My father died 30 years ago
today, so some of my siblings and I (along with my daughter) will be marking
the occasion later this afternoon at a tiny cemetery in Becker, Minn., where he
and my mother are buried - along with a large contingent of the Cox clan
(including my grandfather and great-grandfather).
There will be much reminiscing about our childhood years, I'm sure, and I
expect we'll raise a few glasses of Grain Belt in his honor.
He made his living
delivering that golden elixir to bars and restaurants in St. Paul, an occupation
that earned him a barrel chest and arms like steel. (I remember returning from
Air Force basic training feeling pretty buff and foolishly challenging him to
an arm-wrestling match at the dining room table. It was over before I could
contemplate the true depths of my delusion.) He was strong, but somehow sickly
at the same time.
That barrel chest loomed
over an even larger belly (he fought weight issues for much of his adult life),
and he suffered from ulcers and other digestive ailments. His love of fried
foods and sweets was legendary around our house, and we all learned how to
smoke cigarettes and drink beer by observing him.
Of course, back in the '40s
and '50s none of us knew the dangers of smoking - much less the insidious
threats posed by greasy foods, refined carbs, a sedentary lifestyle and chronic
stress (Dad was a hall-of-fame worrier). So, when he landed in the hospital
with a heart attack at the age of 52, we were all shocked. And when cancer
claimed him eight years later, we all felt he'd been stolen from us.
So I was thinking about Dad
this morning while doing my morning zazen.
And later while sweating through a half hour of push-ups, planks and kettlebell
moves. He really didn't know any better. I don't have that excuse.
It's not often that we're
treated to temps in the 60s in November around here, so My Lovely Wife and I
were able to spend a good portion of the weekend out and about on foot and on
our bicycles (the Crapmobile's right front wheel is making calamitous sounds, as well, so we left it in the
driveway).
Saturday morning, we pedaled
down to Minnehaha Falls and descended into the creek gorge below the cascade
and hiked part of the way to the river. There are points along this trail where
you can actually escape all signs of the city. It's a fabulous little urban
getaway.
We weren't feeling too
ambitious though, as MLW's knee was starting to act up. So, we hiked back to
the falls and climbed on our bikes (which always helps our creaky knees) to
explore the bluffs between the creek gorge and the river where the state
veteran's home is located. I'm guessing that they don't get a lot of bicycle traffic
over there, because we got some strange looks from folks as we wound our way
among the historic and contemporary buildings that make up this little village
above the river. All in all, a lovely morning.
I got in a little indoor
workout Sunday morning: pushups and some kettlebell exercises that got my heart
pumping pretty good. I'm always a little amazed at what a great cardio workout
you can get by spending just a few minutes swinging a kettlebell around. These
kettlebell swings are particularly invigorating.
Later in the day, with rain
threatening, MLW and I once again climbed aboard our bicycles -- this time for a
meeting near downtown Minneapolis, about six miles away. (The whole carless
thing makes for a more adventurous life, I think.) The wind was at our back,
though, so before long, MLW was shedding her fashionable plaid jacket and we
rolled to our destination without breaking a sweat.
Note: Our meeting took place
at a neighborhood pub, so I enjoyed a pint of Surly Furious, even though I felt
like I hadn't actually earned it.
Then, it was off to the
co-op, a mile or so distant, to buy exactly two bags of groceries (another
thing about carless shopping: you can't buy more than you can cart home) and a
pleasant ride along the river back home. The rain held off.
As I write this, the
Crapmobile is sitting in the shop awaiting a diagnosis. And as much as I
appreciate the healthy benefits we gain from leaving our cranky old vehicle in
the driveway, I'd really miss it when the snow begins to fly.
Just back from my fourth
acupuncture session, during which I noticed that the cicadas
between my ears had shifted slightly to the right (an ominous sign for the Obama
administration?), leaving my left ear mostly quiet. They've since returned to
occupy their former space, but I'm holding out hope that eventually this whole
needling thing will offer some respite from the incessant ringing in my ears.
Katherine, my acupuncturist,
is a little inscrutable -- partly because we have to whisper during the
treatment due to the fact that the room is full of people snoozing in
Lazy-Boys, and my hearing is such that whispered wisdom often doesn't make it
through the flock of cicadas she's attempting to disperse; plus, I really don't
have any clue about what questions to ask. This much I've been able to grasp, though:
any sign of movement is a good thing.
I'm a patient guy, anyway,
and I understand that the healing arts -- unlike the pharmaceutical sciences -- can
take time. I wouldn't mind getting a prescription specially formulated to evict
the cicadas from between my ears ("Ask your doctor if Silencium is right for
you. . . ."), but these sorts of solutions tend to have unintended consequences
("Side effects may include headache, dizziness, dry mouth, aneurysms . . .")
and they tend to leave untreated the actual cause of the condition, which in
the case of my cicadas probably had something to do with a lack of effective
stress management when my newspaper went under four years ago.
I know, there's a pill for
that. . . .
Anyway, while I've been
waiting for the needles to rout my cicadas, a couple of interesting things have
occurred: A painful kink in my shoulder and a more mysterious -- and worrisome --
problem in my hip have both disappeared.
The hip thing actually had
me hobbling over the weekend and threatened to derail my Tuesday evening tennis
match with M.E. I decided to go for it despite the pain, because . . . well,
because I'm a guy, and guys just figure that if something hurts the best way to
cure it is to pound on it until it gets better. So, M.E. and I whacked it back
and forth for 90 minutes (6-2 in his favor; then 7-7 when my ailing hip finally
gave in). Wednesday morning, to nobody's surprise except perhaps my own, I
could barely walk.
My shoulder felt pretty good,
though.
I was moderately more mobile
on Thursday, when I got needled again. And by this morning, the pain in my hip had vanished and my gait was back to its jaunty self. Was this a byproduct of
my cicada treatment? Who knows? You start getting your qi rearranged and, before you know it, maybe everything else starts
to fall into place (can't wait to see how the brakes on the Crapmobile are working now). Let's just call it unintended consequences.
A pretty OK workout last
night: Did 30 minutes of intervals on the EDM rather than my normal routine,
during which I watch Seinfeld or whatever sitcom happens to be playing on the
flat-screens and stride glumly along for 45 minutes, moving from a resistance
level of 10, to 15, then 20. I usually burn about 600 calories this way. The
intervals burned about 400, as I recall. (Should I be writing this stuff down?)
But, I was pretty drenched by the time I hit the weights.
I avoided The Pit to let my shoulder
heal, and because I didn't feel that ambitious. Still, I managed to work my upper
body to near exhaustion in about 25 minutes. I concentrated more on form with
less poundage rather than pushing my limits. I've found on those occasions when
I'm lacking serious lifting determination that just scaling back on the weight
and slowing my tempo really does the job. It's not officially tempo lifting -- a
formal strategy of timing your eccentric (lowering) and concentric (lifting)
movements -- but by holding a lesser weight for a couple of counts at the top of
my lift, it has the effect of really stressing the muscles.
It must work, because I'm
pretty sore today (hooray!).
I think I've mentioned once
or twice on these pages how I used to play basketball back in the day with a
bunch of guys who were within shouting distance of my age. We got together one
night a week at a local school gym (and, in the summer, at a local playground).
We'd run up and down the court for a couple of hours, talk some trash,
occasionally twist an ankle or dislocate a finger, and then go have a couple
beers. I did this from 1985 until after my 50th birthday in 2001. I
recall attempting a poorly calculated comeback a year or two after that, but
I've basically been out of the game for the better part of a decade.
So, I was a little taken
aback recently when my tennis buddy, M.E., told me that the old gang was
reconstituting the weekly game and was extending an invitation to him and me to
return to the court. I was flattered, of course, but circumspect. I mean, on
the one hand, I really don't think I can recapture whatever skills I once
owned. And the chance of injury is pretty good. On the other hand, these guys
haven't exactly grown younger in the past decade; I suspect the game would be
played more or less in slow motion.
There was some fine print to
be considered in this deal, as well: It wouldn't just be old guys on the court,
actually. Apparently, there was a gaggle of twentysomethings that kind of
filled out the roster, M.E. noted. Could we convince them to let us old guys
slog along on our own while they pranced, gazelle-like, on a neighboring court?
Part of me -- the
testosterone-fuelled idiot part -- loves the idea
of playing against guys young enough to be my sons. It would be a great
challenge. It would push my limits. Clear out the cobwebs in my fitness
routine.
I was kind of in that zone
Wednesday night, when M.E. and I arrived at the LTF Crosstown club for a 9 pm
tennis match. We had about a half-hour to kill, so we tossed our tennis gear
into a corner the gym, grabbed a basketball and started reliving our former
glory on the hardwood. I was surprised to see that, after a few bricks clanked
off the rim, I began draining 18-footers like the old days (which is to say,
intermittently). Meanwhile, M.E. was starting to feel pretty good about himself,
which meant he needed a little one-on-one.
That was OK. He's not as
tenacious as he was in his 40s. And nobody was going to be driving the baseline
for reverse lay-ups. Just a couple of middle-aged guys reliving the good old
days. But, here's the pathetic part: We went at each other for maybe 10
minutes, neither of us presenting much in the way of defense, and the ball
never actually managed to travel through the hoop.
Hmmm.
We grabbed our stuff and silently
shuffled off to the tennis courts, where we battled through an exhilarating
14-game set before I prevailed 8-6. It was the best tennis we'd played all
season: long rallies, great shot-making, much scampering from baseline to net.
We worked up quite a lather.
And on the way home, I don't
recall any talk about basketball.
The past few days have been pretty eventful: I wrenched my back while channeling Marty Gallagher
in The Pit last Thursday - barbell squats with 120 lbs resting behind my neck
(what was I thinking?). And then, on Monday, back in The Pit (I know what
you're thinking, but no, I skipped the barbells), I did something to my left
shoulder while doing tricep extensions with 40 lbs worth of dumbell. I don't
think it's serious, but something popped right on top of the shoulder.
A brief digression: That's where
the shoulder was slightly dislocated about 10 years ago after this woman opened
her door on me and my bicycle as I was speeding to work. I went right over the
handlebars and executed a nifty somersault, landing on my left shoulder and
thus allowing my unhelmeted (yeah, yeah, I know . . .) head to avoid a
collision with the pavement. I heard a distinctive "pop" when my shoulder made
contact with the road and as I collected myself on the curb, I tested its range
of motion, telling the distraught woman who precipitated the acrobatics that I
was fine. No, no need to call an ambulance, I said as I got to my feet - a
little too soon, it turned out, as I promptly passed out and cracked my
unhelmeted head on the now-satisfied pavement. When I came to, the distraught
woman was still there, more distraught now than ever, given that my head was
sitting in a pretty impressive pool of blood. The ambulance arrived and the EMT
guys transported me to a nearby emergency room, where some doctor cleaned me up
and closed my wound with a few staples (!?!?!). My shoulder was still sore, and
I told him that I thought maybe I had dislocated it. He took a look and said
something about how if it really was dislocated, I'd know it. I told him I was
pretty sure something was wrong, and maybe it should be x-rayed or something.
He said if it really was dislocated, I'd know it. And so on. I went home and
looked at it in the mirror and noticed that it was clearly sitting lower on my
body than my right shoulder was. You could plainly see where the collarbone
should be connected to the top of the shoulder, except that it wasn't. (Check out this illustration.)
Anyway, I never went back
for a second opinion and, while the shoulder still looks a little funky, it
seems to be in perfect working order. Until Monday and my 30 reps with 40 lbs.
It's still a bit sore, so I'll just take it easy - and watch for car doors. My
back is fine today. Thanks for asking.
All of this has nothing at
all to do with my first-ever visit to an acupuncturist yesterday - though I
have no doubt that the folks at Three Treasures Community Acupuncture could
take care of my shoulder and back with a few well-placed needles. The whole
community acupuncture deal is pretty cool; it makes
acupuncture accessible to a much broader range of the population than more
conventional practices. At Three Treasures, you schedule your own appointments,
pay what you can afford, and sidestep the whole health insurance morass. It's
all right up my old anarchist alley.
Still, I'm a little squeamish
around needles - and healthcare personnel in general -- so it took some
convincing by My Lovely Wife for me to even check the place out. She'd had a
session many years ago with a very nice needle-wielder when she was fighting a
nasty and prolonged respiratory illness, and it seemed to work out pretty well
for her. So, I really had no excuse but to give it a try.
Besides, this constant
ringing in my ears (tinnitus) is starting to bug me. For the past couple of
years or so, I've been putting up with it, just figuring that, at some point,
it would disappear as mysteriously as it arrived. But it's still in my head,
like a swarm of cicadas on a sweltering August afternoon, and I'm beginning to
wonder if it's going to start messing with my already faulty hearing (isn't
aging great!). Western medicine doesn't seem to have many answers, but I've
read that acupuncture can be effective.
So, I hopped on my bike
yesterday afternoon and pedaled across the river to Three Treasures, where a
nice young woman named Katherine listened to my woeful tale of the trapped cicadas in my skull.
Then she stuck a bunch of needles into my hands, arms, legs and feet while I reclined
in a comfy Lazy-Boy and looked at the ceiling. (Frankly, the idea of a Lazy-Boy without TV and a beer takes some getting used to.) Pleasant New-Agey music wafted
through the room, which contained several other Lazy-Boys - each containing a
sedate person with needles sticking out of various appendages.
The idea, Katherine explained,
is to simply lay there for an hour and relax while my qi is quietly rearranged
in a helpful way. It seemed like a tall order to me, and I began counting the
various New Agey tunes as a way to keep track of the time, figuring maybe 20 of
these would take about 60 minutes. Pretty soon, though, I noticed I was
becoming one with my Lazy-Boy, and sinking happily into a nice little
meditative state. A little itch arose on my cheek, which I observed until it
faded away. The insides of my elbows started to feel a bit achy, but that too
passed. The needle sticking somewhere near the pinky on my right hand was
pulsing. A while later, I noticed it had stopped.
It went on like that for a
time: small things creeping into my consciousness then fading away. I might
have dozed. Then, at some point, I distinctly felt my chest opening, like
something heavy had been removed. This was intriguing.
Meanwhile, the cicadas were
still singing, but the noise, which tends to be centered between my ears, had
moved noticeably upward - more toward the top of my head. I took this to be a
good sign, and mentioned it to Katherine when she pulled the needles out of my
skin. She agreed, noting that any such activity is encouraging.
She suggested I return a
couple of times next week and the week after, so I made the appointments before
pedaling home (into a nasty gale from the south). My ears were still ringing on
the way home - though it tends to be less noticeable in a gale -- and today the
cicadas are having a real party, but I have no allusions that this is going
away after a single treatment. I'll get needled again next week and see what
happens. It can't hurt.
Well, the weekend came and
went and I was somehow able to circle my way around whatever it was that was
bothering me last Wednesday. This H1N1 flu scare has everyone I know walking on
eggshells, and while I don't tend to panic about these sorts of things, you
never know. . . . It seems as though two days of working at home and a decent night's sleep did the trick.
I even managed to do a
little work on the house on Saturday (got the storm windows on in plenty of
time for our current warming trend . . . geez!) And, then on Sunday, I dragged
my tennis buddy, M.E., away from his household duties and we managed to get in a
set of tennis before the Vikings game.
The tennis was forgettable.
I played putridly, he played slightly less putridly, and the result was 6-4 in
his favor. I noted afterward that he had called it an "exhibition match" prior
to us warming up (he was concerned about his stiff shoulder), but he'd conveniently forgotten that point after he hit one
of the few good shots of the day -- cross-court winner at set point. Whatever.
Besides, it was a beautiful
day. I wasn't sneezing and blowing my nose. My fever was long gone. What's to
complain about?
We retired to his living
room for three hours of watching large men collide with one another before I
headed home. There, My Lovely Wife reminded me that we still needed to get to
the co-op if we wanted to eat, so I climbed on my Schwinn and pedaled the 6
miles along the river to the store. The bike path was packed with happy
Minnesotans enjoying the balmy weather after a week of brutal early-winter
temperatures, so I settled into a nice rhythm and marveled at the fall colors
on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi.
Home again with the goods, we put together a meal that miraculously coincided with my son's emergence from his room and my daughter's return from work. And while it wasn't exactly a Norman Rockwell moment (he wolfed down his meal while describing some horror movie he'd been watching; she grabbed a plate and escaped to her basement bedroom), MLW and I enjoyed a fine repast among the cacophony.
And why not? For the moment,
at least, everyone was healthy. What's not to like about that?
I'm sitting at my desk on my
front porch this morning watching the October rain threaten to become snow, the
kind of weather that correlates nicely with my current mood: Is the bug that
hit me yesterday going to morph into something more serious today?
About mid-morning, while preparing
for a major budget meeting, my face grew hot and I began sniffling and
sneezing. I soldiered on, of course, and stayed upright through the meeting and
its aftermath, but felt pretty drained afterward. Plus, with H1N1 dominating
the news these days, you never know. . . . So, I called My Lovely Wife to see
if she could fetch me from the office, but our son had absconded with the
Crapmobile, which had delivered me to work that morning. Left with no other
alternative, I shouldered my computer bag and started walking home.
Years ago, when the kids
were small, MLW took some classes in homeopathy and essentially became our
family doctor (we were without health insurance). In fact, she became quite
adept at diagnosing our various minor maladies and prescribing the proper
homeopathic remedy. I was reminded of this as I strode across the bridge toward
home yesterday, because I began to feel a little better out in the autumn air.
Indeed, by the end of my 40-minute walk, my fever had almost completely
vanished.
When I mentioned this to
MLW, she simply noted, "You're pulsatilla." Meaning, that's the homeopathic
remedy I should employ if my fever returns. And then she went back to the
drawing she'd been working on. I made some tea, settled into my comfy chair and
marveled silently at my good fortune. Who else has a doctor who makes house
calls? (Even if you have to walk to the house to get your treatment.)
My fever hasn't yet
returned, but I'm watching for any symptoms to appear. The doctor is making
oatmeal.
A gorgeous autumn morning
for a bike ride. The trees along the Mississippi are beginning to turn and the
squirrels in Minnehaha Park are frantically building their winter food cache.
The chill in the air gives
me permission to pump a little harder on my way over the bridge and up the big
hill to the office, but I was still surprised to note that I made the trip this
morning in less than 12 minutes. Now that may not seem like much to you guys
who tool around the parkway at 20 mph, but I always have to balance the desire
for a little cardio before work and my unwillingness to walk into the office
drenched in sweat.
Summer is tough in this
regard. I tend to downshift into my lowest gear going up the big hill and try
to keep my heart rate down as much as possible, while staying in the shade
along the sidewalk. Still, I can end up being a bit moist on the muggiest days.
So, fall temperatures are great for the morning commute - even though I have to
drag out my mittens.
I needed them last night too
after my workout, even though I worked up a good lather at the gym. I skipped
my normal 45 minutes on the Elliptical Death Machine in favor of 15 minutes on
a new version of the EDM - which emphasized the glutes a bit more -- followed by
15 excruciating minutes on the stair-climber thingy. There's something about
climbing stairs that just turns on the sweat faucet for me. I mean, it's OK to
sweat in the gym, but the torrent that machine seems to release from my body
every time I step on it is a little bit embarrassing. Forget the little paper
towel and spritzer thing to clean up; just hand me a mop. Weird.
I glanced into The Pit once
I wrung out my Stewart-Colbert For President T-shirt ("The Smart Choice"), but
it was packed with other sweaty guys, so I hit the machines and decided to test
one side of the "training to failure debate": If your muscles aren't completely
worn out by the time your done with your routine, you're not making progress.
So, I pushed and pulled a bunch of tonnage with my shoulders and upper arms
until, by the end of the night, I could barely bench press 50 lbs. My heart was
racing, the sweat was pouring, and my poor arms and shoulders were screaming
for mercy. How great is that, huh?
I married into a family
cabin almost 30 years ago, which is a marvelous happenstance, except for the
October Saturday every year when My Lovely Wife and I are called upon to drive
200 miles north to Cass County, Minn., for the annual bringing in of the dock.
Cabins have docks because
people like to walk out over the water and climb into speedboats and sailboats
and even rowboats, I suppose, without getting their ankles wet. Others like to
jump into the water from the end of the dock, swim around for a while and then
lay on the dock in the sun in order to bring a well-earned sunburn back to the
office after their vacation. Still others enjoy standing on the dock while
casting a line far out into the water in hopes of snagging a walleye or some other
form of aquatic life. I do not actually belong to any of these groups of
dock-lovers, but I understand I'm in the minority on this.
Anyway, MLW's grandfather,
who purchased the property on Woman Lake in the 1920s, was a civil engineer who
invented the BridgeCo dock, which, according to the marketing materials, was
"built like a bridge". That means it has beams and stanchions and bridge
decking -- a whole lot of very heavy redwood and steel, all designed for
durability and convenience. And, in fact, this particular dock has been in use
at the Parker cabin since before my first visit there in 1977, when MLW was
simply My Lovely Girlfriend.
So, I have nothing but
admiration for the creativity and engineering skill that went into designing
this particular piece of north woods infrastructure. And, over the years, I've
marveled at the technique developed to bring the dock in without having to set
foot in the 40-degree water. This is the primary advantage, it seems to me, of
owning a dock built like a bridge. And I have watched in wonder as, first,
MLW's father and, eventually, her most mechanically minded brother, guided us
through the process.
Very briefly, here's how it
works: You loosen the bolts holding the two beams to the far stanchion, loop a
burly rope around the stanchion, then remove the decking until you've reached the
point where the beams are held in place on the next stanchion. You remove the
bolts holding the beams there, drag them onto shore while the far stanchion
quietly falls into the icy water -- still attached to the sturdy rope. Then you
simply grab the rope and pull the stanchion (which weighs, I'm guessing, maybe 50,000
lbs.) along the lake bottom until it's close enough for you to yank it out of
the water and stack it on the shore next to the boathouse. Then, repeat,
repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat and repeat. Piece of cake.
Until very recently, MLW's
mechanically minded brother would handle most of this. He'd unscrew the bolts
without dropping the socket wrench into the lake, wrap the rope around the
stanchions, etc., while the rest of us carried in the decking (not a
particularly easy task, but you get my drift). He eventually tired of this
particular arrangement, and for the past couple of Octobers, it's been me and
MLW's less mechanically inclined brother wielding the socket wrenches and
hauling the steel out of the water.
So, last Saturday we were
out there in a persistent drizzle, wrenching and yanking and schlepping along
with our two LWs (all of us, I hasten to add, in our 50s) and getting the kind
of workout that creates a Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness that's not really
delayed at all. It's a good thing I've been working out, I was thinking as I struggled
to pull the first stanchion out of the water. But this was lifting of a different
sort: deep squats with a clean and jerk thrown in for good measure; a tug-of-war
with a big old wet rope and a two-legged hunk of steel; dead lifts with soggy
redwood. It all kind of reminded me of the stuff John Hinds does at his
Madison, Wisc., Monkey Bar Gym -- only not so much fun.
Anyway, the dock's all
packed away for the winter now, and most of the soreness has left my body --
just in time for me to hit the gym tonight. Maybe I'll work on those deep
squats and deadlifts. Or . . . I could start working out an argument for the
aesthetic pleasures of an unadorned shoreline.
For months now, I've been
struggling to find ways to "mix up" my workout routine. Loyal readers may
recall my foray onto the basketball court awhile back or my occasional yoga
adventures. Well, now that I'm everyone's favorite tennis opponent, the problem
isn't so much finding a way out of my tried-and-true EDM/lifting/sometimes-stretching
rut; it's all about getting back into the gym!
Since my Belgian Waffle
revelation a week ago, I've not had a chance to visit the gym (or to eat any
waffles, for that matter). I was consumed by various tasks at home over the
Labor Day weekend, I played tennis on Tuesday night, had a meeting after work
on Wednesday, and last night played tennis again. Not against my regular tennis
buddy, M.E., but instead I squared off against an old magazine colleague of
mine, J.W., who apparently reads these pages from time to time and, noticing my
current obsession, challenged me to a match.
J.W. is a kind-hearted soul
who, I figured, would show some mercy on an elderly player who also has fed her a good deal of freelance work over the years (I'm just sayin' . . .),
so I accepted her challenge and we met at the lovely Nokomis tennis courts
after work last night. I also figured I needed some more practice before my
scheduled match with the ultra-competitive M.E. on Sunday; he's been playing
several sets of doubles each week and on Tuesday it showed -- his serve is
getting faster and more accurate, and even though I played pretty well, he
still beat me 6-3. (His Achilles has healed also, I should point out. . . and
he's seven years younger than me.)
Anyway, it turned out that J.W.
and I were pretty well matched. Neither of us has a big serve, relying instead
on solid ground strokes, so we had some great baseline-to-baseline rallies, and
we each hit our share of winners. In fact, J.W. is kind of a machine on the
baseline -- she doesn't make a lot of unforced errors. Which is great fun, if
you can keep up, which I mostly did through the 11 games we played. She went up
2-0, I rallied to win the next two, she went up 4-3, at which time I noted with
some false bravado that I'd have to win the next three games to take a 6-4 set.
It nearly proved prescient,
as I proceeded to take the next two games, losing only a single point. But, at
5-4, my game suddenly deserted me and I put up only weak resistance as J.W.
surged to a 6-5 lead. We didn't play the tie-breaker, as it was getting dark
and J.W. was nursing a bit of a strained hamstring, but I was confident that, had
we continued, my superior conditioning would prove pivotal to the outcome (ha
ha).
And, speaking of superior
conditioning, I'll be heading cheerfully back to the gym tonight for a little
cardio and some stretching. I might even venture down into The Pit to do some
squats and deadlifts. I gotta get ready for my next match.
Back to the gym last
night after a couple of weeks away, and I have to admit I was a little
apprehensive when I climbed on the scale before my workout. It's not just that
I've been avoiding the gym; I've been avoiding the gym while quaffing pints of
ale, brutalizing Belgian waffles, devouring Yorkshire pudding with no regard
for my personal safety and simply inhaling any jambon et fromage within 30 meters of a baguette. And I'm not even
going to mention the chocolate. A European vacation is a magnificent culinary
adventure, but I had to assume that our 10 days in Belgium, France and England
would create some unwanted impact on my personal poundage.
So, I had to look twice
when 158.6 flashed on the scale's digital screen.
158.6?
All summer long, I've been
essentially stuck at 160 -- despite ramping up my fat-burning efforts on the
Elliptical Death Machine, despite embracing a mindful eating protocol, despite
creatively visualizing those last 5 lbs. melting away. I've been stranded in
plateau city.
Now, if I knew that
drinking lots of beer and eating lots of rich food (you cannot even believe those waffles) was the key to
rappelling down from that bluff, I would've got after it a lot sooner. But, of
course, that's not how it works. My personal weight-loss serendipity had
nothing to do with what I ate or didn't eat; it's all about the sightseeing.
Or, more accurately, it's all about getting from point A to point B without an
automobile.
For years, Americans have
puzzled over the seemingly counterintuitive spectacle of lithe French women who
eat all the rich food they want without accumulating any excess weight. How
come all those croissants and full-fat yoghurt and wine and exquisite sauces
and chocolate don't wind up attaching themselves to their hips?
Well, I'm here to tell
you that it's not just the women and it's not just the French. Europeans, in
general, avoid the epidemic of obesity that so afflicts Americans because they
don't drive that much. A 2008 study from the Journal of Physical Activity and Health says
it all: In Belgium, 30 percent of all trips away from home involve walking,
biking or mass transit. And Belgians are pikers compared with the Dutch; people
in the Netherlands get around town without an automobile 52 percent of the time. (Each year, the average Dutch resident logs
an outrageous 1,225 kilometers on foot, bicycle, bus or train.) Americans, on
the other hand, drive everywhere: only 12 percent of trips away from home in
the U.S. are accomplished sans
automobile.
Such "active
transportation" helps prevent weight gain, the study's authors note:
"Walking and bicycle commuting usually fall into the moderate-intensity
range, and if performed regularly, can result in substantial amounts of energy
expenditure. In
addition, the use of public transit (trains, subways, and buses) usually involves
walking or cycling to and from transit stops and, hence, would also be expected
to promote weight control, as well as a host of other physical and mental
health benefits."
This added
"routine" activity by your average European burns as much as 9 pounds
of fat per year, while your average car-centric American might burn 2. And,
when you add it all up, here's what you get: In the U.S., 34 percent of the
population is now considered obese. In the Netherlands, it's 11 percent.
So, this helps to explain
that 158.6 number above. Every day of our vacation, we walked. A lot. On our last day in London, for
instance, my son decided for some reason to count the number of stairs he
climbed. The final count when we boarded the train back to Brussels that
evening: 903. Now, he went out of his way to scamper up steps unnecessarily at
times, but I'm guessing that My Lovely Wife and I scaled at least 750. At
least, that's what my knees were telling me. That's a pretty decent StairMaster
session.
We'll see in a few days
whether I've been able to maintain my newfound European weight-loss plan in a
city with one puny light-rail line and the ever-alluring Crapmobile parked in
the driveway, but as long as my old Schwinn remains operational and my sneakers
hold onto their tread, there's no reason why I can't continue to live like a
Belgian (or even a Dutchman!) right here on the prairie.
Except for the waffles.
I'm really going to miss the waffles.
"The value of maintaining an exercise program became evident when the results of the Harvard Alumni Health Study were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The men who had been moderately active but later became sedentary had a 15% higher risk of death than their counterparts who had never been active."Which makes me want to double my workout time. After all, what's a little muscle soreness in the broader scheme of things?
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