Episode #113: (MINI) 100 Bike Ride Challenge

Elsie: You’re listening to the A Beautiful Mess podcast. Today in this mini episode, I’m sharing about a challenge that I’m currently undertaking to complete one hundred ten mile bike rides. I’ve been screening guilty pleasure movies for almost every single bike ride, so I also have a bunch of funny stories about the movies I’ve watched and little reviews to share.

Emma: All right, so how did you come up with the idea that you wanted to do one hundred ten mile bike rides like why? It’s kind of random.

Elsie: It is. It’s so random. Ok, let me show you my chart. First of all. I’ll put a picture of this in the shownotes. So I made a chart and it just says one hundred ten mile rides on the top and then it has one hundred little squares. Then every time I ride one, I use my kids’ dot a dot marker to dot that square out. Now my next one will be number forty two. So I’m pretty far along, almost halfway through my challenge. I’ll share how I got into it. So last year, I started doing 30 minute bike rides as my main exercise. I think in the early spring and I did that for a long time about four or five months. I felt like I needed, number one, to make it more fun and number two to ride a little bit longer and make it a little bit harder. So this was my solution and I actually recently read the book Atomic Habits. It’s such a good book. So shout out. We’ll put it in the show notes. It’s a great book. I definitely recommend it. He talks a lot about this idea of attaching something that you want to do to something that you need to do in order to create a stronger habit. I am so proud that I did that before I even read the book and I was like, check. The thing I’m attaching is I want to watch guilty pleasure movies all day long every day and I need to exercise. So I have been doing 10 mile rides and I watch movies the whole time. The first movie I watched was Knives Out, which wasn’t my first time watching it or anything. We talked about that in our movie houses episode kind of just like feel good movies. The second movie I watched was Julie and Julia. Have you seen that one?

Emma: Oh yeah, I read the book and loved it.

Elsie: I watch a lot of 90s movies and a lot of early 2000s movies. I watched Bewitched with Nicole Kidman, which was like the cutest little house, the cutest little cottage house I’ve ever seen in my life. I watched the movie Clue which was so old and like weird and funny. It actually had some really offensive parts too but it was also fun to watch because it was like a haunted mansion, basically with a good 20s kitchen. I watched all the Harry Potter’s recently, which was such a trip and all the Twilights. I love this freaking nineties movie called Mermaids with Cher. That’s one of my favorites so far. I’m just going so hard on this challenge and it’s been so much fun because the thing that’s drastically different is before when I would do my thirty minute rides and I usually did it to music. I would be watching the timer and as soon as it said 30 minutes, I would stop every single time. Now it’s like oftentimes I want to do extra miles or I don’t even notice when it’s over, just because I’m watching movies and it’s so much fun. It has really, really been great for me and I would definitely recommend it if it’s in your goals and you like stationary biking, which I obviously love at this point. It’s kind of like my quarantine workout that never ended so.

Emma: Just out of curiosity, how long does it take you to bike 10 miles? Like generally, is it like 40 minutes-ish.

Emma: It can take between 50 minutes and an hour. So I’m not biking super fast. It’s kind of like medium speed like it’s a comfortable speed. I usually drink, sometimes I drink a coffee actually. Like, I don’t care. Sometimes I drink a smoothie. Then I have these big Bink water bottles. I’ll link them to show notes. I love those. I’ll show it to you. I usually drink two of these full of water during the hour. I just get off and refill it halfway through and I usually do it first thing in the morning. That’s something that really helps me is after I drop off my kids, if I do it first thing, then it’s just checked off. I have time management issues so it helps me so much to just keep it the same every day.

Emma: What movies are on your list? What are you going to be watching next?

Elsie: Ok. So I definitely want to open up on our show notes comments today for suggestions because I know everyone has a guilty pleasure movie that is on the level of the Mermaids movie that I love so much and I want to hear what yours are. What I have on my list still, I want to watch all the witches’ movies so like Practical Magic, things like that, I want to watch. Any kind of cheesy Halloween movie that’s too cheesy for Jeremy but too scary for my kids is definitely a biking thing for me. So all of that. Then I really want to watch the old and the new Little Women and the old and the new Emma. I’ve been considering doing a TV series but I can’t decide if I should keep it just movies. I think I could probably get to one hundred with just movies, so maybe I should do that. I don’t know.

Emma: Yeah, I mean, if you run out of movies, I guess you could always open it up, but it sounds like you’re probably not going to run out, especially because you’re about halfway. Well, I’m just going to throw one in there, sparked the conversation in the show notes, but maybe you should watch Hook. Have you seen that in a long time? I love that movie.

Elsie: I read that Hook is one of the longest children’s movies of all time, which is like an interesting little trivia. I have not seen it in probably 10 years or maybe a little less, so I would love to watch that one. Maybe I should do a little bit of a Robin Williams week. That would be fun.

Emma: That would be fun.

Elsie: I have to watch Mrs. Doubtfire too. If I watch anything Robin Williams because it’s like our movie of our childhood so strongly.

Emma: Yes, that and I always think of Sister Act and Sister Act Two. I watch those a ton as a kid. I have also been listening like I just finished atomic habits. I was listening to it in my Audible and I loved it so much. I love the idea of coupling something you need to do with something you enjoy or having some kind of reward tied to an activity, tied to a habit. What were the other things? He had a whole thing about putting a habit alongside so that you don’t forget, like putting your vitamins by your toothbrush. Yeah, habit stacking. I was like, Ooh, that’s just smart and a good hack because it’s easy to just forget things. You’re not really even being lazy. You just forget. So anyway, that was an awesome book, and it sounds like it’s been a positive thing in your life too with the biking and stuff.

Elsie: Yes, for sure. I love that book. It was really cool because it made me realize how much every little thing adds up over time. I think that’s kind of the point of the book. A lot of times, especially in my busy mom’s zone of life, it’s just easy for me to be whatever, I don’t care about so many things right now You have to very selectively pick what you care about. It made me feel encouraged that if I wanted to make changes over time like little things are good enough to make those changes. I think that’s always an encouraging message, especially when it’s like, I’m kind of a person who’s given to extremes, so it doesn’t always have to be extreme.

Emma: No. Yeah, I agree.

Elsie: I love the bike movies thing. We just made a home gym next door to my office, so the hidden room that’s right next to my office is now a gym and everyone is like, oh, you’re going to put your bike in there? And I’m like, honestly, I don’t think so because I want to keep it by my TV and I want to keep watching movies for right now. Maybe eventually, I mean, obviously it would fit better in that room, but having it next to a TV is the greatest thing ever.

Emma: Well, I love Knives Out. That’s like on my autumn bucket list to rewatch it this season.

Emma: Since we’re not going to do a mini-episode dedicated to this, just go ahead and let us know what is your review of the Twilight movies?

Elsie: Ok, so first of all, I loved the Twilight movies and I love Robert Pattinson, is definitely on my beautiful man list. I love him and I love him as an actor and I love Kristen Stewart. I have no issues with the acting whatsoever and the movie is obviously are really funny. In the time they were coming out, I never watched them, except for, I think, the I don’t know if it’s like the fifth one or the fourth one, one of our close friends had a song in the movie so it was a really big thing in our lives, a life memory at the time. It’s just that our friend had the song, so I saw that one at the theater because we were sort of celebrating for him, but I didn’t actually see the beginning or end of the series. All right. My review. Ok, so my review is basically like the style of them I actually would say is hilarious and does hold up because it’s so severe that it’s kind of cool now that it’s like aged better than you, like better than it was at the time when it came out. So I liked the style of them. I liked the effects were crazy, especially the baby. The CGI baby was something to behold. Obviously, I said, I love the actors like I liked the story, but like, I did think that my review of it in one word was, it’s very Mormony. It is very like, prude is the word like it’s just very old fashioned. So if you are ok with that or if you prefer that, this is the series for you. The edginess is kind of not there. So yeah, and I’m not really used to that.

Emma: The edgy part is that there’s vampires and werewolves in it. That’s the edgy part, not the sex part.

Elsie: The edgy part is like for seventh graders. But anyway, I would give Twilight an eleven out of 10 and I would definitely watch it again in the future. Probably wait like five years, though. Obviously, I wish it was more sexy. I think everyone wishes that, but it was still freaking fun to watch so I understand now why people are so weird about it.

Emma: Yeah, I love it. I love Twilight. I read all the books, love the books. But it is definitely kind of old-fashioned and definitely very campy in its own way. I mean, it’s about vampires and werewolves, and there’s a love triangle but I love it. That’s pretty much how I’d sum it up too.

Elsie: There’s not really a love triangle, though, like I said, they’ve been way more of a love triangle.

Emma: I think it is more in the books because it’s just longer in the books because there’s more space, you know, like, so

Elsie: Keeley is really into Twilight and she told me that in the books, the vampire house is completely different then the movie.

Emma: I read them as they were coming out, so I won’t lie, I don’t totally remember. I don’t feel like I was as into houses at that time, so I don’t know.

Elsie: Ok, well, if you’re into the house porn, I will say that the twilight mansion itself for me didn’t age as well. It’s kind of like the house you think is your ultimate mansion when you’re twenty-five or at least it was for me, and it’s not anymore. But the cottage that they make where they live briefly and mostly the honeymoon beach house. Those ones were 10 out of 10.

Emma: Ok, good to know. Good to know.

Elsie: Did I make that the longest review ever? I think that this episode is half twilight. Ok, that’s cool with me. Ok, I would love, love, love, love, love to hear your reviews. Please do not skip any guilty pleasures for us. Send us your suggestions in the show notes today at abeautifulmess.com/podcast. All right, see you next week.