This is my second attempt to talk about my day. Harumph.

First of all, we were up early (no work or school, so of course the kids were up before we were). We decided to tidy up the yard a little.

A “little” being at least two hours of mowing, weed-eating, watering, trimming, picking up, putting down, etc. After this I collapse onto our (now neatly trimmed) lawn and looked up at the clouds.

“Look, that one looks like a donut!”

My wife ignored me. My son, however, took it as a hint:

“Let’s go on a bike ride, daddy!”

So after laying on the lawn for six or seven seconds, we launched into part II of our day: riding our bike to the park.

But let me back up for a second. As I think I’ve mentioned, I recently bought a heart rate monitor, and after much research (if “research” means following a bunch of google links) I’ve figured out my Heart Range. That is the low and high end of where my heart rate should be when I work out. Nifty, huh? And, my new handy-dandy heart rate monitor, in addition to telling me the temperature, altitude, date, and barometric pressure – no, I’m not kidding – will, of all things, also tell me my heart rate. Cool!

So here’s how it works. I have a Max Heart Rate (which is 182). And there is a complicated formula involving Nascar, Elmer Fudd’s batting average, and Meg Ryan that when completed properly during a full moon will tell me exactly how fast my heart should beat to do different things.

Here’s some examples:

• 126 beats per minute (bpm) – your grandmother could do this.
• 138 bpm – “Fat burning and re-energise glycogen stores” (really)
• 149 bpm – more oxygen! (say it in your best Scotty voice)
• 160 bpm – “improve lactic acid threshold”

And that’s where I stop. Because after that, it starts to get scary:

• 165 bpm – “lactic acid threshold” – sounds kinda final to me,
• 171 bpm – call an ambulance
• beyond that – Is your will current?

So, yeah. I realized I might be in a wee bit of trouble (meaning, fat and out of shape) when I hit 158 bpm just putting air in the bike tires. Moving on.

Here we are getting the bike ready to roll. The tires? They all have air.

Dad? Sorta.

The baby she’s ready to roll. Already complaining that we haven’t pulled away from the gate quickly enough.

So here is my son holding the contraption steady while I, um, take pictures and stuff. Good thing they have an adult to guide them, right?

Riding to the park my heart rate kept pinging the end of the meter – somewhere just around the “call an ambulance” mark. But nothing too bad happened, so we’re good. Here we are swinging at the park. Bad Dad let her out of the house with her hair like that.

About to tackle the monkey bars! (he did, too).