A Bit of Step Aeorbics in My Morning Walk.

Looking toward the future, the powers that be, who built the Diversion Road, put in sidewalks on both sides of the road running from the National Hwy. in Sibulan to where the road dead ends near Rovira Dr..

Every so often there is a division in the sidewalk to provide access to lots along the road. Again, an example of good planning on someone's part.

I haven't measured how high the sidewalks are in relation to the road, but one can see by the photos that the height isn't too shabby, as they say. This difference in height makes for an additional leg work-out when walking along the road.

A nice bit of step aerobics.

Random Photos Taken While on My Morning Walk

I mentioned in an earlier post this morning  that I have been neglecting my morning walk and had decided to get back into that today. So, after watching The Five - which, thanks to the time difference between Philippines and New York City comes on at six AM here - I took off, with my camera, to walk along the Diversion Road.

I took quite a few photos today. Thirteen of those photos were of the Nuestra Senora de la Salvacion chapel, which I first uploaded to Google Maps before putting in the earlier post.

The rest of the photos taken this morning will be included in this post.

While on the walk, I took a little dirt road to the Okoy river where I spotted a blue building with the name "Church of Christ" clearly painted on the front. I was able to add the church's location to Google Maps. After Google Maps had published my addition, I realized that I had used the name "Church of God" instead of the correct name - "Church of Christ". I immediately attempted to correct my mistake, but at the time of this writing, Google Maps has not accepted my edit.

Nuestra Senora de la Salvacion Chapel

Although I've done a reasonably good job keeping up a dumbbell routine, it's been a while since I've taken a morning walk. I wanted to fix that, so I took off for a walk this morning at 7:00 AM - bringing my camera with me.

I took a little short cut to the Diversion Road, stopping every now and then to take photos along the Okoy river. More about that in an upcoming post.

After walking about 30 minutes, I left the Diversion Road and walked a little trail to the Magatas road. On the way home, I stopped at the Nuestra Senora de la Salvacion chapel to take a few photos. I'll be posting those photos now.

I've also uploaded these 13 photos onto Google Maps. I had already uploaded one photo of the chapel 3 years ago.

The entrance to the chapel is kept locked and the photos of the inside were taken standing at windows, placing the camera inside.

A Change in My Exercise Routine

For four months prior to our moving into our new house, I worked out at a gym in Dumaguete after dropping off my son at school.

After moving into the house, I decided to drop the gym in favor of doing my workout at home. One reason for the change was the additional room for working out at the house compared to the apartment. The second reason for the change was a desire to save the money spent on gym membership.

With the change in location came a change in the exercise routine. I wanted to change the number of workout days to four instead of six. This was to entail expanding the time spent working out each morning.

Since moving into the house, my routine has consisted of chest, shoulder and triceps two days a week (usually Monday and Friday) and upper and lower back, biceps and forearms on two days (Usually Tuesday and Saturday. I've found, however that this routine was too much. The work load was so heavy that I was often tempted to skip days.

Rather than lose days working out and becoming disorganized in my routine, I've decided to make another change in the routine. Starting today,the days will be broken down as follows:

Day one - chest and triceps
Day two - upper/lower back
Day three -shoulders
Day four - biceps and forearms.

I believe this will be a good maintenance plan for me, balancing resistance training and adequate rest.

Random Bits

Weather permitting, I usually take a morning walk. On most days, I will walk along the road leading from our apartment to the public market in Sibulan, although I will occasionally join friends in their walk along the boulevard in Dumaguete.

It's been a while since I last took my morning walk along the beach, and I thought I'd do that this morning.

These photos are of random bits of coral and shells found along the beach.

Farewell 2018

This being the final day of 2018, I feel obliged to review this past year and put forth my thoughts in a final blog post of the year.

In the areas of reading and writing, this has not been a productive year for me. With this being the 95th post of 2018, I regret to say that I've written fewer blog posts this year than any year since 2013. If it wasn't for the occasional mango shake review, or VW Beetle spotting, I'd have almost no posts to speak of.  Normally my postings drop off in non-Presidential election years, but this year is far worse than 2017.

As one will see in tomorrow's list of books read this year, my reading dropped off. I read fewer books this year than any year since 2013. It makes me wonder what went on that year.

One area where I feel like I've done well is in the area of exercise and physical fitness. As a general rule, I walk every morning - unless, of course rain prevents my doing so. I've set up different dumbbell routines thru out the year, trying to maintain a balance between working on every major muscle group and getting the proper amount of rest.

My current schedule calls for approximately 40 minutes of dumbbells six days a week - taking Sunday off as a full day of rest.

Without going into too many details, the basic schedule calls for a chest workout for Monday, upper and lower back on Tuesdays, followed by a leg workout on Wednesday. Thursday is for triceps, Friday biceps, and shoulders on Saturday.

I normally change my routine every 3 or 4 months - this routine being only a couple of weeks old, I'll stick to this one for some time to come.

I don't usually make New Year's resolutions - that being my only one. I'm not going to promise to post more often, or read more books. I'm not going to try and stay off social media or any of those other things folks resolve to do this time of year.

I'll just be me, and we'll see how that works out.