Never give up, never surrender! Part two.

What I wanted to do with the previous "never give up" post was to illustrate what "never give up, never surrender!" looked and felt like to me on January 25.

I'm a couple of weeks in to my own personal physical rehabilitation. I was in pretty darned good shape on June 29 of last year, then on June 30 I had a fall in a canyon which caused a hitherto undiscovered lumbar spine issue to flare up. I've been living with a lot of nerve pain ever since, and trying to get lined out medically and perhaps surgically.

Getting the medical/surgical stuff to happen has been a struggle of late, and I'm not going to bitch or even describe that here. It's largely out of my control.

What isn't out of my control is getting back into shape. Rest made sense for the first couple of months, but I rested too much and put on too much winter lard. I was getting along fine doing my daily ranch chores which are often somewhat physical, so it only made sense to get back to working out.

And working out, especially with nerve pain, takes a certain amount of determination and a willingness to push through pain and tough going of hard effort. So the Galaxy Quest mantra of "never give up, never surrender!" is a nice touchstone and motivator.

That's kinda-sorta what I was thinking as I made those canyon videos the other day. But I was also feeling really good physically on Saturday and felt like playing a bit. It was beautiful outside with warm sunshine and the canyon glaciers were just right for climbing and sliding. So I did a bunch of that. It was pure delightful play. Little kid play. I loved every minute of it. A side benefit, which I thought about hardly at all in the moment, was that it was an extremely strenuous workout, and that was all to the good.

When I got out of bed Sunday morning I was a bit creaky and cranky. I didn't sleep well because I had a lot of persistent aches and pains from the workout. I also had a lot of nerve pain. The former was simply to be expected following that kind of workout. The latter is just a burden I have to bear.

There's another saying that echoes around the hollow halls of my head. "Find the largest burden you can bear and then bear it." My nerve problem found me, and I really have no choice but to live with it. However, It's my choice whether I bear it as a man or as a crybaby. I'm trying very hard to carry it as a man. In doing so, yet another stupid saying becomes helpful.

"Take some Startactin!"

In other words, "start" "actin" like a man!

I wanted to show visually some of the scenery of one of the countless workout areas I'm blessed to have access to, along with some of the trudging. I did that in the first part of this "never give up" post. I also wanted to show some of the play, and I did video much of it with my phone. However, the phone turned some of the key play videos sideways, and I've been (and still am) struggling to figure out how to fix the video aspect so I can properly share them.

In the meantime, yesterday I was sore and cranky and didn't want to work out. There were reasonable arguments for not working out. But I did, and it was the right thing to do.



I had a bite of lunch afterwards, then sat down to attempt some more figuring out of the videos. I found that my freeware video player will change the video aspect nicely and save it that way. But the u2b somehow sees and renders the videos in the format the phone decided to save them in. I think the smartest thing for me to do is learn how all of this video stuff works. How the phone assigns aspects and how u2b reads the aspect, which I suspect lies somewhere in that dreaded "code" stuff I've heard about. In other words, if I want to do this stuff the right way, I need to be the master of the tools, not the reverse.

Anyway, as I was struggling to wrap my ageing mind around all this young punk computer business, my body whacked me with a serious demand for rest. That pissed me off frankly, because I was in the middle of doing something and wanted to complete it or at least make some significant progress. But I recognized what was happening and realized that giving in and resting was the best course. I could have powered through, but it would have been a stupid move. My body was, after all, working hard on repairing the thousands of little damages I'd done myself while playing and working out.

So I rested.

Monday morning I felt a lot better. Still sore and a bit weary, and still with plenty of nerve pain, but better. So I sat myself down to work on this post and on the video problem, as well as to upload and trim yesterday's videos. Before long it was time to get out and do morning chores, which is where I am at this moment. So I'll get to it.

And..........Now that chores and workout are in the past, on with the show.

Okay, how 'bout more Sunday videos? Say's Phoebe nest and a glimpse of a little snow cave.



Pretty nice day. Which is what I say every day.



Danger! Not really. Just pay attention and don't stand in the wrong place at the wrong time. Plus rabbit poop.



A bit of reluctant hill climb.



Even more reluctance.



And the rest of the videos were awful. plus I haven't cracked righting the wonky videos yet.

It was a good workout, the best I could muster at the time. A million times better than no workout.

Later when my body demanded rest I rested, and therefore didn't get this post finished and off to scheduling. So I'll post it now(ish). Then I'll try to get Monday's post finished in time to send it off to scheduling so it'll post on time in the morning tomorrow.

That'll be kind of a pain in the backside, because I shot a lot of video today with the new camera, trying various different things. I changed some settings, and possibly some that I shouldn't have changed. We'll see. Also I have other things to try to get done this afternoon and later this evening. So it'll all be a bit of a slog. But that's okay, slogs are good. It's how you figure stuff out.

And can I just say that today's workout was very intense and very sublime. I hope I can get that across in tomorrow's post.

Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.