No plans yet for the weekend? Perhaps we can help.
Coast
By “coast” this week, we mean the coastal plain, of which Fayetteville, home to Saturday’s Lake Rim Paddling Festival, is firmly a part. There’ll be canoe and kayak racing for more accomplished paddlers, and rentals for newcomers to the pursuit. The festivities begin at 9 a.m. Lake Rim Park is at 2214 Tar Kiln Dr. in Fayetteville.
From the research world comes more incentive to stay active — or become so — as you age.
From the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University comes “preliminary evidence” that keeping your brain sharp can help you physically. Einstein researchers took a group of 20 “frail” seniors (age 70 or older who walk less than a meter per second) and divided them into two groups. Ten went about their normal routines, 10 participated in the MindFit brain fitness program: For 45 to 60 minutes a day, three days a week for eight weeks, they carried out tasks that honed their cognitive abilities: focusing, planning, organizing, problem solving. After eight weeks, the MindFit folks walked slightly faster, but their ability to walk and talk at the same time improved significantly.
I had just said hello to Vic Lebsock when the inevitable happened: A woman walked up and wanted to know the status of a greenway planned through her neighborhood, a greenway years from construction, she knew, but she just had to know the latest. Lebsock excused himself and dutifully walked the woman over to an aerial map of her Lake Johnson neighborhood for “the latest.”
“Man, isn’t this embarrassing?” the mountain biker said as he pushed his bike up the steep hill to where I was already leaning over my bike, sucking air. I thought he was referring to being with me this far into the race.
“I lost my water bottle,” I said, making conversation by way of commiseration. I gulped some air to continue, but before I could he reached into his second cage and grabbed a spare water bottle. “Here. Take this.”
Thursday evening, Sig Hutchinson and Vic Lebsock shared their respective visions of the Triangle greenway scene at the monthly meeting of the Sierra Club’s Capital Group chapter. Hutchinson represented a more future-oriented, farsighted approach that deals in both reality and hopeful thinking both necessary to The Big Picture, Lebsock with the laser-focused nearsightedness required keep things advancing day to day. Their respective approaches showed how two people can both look at the cup being half full — with differing degrees of fullness