 Good afternoon. Welcome to coronavirus in our mental health. Today is November 23rd, 2022. And we've got a great show for you. We've got the joy of bicycle riding, which is great. And we've got a couple of wonderful guests with us. But first, let me talk about the coronavirus update. Now, it's good news this week. There are four big ones that I look at every week. I look at them from Hawaii and I look at them from the US. And those big ones are the average number of new cases per day. They're the positive, you know, the coronavirus positives, entries into the ICU, and deaths. Those are the four big ones. And if we look at the national figures, and these figures are coming to us from the New York Times, with the support from the Department of Health. US is up in all four categories slightly. It could be a lot worse, because we're coming up on the holidays. And I'm worried about this increasing, but it's going up. And we need to be aware of that. Now, the other hand, if you take a look at the average new cases in Hawaii, we're slightly down in that. And if you look at the other three that I was talking about, the positive rate, the entries into ICU and the desk, we are significantly down from two weeks ago. So we're doing well. There's a caveat. There always is a caveat to say yes, but, and that is the holidays are coming. And I think that's the reason that the US is up slightly. And the holidays, well, it starts tomorrow. And I'm hoping everybody's going to have a great Thanksgiving tomorrow. It's just, you know, hope it's going to be a safe Thanksgiving and a delicious one. Okay, so the other part of it is that I need to talk about is the two other two things I'm tracking are vaccinations and boosters. Both of these we're doing much, much better than the than the national average. We've got 81 percent of the people here in the island vaccinated, which is great. Except that also means that 19% of the people in the islands have not been vaccinated are not protected. Now the booster shots, 47% of the people here in Hawaii have had their booster shots. Again, significantly better than the mainland. But that means that over half our people had not have, did not have the boosters, including that really critical booster that's of the Omicron variant B five and B four. That booster helps protect us against these very infectious variants. So that's the real takeaway from all this is one, what I've been talking about for the last month or so. Go ahead and get that booster. Make yourself safe. Make yourself safe for other people. The other thing I just want to mention that I haven't talked about before is middle masking. We tend to look at masking as being one of the other where either masked or not masked. Well, my suggestion to you is that we deal being middle masked. We mask sometimes, but we don't have to at other times. Times we really need to mask is when we're with big groups with a lot of people that we don't know. And that includes shopping, holiday shopping and things like that and big parties and big get together and celebrations. So please consider masking during that. And the other thing is public transportation. When we're taking public transportation, that means we're in very close quarters with the number of people that we don't know. And oftentimes the ventilation system is not the best. So please take that away with you as far as the coronavirus stuff. Okay, that takes care of coronavirus update. Let's get to the joy of bicycle riding. And I am very fortunate to have Steve Katz and Tamramon. They've both been on the show with me before, but separately. And this is the first time I'm able to have them together. And not only that, but they're here. It's my first time for two people being guests. And so it's quite a special time. And these are special people who are are going to tell us a lot about the joy of bicycling. Welcome to the show, you two. Thank you. Thanks, Ken. Now, one of the things about Steve and Tamra is that they're a power couple, I think. Steve is a psychologist and Tamra an artist and teacher. And so when they look at joy, they look at it from both the external standpoint from the artist standpoint and also the internal, the psychological standpoint. So we get we get both views from this powerful couple here. And I have to tell you, they've been bicycling. I mean, I think of myself as a bicyclist, but I am nothing compared to these two and where they've been and what they've experienced. They've been around the world, they've been to Europe, they've been so many places. And we'll get to those. But first, I want to ask them to start off and tell us a little bit of the advantages of seeing a wife, for instance, on a bicycle rather than taking a car or public transportation or whatever. Tell us about the joys of bicycle riding in general. Ladies first, Tamra. Well, I've always thought that the pace of travel on a bicycle is really ideal. You get to cover more ground than you can walking, but you are not whizzing by like you are in a car. And you're also the environment around you is very, you know, you're right in the middle of the environment. You're not separated from what you're traveling through. There's no windows to roll down. So those are the advantages I like. And of course you're getting exercise at the same time moving your body and getting some physical benefit. Well, also, if you pass something that's worth stopping for, you're right there. You know, you don't have to look for a parking spot. You don't have to look for the closest highway exit. You know, you can see everybody. You're up close. And one of the advantages that we used an awful lot on our last trip was if you get lost, there's somebody right there next to you. You can pull over and say, how do we get to so-and-so? You know, and yeah, we did that, I would say, on the last trip at least two or three times a day, Tamra. Yeah, it's this and the pace of it is just so much better. You know, one of the things that really impressed me was a number of years ago, actually it seems just like yesterday, but these two went off on, took a full year off to go around the world on their bicycles. And that was just something way beyond my comprehension of trying something like that. It was just that made me very, very envious. And if we can talk a little bit about that, tell us about what it was like to not to leave Hawaii and then tackle the whole world on a bicycle. Well, I'll go first, Tamra, this time because I just wanted to say like the way it happened was on a bicycle ride. The idea for it came about, we were doing the Sentry Ride here in Hawaii. We weren't even dating yet, and we found ourselves alone on a beautiful stretch of the Sentry Ride next to the Kolaos in Waimanalo. And you know, I said something like, so what do you want to do with your life? And she said, well, you know, I kind of like to meet somebody eventually settle down. And she said, what do you want to do? And I said, I want to ride my bicycle around the world. And she said, I can do that. And it just like blew my mind. And you know, I just like put that in my head and said, all right, I got to come back to this one later. And then after we were married a few years, I said, well, you know, so what are we going to do? Are we going to go around the world on our bikes? And I'll let you take it from there, Tamra. Yeah. And so, I mean, originally, I had thought maybe we'd do a little bike trip here or there, you know, every year maybe do a little section of it. But it was clear it was going to take us 79 years to go around the world that way. So we did start planning to do the whole thing and to take off a year. That's what we thought we would do. And we, I don't know, there was a lot of months of planning and figuring out the best way to do things. We ended up not getting an around the world air ticket. We just got one way ticket says we needed them, which I'm glad we did give us a lot more flexibility. And that was important in part because not so far into the trip, maybe about a month and a half or two months, I fell off my bike and had a major injury and which needed surgery. And I had torn the ACL and my knee and we ended up, I ended up having surgery in Bangkok to fix it and we decided to continue traveling although I could not ride a bike for three or four months after that. But we did end the trip bicycling again. We started in Australia and by the time and that's where my injury happened and then by the time I could ride again we were in Hungary. So you know a couple seasons later we were bicycling down the Danube. But it was really, you know, the trip took a lot of unexpected turns but we just decided to keep going. Yeah, she was amazing. I mean she never, she never once said, you know, let's go home after that injury happened. And we persevered and I remember the first time she was back on a bike was in Tel Aviv. We had already mailed our bikes back, our own bikes. So we rented those you know city bikes in Tel Aviv and I remember she was so thrilled to be able to ride up and down the boardwalk in Tel Aviv. It was like she had just learned how to ride a bike again. Yeah, that was great. It was throwing. I mean there was something about the unpredictability, the flexibility in being on a bike that is unbeatable. And it's also the independence. I mean we have these bikes called bike Fridays and when you buy them you buy them with a piece of Samsonite luggage that converts into a trailer. So you ride your bicycle to the airport and you put a backpack with your clothes in the trailer. When you get to the airport you take the back pack out, fold up the bike, put it into the trailer which and take off the wheels and now you got a piece of Samsonite luggage that checks in because it only weighs 49 pounds so it's you're not even overweight. You put it on the plane when you get you know to Sydney, Australia like we did you reverse the process put the wheels back on take your backpack off put the clothes in there and the trailer gets pulled along after you and so you're really independent. You can carry around stuff. You're like you know like one of those like a hermit crab. That sounds phenomenal. It sounds great. The interesting thing is that you followed that up with a trip this summer to Europe bicycling and I guess what I was you know we sort of fast forward to that time of your bicycle trip this summer and I was wondering you probably saw some things that you saw around the world but also probably some new things so visiting old places and finding new places is that how that trip this in Europe went today this summer? It was actually mostly new places because we started in Amsterdam which both of us had separately been to Amsterdam in the past but all our riding really was in the countryside through the Netherlands and neither of us had been there before and it was really all of it was pretty new and fresh. Yeah and Netherlands is like if you like to ride a bike first of all it's flat so you've got that advantage but also there are bicycle routes away from the traffic all throughout the country and they're numbered and this time we didn't take our bike Fridays but we rented bikes from a bike tour company and we had the luxury of riding in the daytime from one town to the next and when we start out the next morning you leave your luggage at the hotel they pick it up and take it to your next destination so you're just riding with a little day pack at most and so that was really luxurious and I mean we just saw windmills and canals and bridges and ferries and we ended up in from Amsterdam we went ended up in Brugge or Brugge as they say and that's got to be one of the most beautiful towns anywhere in the world it's just amazing yeah the food we have some photos if you want to share those absolutely this first one is us with the windmill in the background and it was a thrill to actually see a real live windmill we saw many on our route yeah both the ancient kind and the high-tech modern ones yeah this was the town of Gouda where Gouda cheese comes from and we just happened to be there when a little local you know amusement fair was going on this is a really typical Dutch bridge of course there's lots of water and canals and all kinds of bridges and we had been when we were in Amsterdam we'd gone to the Van Gogh Museum and he painted that style of bridge which is still operational well we also because there is so much water we went over a number of ferries some this one I think had cars on it as well but this one was only for bicyclists and pedestrians you could have 12 bikes on it and it just allowed you not to have to ride a long way around a piece of water and the last photo there is a town called Veer in in the Netherlands and it was fairly close to the end of our trip this was a town that had gotten really rich with wool trading in the you know in the Renaissance period anyway it was fun to discover all these old historic places and see how they look today and a lot of it still looks very similar to what it was centuries ago while I'm thinking of it I'd like to put in a little plug for an organization that most people never heard of called Warm Showers.org I believe and it's sort of like an Airbnb for bicyclists but it's free so we've hosted people who are riding their bikes around the world or just riding to Hawaii we've hosted them in our house and when we did our trip around the world I think before we left the country we stayed at a Warm Showers place in Washington state yeah it's an amazing organization I mean just people open up their homes because you have this kinship with other cyclists and they tend to be really interesting intelligent people well how about you know I'm really happy that you brought those pictures that's great and the trip just sounds wonderful it sort of leads me to my next question which was I wanted to ask both of you what was your what was one of your favorite moments on a bicycle one that you know when you're looking back at all the bicycle trips that you took one of those that really stands out and maybe sort of you know the first thing that comes to your mind and say wow that was that was a trip I remember the first day that we started out riding from Vienna so this was after on our big world trip after my knee had healed up again and I realized I could ride and so we rented bikes in Vienna because by then we shipped our own bikes home and that first day we just ended up riding out through this large park in Vienna and getting on this track that would hit us down the Danube all the way to Budapest and that first day it was just lovely it was just when spring was beginning and each day of that ride toward Budapest it seemed like spring was unfolding right before us the trees were bursting with color and animals were out and every day the warm the air was warmer and it was just it was like being reborn again well that trip along the Danube I mean I never knew until we did that that all along the Danube that stretch at least that we did from Vienna to Budapest there are natural hot springs in the ground and people in each of the towns sort of use those hot springs to create swimming pools from the natural hot springs and or like the hotel would have a swimming pool that's made from that and we used two or three of them at least and it was just wonderful I mean to ride your bike in the daytime and then jump into a natural hot spring pool at night I felt like a king I really did and you know the irony is it's a lot less than you know booking a cruise you know it's wonderful here you talk about the Danube because you know I think it's one of the best known rivers in the world and from the blue Danube the music and I've never had the opportunity to be close to it um and to hear you talk about it just is makes me feel so good especially because so many of the great rivers of the earth have been polluted are in a bad shape and it just sounds like the blue Danube is still there and still romantic and still making you feel wonderful thank you for sharing that that was that was beautiful the other thing is um not necessarily related to bicycling I mean we love to travel on bikes but as part of that round the world trip one place we went without our bikes was Keef in 2003 was that 13 already? yeah and we went there mostly because that's the city where my grandfather was from and I just wanted to see it I didn't know any of the people there I didn't know exactly where but it makes connections that are lifelong we stayed with a woman in Keef she had an apartment a tiny little one-bedroom apartment with her teenage daughter she was so kind to us she so she and her daughter separately gave us tours of the city made sure we got tours went to the ballet and the opera and so when this war broke out it was really personal for me you know and I found a way to write to her to make sure she was okay and I was really relieved to find out she had gotten out of the country she first went to Poland and then she went to Switzerland with her daughter but now I keep thinking about her because I don't know if she went back when it was safe again in Keef and now it seems like it's not safe again but I think that that is such an important thing if you know people who live somewhere and they mean something to you you're much less likely to go to war with them and because it's like they're part of your family absolutely you know I really appreciate you sharing that because we're not just part of a state or a country we're part of a world and everybody in that world is our neighbor and everybody in this world is somebody we care about and I think the war has really shown this that we're no longer disconnected we are so so connected and something like the war in Ukraine has just been heartbreaking for so many of us and anything that people can do to help in any way would be wonderful I really appreciate you you sharing that we're getting short on time I just wanted to ask you real quick what where would you guys like to go for your next bicycle trip we've talked for a long time about South America we didn't get to South America on our round the world trip and that's a big big shortcoming that might be next any particular places in South America Columbia but maybe we can do some biking there yeah all right good it is so South America is so huge I can imagine going from north to south oh we've met people we had people stay with us through the warm showers thing that have gone from the North Pole to the tip of Argentina and Peru well I can't even imagine well yeah I don't know if it's brilliant certain Saturday but it's certainly perseverance I have a cousin who lives in Alaska and right now she's in Antarctica I don't think you could ride your bike in Antarctica but I'm sure she's she's seeing it and it's quite an experience because like I said she lives in Alaska so talk about going north to south you know it's it's an amazing world we live in so yeah and I I want to put in a plug for a Hawaii bicycle league they're a great group to support to make cycling safer in Hawaii this is still not one of the greatest places to bike because people here just aren't used to it still I mean we have a few more bike lanes than we used to have but there's it can be very dangerous you got to be really careful yeah it was pretty eye opening bicycling in the Netherlands where everybody cycles and there's so many paths that are just dedicated to bicyclists and you'll see all every age a person out there you know grandmothers to little tykes and they're just whizzing along and that's that's just how they get along you know to wherever they want to go every day yeah you know we have all of the a lot of the pictures from around the world trip on a tumblr site called rollaroundtheworld.tumblr.com if people watching want to see pictures all right that sounds great you know I wanted to comment on what you were saying about bicycling here in Hawaii I think I mentioned earlier that I bicycled did my bicycling in the 70s with around the island trips and it was different you know I mean yeah we had traffic but it wasn't as much traffic and it wasn't people there was there was a lot of aloha in the 70s I can I can remember we were biking up Haleakala on Maui and we were about halfway there and we were tired I mean you know I'm biking up Haleakala and this truck pulled over this you know not a big truck but you know over the flatbed and back and the guy offered to you know to take us up to our stop where we were going you know we're actually we're going to stay at a at a friend's place a midway up the thing and he offered to take us and it was just the most wonderful thing you know so you know I was with a group of about eight people and we all loaded our bikes on the on the you know in the back and he took us right up to where we were going and I never forgot that I never forgot that aloha where we were you know he just pulled over and said would you guys like a lift I guess you could see our tongues hanging out I guess that was but yeah I think we've lost some of that I mean there's a lot of aloha in this state and which I'm internally grateful for but it seems like with bicycling it is more dangerous today and people are it's a little scarier and I don't see as much of that least on the road that type of aloha I think we could do better on that thanks for bringing that up any last minute words we're down to about the end last thoughts Tamara Steve about bicycling are anything that you've thought of as we've gone along just that it makes me happy it's like any kind of exercise but it seems to be the perfect speed like walking is wonderful and healthy but it's kind of slow you can't see as many places a bike is that middle ground between a car and walking that just seems perfect you know you're right there among everybody and I've been riding a bike since I'm four years old and every time I get on a bike it makes me happy that's great Tamara any last minute thoughts oh I just I hope I can do it for a long long time to come wow terrific I wanted to thank you guys especially for being on it's such a you know there's so many things not to be happy about in the world today and being with you too and hearing the happiness and the joy that you got from from being on a bicycle and together that was just terrific and I I really appreciate and want to thank you for for being with us today thank you Ken thanks for doing the show and thanks to everybody who's watching I'm happy you're out there and thanks to the people at ThinkTickAway Haley and Jay and Eric and Michael and all those people who make this show possible we're deeply indebted to you and to everybody out there again I wanted to wish you a happy Thanksgiving some delicious food and some wonderful fellowship with the people that you love Aloha you can also follow us on Facebook Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktickawaii.com Mahalo