Back Breaking Labor

Afternoon Commute

My ride home was uneventful and fast.  I didn’t stop, I didn’t have any technical difficulties and I learned from my mistake last week and left all my heavy cold-weather gear at the office. I just didn’t want my back to hurt again. I might look into getting a saddle bag for my bike but I need to talk to my cycling expert about that. 😉

The sun was out and it was really warm but with a nice, cool breeze. The sky was clear and I could see the mountains in the distance. The roads weren’t crowded with other cyclists.

Since I parked somewhere else in Sellwood, I had to take a different route through Sellwood. That meant I had to go through a very busy and slightly scary intersection at Tacoma and 13th. The photo above doesn’t accurately describe how busy that intersection is. But I made it through unscathed and go to the car in record time.

I was so hot and sweaty. But I could have ridden longer. I think it might be time to start parking somewhere other than Sellwood to lengthen my ride.

Ride Stats:

Time: 26 minutes

Calories Burned: 246

Miles Biked: 5.9

It was a good ride. When I got home I had a quick snack and then Michael and I spent almost two hours working on the rest of the front yard.

BEFORE

I tackled the weeds in the section dividing our property with the neighbor’s. I  pulled up the old weed-tarp that was rotten, leveled the ground and put down a new tarp.

AFTER

The front yard is 99% done for 2011. I am so happy with the hard work we’ve done. I think it looks great. We need one more bag of mulch to do a small section and it’s complete. $100, 12 hours of labor later, it looks presentable.

The next task: focusing on the expansive backyard and vegetable garden. That will take much more time and energy. In case you were wondering how many calories I burned doing yard work, I wore my HRM:

343 calories in a little over an hour of manual labor! Not too shabby in my opinion! That was me lifting, carrying and dumping the huge bags of mulch plus lots of squatting, weed pulling and bending over to rake.

I was famished!

Dinner was a chicken taco salad. There was a gallon of lettuce: red leaf and baby spinach. Then I topped it with a little shredded cheese, black olives, freshly made guacamole, sour cream, broccoli, celery and cauliflower.

I added cooked black refried beans and Michael cooked the chicken and sliced red and yellow peppers with cumin and some other spices. It was DELISH! I love this dinner. It looks huge because there’s so much salad fixings but it that it’s not as big as it seems. It’s definitely filling though.

Total Calories burned for the day:  844

QUESTION: Any recipes or tips on making shredded chicken for a salad like this?