Regarding my near-beer fasting experiment, remember it's "guinea pig me" that we're talking about and I'm free to fuck up and to be a cautionary tale and yada yada. I'm actually running several experiments at once and have to weigh tradeoffs. Another goal is to sample a huge variety of near beers, so I can't afford to slack off on that front.
I was out testing blazers, as in jackets, at the thrift stores yesterday, more to get a sense of how to calibrate. I didn't study grooming at Princeton and at the Catholic school, my female students offered lots of counseling. When I showed up the first day in a three piece suit (as I recall) they said I was overdressing for the part, and so on.
However, worry not, and allow me my mental model, however misguided, of my insulin-ketone system as like that of a Honda hybrid: it flips back and forth effortlessly between "gas" and "battery" and at a higher frequency than you might think.
One could say that's BS and the inertia is actually way higher (one near beer will trigger hours of glucose fueling), but I'm working that out proprioceptively, more like a juggler. You can't learn juggling from reading books or watching YouTubes, the problem being you're in your chair and not learning juggling.
Speaking of juggling, some of the finest physical specimens I met in terms of their level of coordination and gracefulness in body movement, were actually Friends, meaning Quakers. One might stereotype that group one way or another. Mine were like circus performers, arriving from Hippie Land California (the way I thought of it) and teaching me all kinds of stuff that I'd missed, living in Rome and then Manila. I also knew stuff they didn't of course. That's why we enjoyed these gatherings of western young friends near Myrtle Point, Oregon, in mid-winter, over the New Year.
You might wonder why, if I was of that young age, I didn't marry into my clan and find my future wife at this annual winter gathering. I almost did, a couple times. However where I did encounter my wife-to-be was no more off the beaten path: at my place of work, as a new hiree (the bookkeeper) since I'd taken a working break in Bhutan. Dawn and I would then attend the gathering together, I forget how many times. She would also join me in Bhutan, where my parents were then living, on a next visit.
"Guinea pig me" is of course a play on "Guinea Pig B", Bucky's perspective on his own avatar as well. He was doing a Flowers for Algernon experiment wherein he reached a point of dynamic equilibrium that buoyed him up, as it were. He just needed his "lab rat" to stay healthy, and he managed that with various experiments, exploring the paleo diet, and jogging (loping wolf ganter), before either were mass-adopted.
I've blogged about our Gathering of Western Young Friends previously, as a part of my life's story. The Camp Myrtlewood site has been an influence in my projections of Project Earthala. We had a large well equipped kitchen with a walk in refrigerator and all that. Our logistics team procured food in bulk for the whole group enroute, and "fooding" (a Himalayan term) was a big part of our experience, as we could practice meal prep and cleanup together, team activities that don't preclude social interaction as much as race car driving might. We had some experienced chefs amongst us. This all became a precursor to Food Not Bombs in my case (a later chapter).
