactly what the instructor tells the class.  Try to find other students that also shave off speed settings and chose a treadmill next to theirs.  You really don’t want to be running next to a person at speed 6 while you are at 5.
  • Many treadmills have at least two methods of entering speed.  Choose the slowest method when going up in speed.  The treadmills at my club have direct speed enter as one method and up and down arrows as an entry for the second method.  I chose the up and down arrows and press them slowly.  I often can shave off 15 seconds or more from a speed increase.  Obviously, choose direct entry for speed when going down in speed if it is faster.
  • Try to distract the trainer by conversation and then try to detect if they can remember the last speed and incline number.  Often times an instructor will call out the same incline and speed because they were engrossed in telling the class a story.   Most often some knucklehead student reminds the instructor we already are at that speed and incline which really ruins it.
  • If you are caught with a lower treadmill incline than the other students, pretend that you failed to hear the last directions.  You can also pretend to be in a meditative state and failed to hear anything.  This works best if you hold the hand rail and close your eyes to paint the picture that you are zoned out in some Zen moment but make sure you can run a treadmill with your eyes closed.
  • Having loud conversations with a person in the next treadmill often works for explaining that you did not hear the speed of 6 when you are currently at 3.  This really works if the person you are taking too also is at the same speed and incline you are.
  • I also have razzed the instructor occasionally with comments that in past months they were setting lower work out speeds but now are being more aggressive. If the instructor is motivated to think about how this might have happened you must measure if this turns out well for you or not.
  • I found out that I can clip some time off my class by removing the cover shirt that I wear over my tank top.  It is safe to do this off the treadmill and then I walk over to the bins used to house our workout bags and place the garment into the bag and walk back.  Bathroom breaks are also in this category for shaving time off and getting a recovery.
  • If the instructor likes short recovery times, challenge and complain.  This really depends, obviously, on the instructor as to how successful this plays out.

 

 

Barnes & Noble Book Store Allegidly Fails To Honor Discount

Barnes & Noble Book Store Allegidly Fails To Honor Discount

November 30, 2013 at about 9:40 pm I placed an order for a book with Barnes & Noble Internet web site (BN.COM).  I have a coupon that stated that I should get 20% off if I buy in a store or on line.  The end date is November 30 but the fine print on the rear side of the discount it states “until December 1, 2013 at 2:50am Eastern Time.  I made the purchase on line and because I have a credit card registered with B&N the purchase went straight through without being allowed to take advantage of the discount.  I was never allowed to enter the coupon code.

I then felt obligated to notify B&N of my not being able to take advantage of the discount by using their web site portal (I removed the actual coupon code below):

You guys send me 20% off coupons to entice me to buy books.  I go on line to barnesandnoble.com and place an order.  I am never allowed to “Enter coupon code at checkout: XXXXXXXXXXXXX”.  I have a credit card on file and I guess I get screwed because of that.  I have a second 20% off coupon that I was also going to use but I would rather quit your store from any future purchases and add this incident to my blog.

 

Here is B&N response:

 “…this coupon cannot be applied to NOOK Book.”

The coupon states in large letters in front

“SAVE AN EXTRA 20% OFF ONE ITEM”

“Present this coupon AT BN.COM.  Enter coupon at checkout.”

I thought they sold books.  Oh, I guess only books that you can hold in your hand?

So the back of the discount coupon card has writing that requires a magnifying glass and it includes a whole list of items that the discount does not apply to.  Oh, B&N, I apologize for not digging into the fine print.  Well here is my reply to you.  I have my terms.  I demand a good shopping experience.

The following was a screen shot of iBooks price for the same item:

Above image taken Dec 1, 2013 at 11:50am

Other purchase options:

  • Google Play has the book for $11.99 (Dec 1, 2013)
  • Amazon Kindle: $7.99 (Dec 1, 2013)

Now B&N now makes me feel bad twice.  I get no discount from them and then discover that I could have made my purchase somewhere else at just over half their price.  I paid $14.99 for the book at Barnes & Noble.  I just learned a life lesson.  Be cautious with B&N or just don’t use B&N coupons at BN.COM.  You can use them in their walk in stores.  It has been my experience that the people running the cash registers at Barnes & Noble brick and mortar stores will bend over backwards to extend a discount to you.

 

Daughter’s Top 3 Amsterdam Picks

Daughter’s Top 3 Amsterdam Picks

After more than two hours of research (Nov. 29, 2013) looking at about 15 hotels, my daughter came up with her top 3 choices.  We removed much of her research comments such as prices, reviews and any other information that is time dependent.  The comments below do not show our hidden requirements of location near the Dam and the central location close to sight seeing locations.

Radisson Blu Hotel, Amsterdam:  Free Wifi; 6 min. walking distance from Dam Square; 17 min. walk from Anne Frank House.

Hotel Estherea  (on canal) Has internet (wired) in room, when booking, we can get a discount on breakfast.  Cancelations are free of charge up to 24 hours before arrival.  “Special gifts” available if staying more than 3 nights. 4 night gift is a custom canal cruise.  6 min. from Dam Square; 10 min. from Anne Frank House

Inntel Hotel Amsterdam Centre
No Free Wireless internet in room.  ?6 min. walking distance from Dam Square; 13 min. walk from Anne Frank House

November 29, 2013 we booked a stay at Hotel Estherea.

My Daughter’s Spread Sheet Research For Amsterdam

My Daughter’s Spread Sheet Research For Amsterdam

The spread sheet below was done by my daughter, November 29, 2013.  The data in the table may very well become less accurate as time moves on.  We offer this data only as an example of one method for deciding upon a place to stay in a foreign country.  Not stated in the data sheet is the fact that we did some reading about Amsterdam and found that there are certain city sections that we wish to be close to.  I strongly recommend that you do the same.  First, look to see the sights that interest you and you just might decide to stay at a hotel that is within walking distance.

The Amsterdam Hotel spread sheet below is an example of how complicated finding just the right hotel in Amsterdam can be.  The fields shown along the top will probably not be as important to you.  For example, we have one party member that has a walking problem so we need a hotel elevator.  We also want to know how close the hotel is to the attractions we wish to visit so we added distances.  I have removed the hotel cost from this sheet as they would be out of date by the time you read this post.  The ratings are from the Internet web sites and is subjective.  I really recommend that you read the reviews that are posted and you can detect that there are some pretty tough individuals that are hard to please.

 

Amsterdam_Research_Data

Need Advice For Visiting First Part Of Tip: Amsterdam?

Need Advice For Visiting First Part Of Tip: Amsterdam?

A group of 8 adults will be visiting Amsterdam, May 2014.  We need hotel, restaurant, and points of interest ideas in Amsterdam.  We would love to stay 4 days in a hotel by a canal.  We need 4 rooms.  If you have a recommendation to make, please share with us.  Send an e-mail to [email protected]

We plan on sharing our reviews of everything about the trip including travel, hotel, restaurant, and places we visit and make reviews in this web site.

Following is what we have discovered so far during the planning for this trip (End of November 2013):

  • Flights into Amsterdam typically arrive early in the morning.  Hotel rooms do not offer up their rooms until about 3pm.  Hotels charge about $40 to $50 for early book in.  Our AAA travel agent said that this is a money maker for the hotels.  My daughter came up with this solution.  Because we need 4 rooms, only pay for one room early book in and everyone store luggage and freshen up during the early hours using this single room.
  • Tip from my son: Use Firefox browser and go to File > New Private Window.  This method should keep the web site booking companies form seeing your interest in any particular hotel and raising the rates if you visit a page frequently.
  • Our top recommended trip web sites for Amsterdam:
    • Booking.com.   I just love the Amsterdam map with all the hotel pins.  I can zoom in and out.  When I pass my computer mouse over any map pin, I get a quick look at price.   We want to stay in the “Canal Belt”, 16 and 17th century waterways and Booking.com worked for me:
      • Singel
      • Herengracht
      • Keizersgracht
      • Prinsengracht
    • Kayak.com does a good job of presenting all your choices.
  • After using a good web site search and finding your top three or more hotel picks, then go to the hotel web sites directly and see if you can get any better deals.  In the United States, this almost always works but we have never been to Europe before.  Here are the  reasons why we like to compare web vacation web sites and hotel web sites.  The booking web site has to make a profit.  Some times the rooms are located in less desirable locations.  Some times the hotel can offer better prices, secret offers or perks.  My daughter discovered that some hotels give better rates for AAA, senior citizens and advanced purchase by visiting the hotel web sites directly.  When you go to any hotel web site examine it carefully as some money saving promotions are another page or two away from the home page.
  • We have been very impressed with AAA travel agents.  We have booked our flights and tour in November 2013.
  • Look into getting a credit card with an imbedded chip and rewards.  AAA is not offering a Visa card with some pretty nifty rewards.  Europe is not credit card magnetic strip friendly.  We applied and got accepted for AAA Member Reward Visa cards.  The rub is that you must ask for the chip.  We had to ask Bank of America for the chip after we received the cards without it; quite annoying.
Customer Interface Is Friendly But Slightly Flawed Process

Customer Interface Is Friendly But Slightly Flawed Process

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A student with a medical problem could not attend the first day of classes at Santiago Canyon College, a junior college in Orange California. The student sent all the faculty she was to take classes from e-mail notifying them that she may not be able to attend the first day of class. The notification was sent on Friday before the Monday classes began, thinking she was giving two days notice. Two of the faculty, allegedly, did not read their e-mail and gave the student’s classroom seat to other students. The faculty claimed they did not have enough time to read all their e-mail.

This blog sent the college a request for their drop policy. The request was made August 25, 2011 and no reply has yet been received.

We do rate this college extremely high for friendliness. It seems that the college president has mandated a friendly policy which is most apparent when you interact with any of the college staff and faculty.  It is our opinion that they really need to provide a more friendly business process.