Week 3: VR Scares and Rollercoasters
And the robot moon is falling into planet Earth!
Monday, Spooky workouts
I managed to get in a workout or two at the end of the day. I turned my workouts up a notch by going to medium intensity, and I felt it! Dripping in sweat by the end, my heart rate went to the high 150s BPM, about what I would get on a 12-minute mile jog.
One workout was to movie soundtracks, smashing the black and white targets to the Indiana Jones theme at the cliff side temple of Petra. In the other, my trainer was dressed as a hotdog over an Ethiopian volcano. Halloween themed workouts!
For instance:
Food: 30 points of taco salad, veggies with ranch, and veggie chip snacks with whiskey.
Weight: 201.4 (nice and easy start)
Today’s Awesome: Every so often you gotta take a moment to appreciate how incredible the ocean and all its life is, and how 80 percent of it is unexplored!
For Your Consideration:
Tuesday
VR workout update: Pretty standard mix of Beat Saber and Supernatural today.
Food: McDonald’s breakfast, roasted salmon with chickpeas, whole milk yogurt, veggie chips: 31 points
Weight: 199.8 (Whoohoo!)
Today’s Awesome: Meanwhile, in the world of real space travel, we’ve got realistic plans for a private space station, a “business park.”
For Your Consideration:
Wednesday
VR workout update: Sad day. Life was packed to the brim and I couldn’t find time to get a VR workout in. So it goes some days.
Food: Toast with jelly and butter, salad with dressing, chicken salad. Veggie chips and whole milk yogurt: 32
Weight: 199.8 (nice!)
Today’s Awesome: The Great Resignation. I’m hopeful that these market forces will shake things up to help more people get better jobs!
For Your Consideration:
Thursday
VR workout update: I started an actual program in Supernatural, to workout specific parts of the body, like the shoulders, arms, etc.
Food: FAIL! A fast food meal put me over, dang it. Didn’t go crazy with the eating, but I did go over.
Weight: Unknown. Very busy at work, and I missed my usually weigh-in.
Today’s Awesome: Let’s go fly a kite! Specifically, ones that generate the energy of wind farms at half the cost.
For Your Consideration:
Friday
VR workout update: After the Supernatural workout, I made sure to take time to just enjoy some games! So I started playing through Jurassic World: Aftermath.
It’s a bit of a horror genre, so I’m sneaking around trying to not get eaten by raptors. Generally not a fan of horror, but of course, if you like scares, I can’t think of a better platform for you than VR.
Food: FAIL! Uh oh, my plans to make this my super healthy eating week are falling by the wayside.
Weight: 200.4.
Today’s Awesome: Aw dang, Apple and Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook), going head to head with pricy, high quality AR/VR headsets. Facebook has Project Cambria in the works. Apple’s coming next year?
For Your Consideration:
Saturday
VR workout update: After meeting my goals with Supernatural and Beat Saber (the levels are getting harder; one song took me about eight tries, and Carrie, bless her heart, was sitting in the living room and commented that she is now very familiar with the song), I played the Climb more! The play still feels incredibly immersive once you’re just thinking about reaching the next grip. Until, that is, you accidentally put your head through the cliff to get a black screen. Such is VR.
Food: Fail again!
Weight: Missed it again, dang.
Today’s Awesome: I’ve already talked about how solar is the cheapest energy to generate, but that it still needs resiliency and storage to really reach its highest potential. Also an issue: solar takes a lot of land and that brings resistance. A possible help: agrovoltaics. Basically these are techniques where you can use land for solar and farming and raising livestock at the same time!
For Your Consideration: Thoughts on the time change
Sunday
VR workout update: Played more of the Supernatural body workout plan. Then I played a bit more of the Jurassic World game, sneaking around until the screen goes red and I see the velociraptor frozen in the air jumping at me (meaning I was eaten, without the gore). And then I played a new kind of game: a rollercoaster!
This wasn’t related to any workouts. Just having fun. I also wanted to see if I could actually get nauseous. If you were ever going to be nauseous, it would be with this game/experience.
You can check out this video at about 5 minutes in to see the ride I went on.
It’s pretty ridiculous, but really creative!
You can choose a “riding partner”, who would either be a real-world person joining you in VR, or just a computer person, like a soldier, a zombie, Santa Claus, etc.
There is a little intro that tests how comfortable you are with the roller coaster. Apparently, adding blinders so that you don’t see too much of the world in your peripheral vision helps. And there is a target at the end of the coaster car you can look at to help center yourself.
I got crazy dizzy, in a fun way, and no nausea, but this is definitely the experience you want to avoid if you have nausea in VR.
Food: Salad with dressing, pork tenderloin and apple butter, veggie chips and a cup of coke: 27
Weight: 202.4 (Yeah, really jumped up there and it makes sense. Three missed days have consequences).
Today’s Awesome: Even as a tech junkie, I don’t trust completely autonomous cars to get me around. But deliver my groceries? I’m down with that. I could also see Nuro eventually transporting people if it can make its tech work enough (i.e. perfectly) with delivery first. The site is also nice. And I like that their FAQ addresses things like, are you going to destroy jobs. Whether you believe them is another story.
For Your Consideration: This crazy movie where it wasn’t the lunar landing that was fake; it was the whole moon! Which is now crashing into earth. And there is some sort of smoke monster:
End of Week Thoughts
Well, that didn’t go according to plan. I still need to hit a week where I have solid eating each day. Even so, my average weight was 200.76 and last week it was 202.2! The week before it was 203.2. So the first two weeks I lost about one pound each week and this week I lost about two pounds! And that’s with a week loaded with bad eating.
Can I pull off better eating this week? Can we break through that 200 pound floor? We did it for a couple of days. I’ll do my best to get down there.
Have a great week!