I spent three hours tonight volunteering at Project Open Hand, a very organized food service program for low income and sick patients in San Francisco. After making hundreds of meatloaves and cleaning the kitchen, I realized that I don't even spend this much prep time cooking for myself and it's been quite some time that I've cleaned my own kitchen. What's that saying, charity starts at home? I must say that I was truly impressed by the organization of Project Open Hand. We were fed a pretty good meal before we started our work and the volunteers were super knowledgeable and had a lot of experience working with this organization. After the meatloaf preparation, we packed probably close to 1000 frozen dinners to be delivered to people in need. I was amazed at how much food is prepared and given to those in need in San Francisco by Project Open Hand. Just one of those moments where I just thought to myself, "daaaaamn, I can't believe what this group does." I'm looking forward to bringing some of my friends with me next time. Since volunteering more this summer, I'm starting to sense that there is a volunteer groupie scene in the city...more as I try to penetrate the inner circle. You probably want to know the whole Aquachi thing. When I visited my friend Randi in Colorado, she took me to this spa to experience aquachi. Supposedly, you put your feet in this bath of water and salt and an electric current is run through the water. As explained to me by the spa technician [a woman with incredibly frosted hair], the current along with the salt pulls out the toxins in your body. The water bath will change colors as the toxins are released and the colors formed tell you which part of your body is releasing the most toxins. For example, green is the liver, black is the immune system, I can't remember them all but you're given a guide. Being the biologist that I am, I don't ever recall the soles of the feet being all that porous, especially enough for large molecules like toxins to pass. Also, as I watched the water change color, I was quickly reminded of an experiment in chemistry where we split water molecules called electrolysis. The sludge that formed during aquachi looked amazingly reminiscent of the sludge formed during the electrolysis of water. I threw this out to the spa technician and she gave me this priceless look. I told her that I know why she has to add salt to the water bath and asked her if she knew why to which she just said that's what I was told to do for aquachi. Love it...that's most of America for ya. On the training front, I finally dipped under 6-minute miles for a brick, running 5:55 miles for two miles. Also, I equalled my PR for the wildcat climb [10:30, this time means nothing to you but since this is sort of my training log, I'm posting the time], not bad considering that I'm not riding as much nor as intense as when I set that PR, I could go on with theories buy why bother.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Volunteer + AquaChi = Good Karma?
I spent three hours tonight volunteering at Project Open Hand, a very organized food service program for low income and sick patients in San Francisco. After making hundreds of meatloaves and cleaning the kitchen, I realized that I don't even spend this much prep time cooking for myself and it's been quite some time that I've cleaned my own kitchen. What's that saying, charity starts at home? I must say that I was truly impressed by the organization of Project Open Hand. We were fed a pretty good meal before we started our work and the volunteers were super knowledgeable and had a lot of experience working with this organization. After the meatloaf preparation, we packed probably close to 1000 frozen dinners to be delivered to people in need. I was amazed at how much food is prepared and given to those in need in San Francisco by Project Open Hand. Just one of those moments where I just thought to myself, "daaaaamn, I can't believe what this group does." I'm looking forward to bringing some of my friends with me next time. Since volunteering more this summer, I'm starting to sense that there is a volunteer groupie scene in the city...more as I try to penetrate the inner circle. You probably want to know the whole Aquachi thing. When I visited my friend Randi in Colorado, she took me to this spa to experience aquachi. Supposedly, you put your feet in this bath of water and salt and an electric current is run through the water. As explained to me by the spa technician [a woman with incredibly frosted hair], the current along with the salt pulls out the toxins in your body. The water bath will change colors as the toxins are released and the colors formed tell you which part of your body is releasing the most toxins. For example, green is the liver, black is the immune system, I can't remember them all but you're given a guide. Being the biologist that I am, I don't ever recall the soles of the feet being all that porous, especially enough for large molecules like toxins to pass. Also, as I watched the water change color, I was quickly reminded of an experiment in chemistry where we split water molecules called electrolysis. The sludge that formed during aquachi looked amazingly reminiscent of the sludge formed during the electrolysis of water. I threw this out to the spa technician and she gave me this priceless look. I told her that I know why she has to add salt to the water bath and asked her if she knew why to which she just said that's what I was told to do for aquachi. Love it...that's most of America for ya. On the training front, I finally dipped under 6-minute miles for a brick, running 5:55 miles for two miles. Also, I equalled my PR for the wildcat climb [10:30, this time means nothing to you but since this is sort of my training log, I'm posting the time], not bad considering that I'm not riding as much nor as intense as when I set that PR, I could go on with theories buy why bother.
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