Welcome to Running: A FEVER. My name is Michael Davis, and this is a show about fitness, diet, and medicine. My goal is to live a long, healthy, happy, active life right up to the very end. It’s all about livin’ long and lovin’ life.
Well, today I am back at the Lake Fayetteville Trail, starting at the parking lot near the Botanical Gardens — one of the classics of Running: A FEVER venues. It’s a beautiful day, a bit warm. Middle of summer in the middle of the United States: about 93 degrees, and I’m breathing a little harder. I’m 263 pounds, and it’s been a few weeks since I’ve been out exercising anything other than yard work. Glad I’m out here today, but I’m not promising anything more than a mile. We’ll see how it goes.
I made a little life decision, somewhat health-related, since my last recorded episode. I had mentioned briefly that I was considering going back and exercising the privileges of my pilot license. I got that license back in the early 90s. I am a private pilot, and I really enjoyed it then. I really wanted to get back into it.
So I investigated what it would take. The license itself doesn’t expire, but you need a current medical certificate and a proficiency check every two years. The crux of the matter: I’m just over 60, and it’s been about 32 years since my last medical certificate. A lot has happened since then — misdiagnoses, diseases I’ve recovered from, and so on. Getting a new medical would require a lot of investigation and revealing private medical information I didn’t want to put out there.
So I decided not to apply for a new medical certificate. That doesn’t mean I can’t fly — it does limit the options. Something I didn’t have in the 90s is sport pilot rules. Under sport pilot rules you’re restricted in a number of ways, but the most important thing for me right now is you don’t need a medical certificate. You just need a driver’s license. They figure that if you’re physically qualified to drive a car, you’re physically qualified to fly an airplane for these purposes — which kind of makes sense. That’s about medical fitness, not technical proficiency.
I do have a driver’s license, so I’ve got a lot of catching up to do on proficiency and knowledge. A lot has changed since the 90s. They weren’t using GPS much in aviation then. I’ve been reading about the first nonstop flight around the world without refueling in the late 1980s — they used something similar to GPS. For a while GPS was military-only, and accuracy wasn’t what you get today. Different classes of airspace, radio calls, and more. A lot to relearn, and a lot that’s new.
But my medical history is not going to hold me back. The limitations: visual flight rules only (no instrument-only weather flying), daytime only, certain slower aircraft (they’ve expanded that quite a bit), and only one passenger at a time. That’s how I made my decision regarding the FAA and medical qualification.
I’ve got somebody coming behind me on a lawnmower — a driver in a t-shirt that just says Parks on the back, probably city parks, right on the border between Fayetteville and Springdale. Walking for 12 minutes; not doing too bad. E-bikes and e-scooters — a whole fleet when I parked. Never tried one. I hope they have a battery indicator so you know when you’re halfway out you can still get back to the car.
I’m on the south side of Lake Fayetteville. Shady on this side — good, because I didn’t wear sunscreen today. When I go out to mow I usually do. Just have to be aware of heat exhaustion. Not trying to break any records today. It’s been a while; not in great shape.
I mean it when I say Lake Fayetteville is beautiful. Nice woods. You can see a little of the lake through the trees — middle of summer, all the leaves are out, not like winter when you can see more water. Nice to be in the shade under a canopy. They’ve kept it pretty well; you can see where somebody’s been trimming limbs and leaving them beside the trail.
So far today I haven’t seen any graffiti. I have in the past, but not today. People are respecting the open spaces available to a community. I can understand wanting to speak your mind and publish your thoughts — if you do that where people can seek you out, that’s one thing. Invading a public space and forcing it on people is another thing entirely. Humans are communal by nature, and for the most part we do a good job of respecting each other. There are always struggles. It’s always the hope that someday we’ll all live in peace together — that’s not how things are now, but for the most part we do.
Really, the big world events you hear about are often on the outskirts of humanity. Easy for me to say as an American in a well-protected country — not all places are like that. I was watching a show called Star City, an alternate take on the 1960s–70s space race between Russia and the United States. Soviet Russia then; things have changed some. I found bilingual dual-citizen folks speaking British English and Russian, showing regular life — where people shop for food, Soviet-era housing. The show was filmed mostly in Lithuania, where a lot of that 1960s–70s Soviet-style architecture still stands.
Got a mile in about 22 minutes — not too bad considering the shape I’m in. One thing those voices said: there’s very little street crime in Russia; you can walk cities without the same fear of robbery or violence. At this point the United States and Russia are both involved in war, but the vast majority of Russians and Americans are not directly in it. We’re mostly getting along — standing in line, yielding the right of way, not defacing community spaces. That’s a good thing. Too bad about the war. It shows there is a bit of hope for mankind: at our cores we are able to get along. We just need to work on those fringes.
This is going to be a pretty decent workout today. Kind of sad how hard it feels, but what can I say — I didn’t make it easy on myself by staying away so long. I’ve got a little hope for myself individually on my own health if I can get out here today and next time I have an opening — possibly Thursday.
Other than that my body’s doing pretty good. I recently had one of those “don’t know what I did” things — wake up in pain and you don’t know what caused it. Weird muscles under my arm / armpit. Heat and rest did the trick; a couple of days and it was as good as new. Didn’t help that I exacerbated it a little, but I recovered nonetheless.
Back to the parking lot — you can hear the traffic — so I’m going to sign off. Thanks for being with me today, listening, and traveling along this journey of health and fitness. I hope you are having a beautiful day wherever you are.
There are a few references connected to this episode, and as usual you can access them at http://RunningAFEVER.com/480. Please also like the episode on YouTube if you benefited from it, and subscribe if you’d like to hear more about fitness, diet, and medicine as I seek a more healthy life.
Thanks for listening/watching. If you’ve got the fever, keep it burning, and if you don’t, catch the fever, and I will see you next time on Running: A FEVER.