University Health Care

Hi everybody!

dsc00049-1024w Thank you so much for your interest in my bicycle tour! I hope you’re all having a great summer back in Salt Lake City. I’m looking forward to seeing you all in October!

If you have a question that you’d like to ask me or if you would simply like to say hello, please fill out the comment form below. Even though I’ll be quite busy riding my bicycle, I will try my very best to review your emails every day.

14 Responses to “University Health Care”

  1. Brandee Says:
    June 20th, 2006 at 4:22 pm

    1. Do you eat enough for the amount of exercise you are getting? I eat more than you and I sit at a desk all day :)
    2. How come you’ve been eating only raisins, bagels, peanut butter, energy bars and juice during rides? Are you growing tired of these selections?
    3. Do you eat out for most your dinners and do you have to be careful what you eat?

  2. Peter Hoogenboom Says:
    June 25th, 2006 at 4:32 am

    1. Well, I don??t report everything that I eat on the web site, so I??m sure I??m eating more than you can tell from the web site. Pat tells me that I don??t look like I?ve lost weight since the start of the tour, so I??m probably doing alright on the food intake. If I get a chance to step on a scale, I??ll probably do that.

    2. Actually, no, I??m not getting tired of them. I suspect that I??ll still be eating them the day I return to Salt Lake City.

    Diabetes is a 24×7 struggle to balance food intake with exercise and insulin intake. Food that is eaten must be accounted for through either exercise or insulin intake. I occasionally find it useful to think of the whole thing as balancing a budget. If the budget isn??t balanced, you either go into debt (low blood sugar) or something goes into savings (high blood sugar). Unlike a budget, the former condition is a life-threatening and dangerous condition and the latter is what causes those longt-term complications such as blindness, kidney disease, heart disease, etc.

    Anyway, the reason I mention all that is I feel it explains why I don??t mind the same foods day after day. Once I??ve figured out the carbohydrate content in a specific food, eating it again makes keeping the whole process in balance easier. With a new food, there??s some guesswork involved in knowing how much insulin to supply to account for it.

    3.Like I mentioned in the previous question, management of diabetes is a process of keeping food intake balanced with insulin supply. When we eat out, there??s some of guesswork involved in estimating the carbohydrate content of a given meal. So, we have been eating out, but it does provide for an additional challenge. When we can, we also will buy supplies in a grocery store and cook dinner ourselves. When we??re staying in a hotel, about all we can do is make a sandwich. When we camp out though, we get an opportunity to cook a hot meal and that??s become part of the appeal of camping when we can. We haven??t been able to camp nearly as much as we would like, unfortunately.

  3. Teri Says:
    June 25th, 2006 at 4:24 pm

    1. How are you protecting your skin from the sun? It seems like even sunscreen would not be effective for the amount of time you are spending outside.

    2. Are you eating out at restaurants in the evenings? If so, have you had any food poisoning yet?

    3. Do you feel that your outlook on life in general is changing as this trip unfolds?

  4. Peter Hoogenboom Says:
    June 25th, 2006 at 4:50 pm

    1. I??m applying sunscreen liberally each day that I ride. I carry extra sunscreen with me so I can reapply sunscreen at midday, but I don??t always do it, unfortunately. While I??m riding, I do seek shade whenever possible. When I stop for a rest, test of the blood sugar, or whatever, I always look for a shaded spot to stop in.

    2. Like I mentioned in the answer to Brandee??s question, we eat out at a restaurant in the evenings the majority of the time, but we do occasionally just get the supplies to make our own dinner. From Arizona through the south, we found it often the case that there was one restaurant in the small towns we were staying in. On a number of occasions we decided we would rather go to the grocery store and make our own dinner. That has changed now that we??re on the east coast. We actually have a choice in restaurants! Maybe because we tend to be selective in terms of restaurants, we haven??t had any cases of food poisoning. We??re very thankful for that!

    3. Hmmm. I??m not sure about my outlook on life has changed, but my outlook on the United States has changed, for sure. A lot of people who travel the country do so traveling from one tourist destination to another and then they make that trip via an interstate highway. We??ve been fortunate to be able to travel the country on primarily rural roads and definitely NOT any interstate highways. I??ve learned that what you see from the interstate is only a thin veneer on what??s actually out there. Some of what you see beyond that veneer may surprise you. It might be good or it might be bad, but it will definitely surprise you.
    Next time you make a long trip by car, I strongly urge you to take a little extra time and make the trip on local roads or at least non-interstate highways.

  5. Chrissa Says:
    June 30th, 2006 at 4:25 pm

    I just have one question: how has achieving your dream affected how you feel about life?

  6. Peter Hoogenboom Says:
    June 30th, 2006 at 5:01 pm

    Teri asked this question too. It’s a very interesting question so I??ve been giving it some more thought since I answered it the first time. Dreams are like opinions — everybody has one. Not everybody is fortunate enough to have their dream come true though. I??ve had my dream for the past twenty years and now I??ve been fortunate enough for it to come true. What??s my dream when this is done and I??m back in Salt Lake City? Well, I don??t know the answer to that…yet. But, I do know that this has been a life-changing event and it will have an effect on the direction of the rest of my life. Again, I don’t know exactly what those new directions might be, but I’m looking forward to that process of discovery.

  7. Dan Says:
    July 1st, 2006 at 4:26 pm

    1. Has your body adapted to the long rides so that you don’t feel extremely tired at the end of each ride?

    2. Concerning Hydration, what is the difference you’ve noticed from the winter months to the summer months? How much more (or more often) do you drink?

  8. Peter Hoogenboom Says:
    July 1st, 2006 at 6:06 pm

    1. To a certain extent, I have adapted. I remember early in the ride feeling like I needed to stop frequently (every 45 minutes or so) simply to get off the bike and stretch the muscles. And, frankly, it was difficult to be in the saddle for that long day after day. Now, I don??t have that problem nearly as much. I feel pretty comfortable on the bicycle and feel like I could go at my normal (slow) touring pace for a couple hours before really needing a break. But, I don??t believe you ever totally adapt on a tour like this because by the time you??ve gotten used to the flats of Kansas, you??re into the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. By the time you??ve gotten used to the river valley pattern (descend to the river valley, ride the river valley, climb out of the river valley) in Georgia, you??re into the long, steep climbs of the Appalachian Mountains of the Carolinas. There’s constant adaptation going on.
    2.I definitely drink more in the warm weather. I remember starting out the tour with two 24-ounce bottles for a typical 60-mile ride. These days, for a typical 60-mile ride on a warm sunny day, I??ll take 3 32-ounce bottles, a 20-ounce bottle of water, plus 2 10-ounce bottles of apple juice. The apple juice serves three purposes. First, it??s extra fluid. Second, it provides a source of quickly absorbed carbohydrate if I find my blood sugar unexpectedly low. Third, it provides a source of potassium which is an essential mineral for proper muscle function, fluid and electrolyte levels, and metabolism. Recently, on shorter rides or on cool, rainy days, I??ll skip the third 32-ounce bottle of water, but that doesn??t happen too often.

  9. Nate Says:
    July 2nd, 2006 at 4:27 am

    Pete I love your website! There’s so much content there and lots of great stories and features. Im really interested in the process you go through each day to maintain and update the site.

    • How much time do you spend each day updating your website and reading and replying to emails?
    • The flickr photos are great! How do you post individual pictures from flickr on your site?
    • What kind of software or web apps do you use to update and maintain your site. I see there is a flash banner is that something you did? What about the video clips.
    • How do you keep your location on the web site maps up to date and how do you get the weather. Is this a plugin for word press?
    • Do you get tired of eating some of the same things all the time like energy bars or do you find yourself so hungry that it all tastes good.
    • Do you ever find a stretch of the ride boring? If so is there anything you do to pass the time or keep your mind occupied.
    • Have you ever had a car bump into you while riding?
    • Do you ever find yourself feeling really fatigued like when you’re riding up big hills or is this gotten easier as you have ridden?

    I realize these are a lot of questions so you can choose which ones you want to answer.

  10. Peter Hoogenboom Says:
    July 3rd, 2006 at 5:36 pm
    1. Pat has been scolding for months now, saying I spend too much time on the web site. But, since it represents what everybody sees about The Dream Tour, I feel like it??s worth the time I spend on it.

      I probably spend anywhere from 1 to 3 hours a day generating a web site entry. How much time it takes depends on how much I feel like writing and also the speed of our internet connection. I try to upload at least a couple photos for each entry and sometimes uploading the photos takes the most time of the whole process.

    2. WordPress has a plug-in called FAlbum (http://www.randombyte.net/files/falbum/). It adds a panel to the post edit page that allows me to 1) get a list of photos from my Flickr account and then 2) select a photo for inclusion in the post content.

      FAlbum also has a feature for a photo gallery page. In particular, it will recognize the ??Sets? that you have defined in your Flickr account. For example, check out this page on my site:

      http://www.thedreamtour.org/blog/wp-content/plugins/falbum/wp/album.php?show=sets

    3. The flash header was generously provided to me by Bayer HealthCare. I supplied them with some photos and the size of the area where the header should go and they created it for me.

      The video clips are mine though. I use Windows Move Maker to create the video as a .WMV file. (I have a template .MSWMM file that has the standard intro, and credits.). I then upload that video to YouTube.com. After uploading it, YouTube.com provides an tag for displaying the video on my web site.
    4. Unfortunately, the location is updated manually by me everyday. Occasionally, I forget to update it, but not too often. I have a piece of PHP code where I specify 1) our current location, 2) (optionally) where we??re going to next, and 3) the closest ICAO Location Indicator. The current location is used to create a hyperlink to a Google map of our current location. Similarly, the current location and the next location are used to create a hyperlink to a Google map of the directions to our next destination (unfortunately, I have no control over the route it creates and the route it creates is frequently completely different than the one we actually take). The ICAO Location Indicator is an input to a WordPress plugin which retrieves weather data and generates an HTML weather report that I display on the site.

      There??s also a ??Current Location Map? which shows not only our current location, but also our history of locations. This web page is made possible by QUALCOMM and a real-time location tracking system that they lent to The Dream Tour. We have a briefcase-sized module and keyboard behind the passenger seat in the van and a black antenna module on the dash. Through the antenna module, the location data is collected via GPS and transmitted to their central server via a cellphone signal. Data is transmitted every ten minutes. The keyboard allows us to send and receive short messages, but we haven??t done much of that.

    5. I talked a bit about this in answering Brandee??s question about whether I get tired eating the same foods all the time. But, let me add this: The guideline in cycling (or any endurance sport, I would guess) is ??eat before you??re hungry and drink before you??re thirsty.? If I were to wait until I was thirsty before drinking, then I??m already dehydrated and the damage has been done. Likewise with hunger. If I wait until I??m hungry before eating, then my energy stores are already depleted. When I??m riding almost every day, either one of those conditions would put me at risk of not finishing the day??s ride and not starting the next day??s ride.
    6. It??s all new terrain for me, so no it??s not boring. In fact, I haven??t been on a road that I recognize since leaving Durango, Colorado back on April 3. When I get to Minnesota and points west of that, I??ll start to recognize some spots again, but it??s all new to me for the next month or so.
    7. Not yet. I had a close call with an RV recently though. I was on a New Hampshire highway with about a 3-foot shoulder and I was rounding a gradual, slightly banked, righthand corner. Somebody in a huge, monstrous RV rounded the corner at the same time and in the same direction and didn??t realize that he/she was drifting down the slope of the corner and onto the shoulder. It was over before I realized that he was even approaching me. It was pretty close, but no harm done. Much closer though and I??d be sharing a much different story with you. That??s probably the closest call I??ve had in the entire tour.
    8. All the time! Like I mentioned in the answer to Dan??s question, I have adapted somewhat. For example, it??s easier now to be in the saddle for long periods of time. But, our usual schedule has us riding three days then taking one rest day. So, the first day back on the bike after a rest day, I feel pretty fresh, but the second and third days are difficult because I??m not totally recovered from the first day. Fortunately, this tour is not about going fast, so I can take my time and enjoy the scenery on those days when my legs are feeling fatigued.
    9. Micky Says:
      July 6th, 2006 at 8:29 am

      Are you having fun yet? - This is just a joke. Of course I know this is an experience of a life time.

      1. Don??t you just love some of the town names back east UpTown, MidTown etc.???
      2. How many free tools are you using on your website? How did you decide on which ones?
      3. How do you like the tool for showing the video clips?
      4. The map of where you??re currently at??what are you using to do this?
      5. It looks like you??re using PHP for the dynamic loading of images to site. Are you storing the images as blobs in MySQL?
    10. Peter Hoogenboom Says:
      July 6th, 2006 at 11:08 am
      1. Yes, I love the names AND their pronunciation. Worcester and Glocester, as examples. And, Leominster, for another. We were pronouncing it Leominster with ??Leo? as in the astrological sign. But, it??s actually pronounced more like ??Lemon-stir?. Go figure. My favorite name though has to be Smuttynose Island which lies about ten miles from the mouth of Portsmouth (New Hampshire) Harbor.
      2. A lot of the tools are selected by my hosting provider of course. Since I??m familiar with PHP, I was searching for a hosting provider that allowed some PHP. I was also searching for a hosting provider with some experience supporting WordPress. After I had selected a provider, I went searching for a series of WordPress plugins that would do some of the extra things I needed to do. For example, real-time weather reports (WeatherIcon — http://www.viper007bond.com/wordpress-plugins/weathericon/, photo galleries (FAlbum — http://www.randombyte.net/, mailing list management (Subscribe2 — http://www.skippy.net/blog/plugins, and video clips (Video Blogger — http://helmetcameracentral.com/2006/01/11/videobloggerplugin/. The Video Blogger plugin I don??t actually use anymore because it required some special coding in the title and body of an entry and that had an undesireable side-effect on the Subscribe2 plugin ?? the special codes would appear in the email that went goes out to subscribers.
      3. Well, like I mentioned in the answer to your previous question, I??m not using the Video Blogger plugin anymore. Instead, I manually enter the HTML necessary to make the video clip appear in the article. Fortunately, when you upload a video clip to YouTube.com, they provide a sample HTML for you to use.
        And, regarding YouTube.com. It??s a great service. I tried a couple other similar services — Google Video, vSocial, and Dailymotion ?? and YouTube.com seemed to be the most suitable for what I was trying to do.
      4. There??s actually two pages that show our current location. The one that only links to a Google map of our current location is done manually. Every day I update a snippet of PHP code with the city and state of our present location. I occasionally forget to update it, but most of the time it accurately reflects where we stay overnight. The other map shows our present location plus a history of locations. It??s a map that has been generously donated to The Dream Tour by QUALCOMM. I described this ??Current Location Map? in the response to one of Nate??s questions.
      5. No mySQL involved for photo storage, as far as I know. I actually use Flickr for photo storage. I upload the originals there and Flickr automatically makes a variety of sizes that I can link to from my web site. As I described in an answer to one of Nate??s questions, I use a WordPress plugin called FAlbum to help out with getting the photos added to an entry.
    11. Lindsee Colindres Says:
      July 6th, 2006 at 11:15 am
      1. Let me start off by saying that I have such a high level of respect for bikers (especially those who travel the Unites States) as I have recently taken up mountain biking and have found it to be very difficult! In addition to road biking, do you ever mountain bike?
      2. Do you have any training in photography? Your pictures are great!
      3. Do you ever get nervous being on rural roads when you are by yourself? What do you do to pass the time on the road besides enjoying the scenery?
      4. This may be an odd question but what kind of seat cushion do you have? It must be comfortable for how long you are on it!
    12. Peter Hoogenboom Says:
      July 6th, 2006 at 11:19 am
      1. I have a mountain bike that I dust off a couple times a year. But, you know what, I only use it for commuting; not actual mountain biking. I find mountain biking to be very hard too — it often involves very steep hills and to be perfectly honest, falling hurts too much.
        My mountain bike is getting old enough that things don??t work on it very well anymore. Some people makes comments about it; others just simply laugh at it. It??s very heavy and doesn??t have front or rear suspension, but I don??t ride it often enough to make it worth replacing. So, I just keep riding it once or twice a year. Back in the late 80??s and early 90??s, I did a lot more mountain biking. I would actually go down to Moab on a fairly regular basis to ride the Slickrock Trail or explore the backroads of Canyonlands or the Dead Horse Point area.
      2. Thank you. It??s nice to know that people are enjoying them. I have no formal training in photography. I was a photographer for my high school year book, but that??s hardly any kind of training. I??ve read a few books years ago when I thought photography would be fun. Some of it must have stuck in my head, but I still take a lot of those scenic vista pictures that the books tell you not to take because the picture rarely does the scene justice. I can’t resist trying.
      3. Occasionally, if I let myself think about it too much, I get a little nervous about all the bad things that could happen. But, in 22 years of cycling ?? probably over 100,000 miles ?? none of those bad things have ever happened to me, so chances are they??re not going to happen in the next 5,000 miles.

        A lot of my mental effort is spent watching out for hazards in the road ?? cars, pedestrians, animals, potholes, etc. So, depending on the road conditions, I might have no time at all or a lot of time to spend time thinking about any number of things such as 1) the content of my next speech, 2) what I might write about in my next blog entry, or 3) how great it??s going to be to be back home in October. Particularly hard stretches of riding (like up a steep hill), I often count pedal strokes. I??ll do, for example, 100 pedal strokes sitting, then 50 standing up, etc. It might sound funny, but I really find that it helps. It must keep my mind off of the extra effort.

      4. No cushion; just the saddle that I ride on. The saddle has a bit of padding in it and my shorts have some padding (usually referred to by cyclists as ??chamois?). I don’t care how much you spend on a bicycle saddle; it will be painful if: 1) your bicycle isn’t fit properly (a saddle that’s too high is a very common reason for saddle soreness), and 2) you haven’t gotten used to being in the saddle. Contrary to popular belief, extra padding and cushions aren??t the way to solve saddle soreness. In fact, padding is often a source of chafing which in the long run, causes more problems.

      13. Leave a Reply