My Near Death Bike Experience

I've been working another turnaround out at the refinery, which is fantastic for the money, but horrible for the "outside life." Going from working part time (three eight hour days a week) to seven twelves has been kind of iffy, and if it wasn't for our beyond awesome nanny, I'm sure things would have been super unpleasant.
My part in the turnaround this time is to just fill in where Dale (my boss) needs me too. Sometimes it's turnaround related, like taking Chromium VI samples while contractors weld inside a vessel, and sometimes its things in other units that aren't involved in the turnaround, like an odor complaint from a flare line. The funnest thing is that I've logged many more hours on my bicycle out there.
I had to follow Dale on his bike the other day. Dale is fantastically fit. He's a runner, soccer player and avid fitness enthusiast. I, on the other hand, am far from fit in any sense. I've been working on it, and the gluten/dairy free stuff has been a huge motivator and help, but still, I'm fat and slow.
Dale hoped on his bike and took off while I was still trying to attach all my IH equipment to my bike with a bungy cord. He never once looked back and slowed down, so I had to hunker down and slam it into a low gear and pedal as hard as I could. I caught up to him and stayed pretty close the rest of the ride, but by the time we got to our destination, did our work and then got back to our lab, I was pretty sure that I was going to die. There is something very humbling about trying to carry on a conversation while pretending not to be entirely out of breath, hardly able to stand on your two wobbly legs.
Turnarounds are a great time to get into shape, there are lots of extra stair climbing and ladder climbing and general running around to get things done on a timeline. On a downside there is also a lot of extra on site food too. This time we've got Kelly's O'delli catering lunches as well as Chihuahua's selling tacos and burritos right by the main gate. Fortunately, the tacos are on corn tortillas and are cheese free, so good! Everything else though is pretty much forbidden.
Nathan has lost a lot of weight on the gluten and dairy free diet. I have to try to not be really mad at him. I'm sure I'll catch up with the weight loss soon enough, but I wish I could lose it as easily as he does.
Only another week or so left of the turnaround things will be back to normal (well, as normal as they ever were).