In about 6 months I'm going on a BWCA canoe trip with my two brothers and my dad. Just the guys, nature and a couple of canoes. We're planning a pretty leisurely trip with enough leeway for an entire day without canoeing. Still, it'll be the most physically taxing week I've had since...oh, probably when I played basketball tournaments in Junior High. Maybe even more. And since then, I've become the most out-of-shape I've ever been in my life.
I've never been one to hit the gym or really care about bodily image. I suppose that is a sideffect of being so skinny your entire life. Unfortunately skinny does not equal endurance and strength. Rewind to 1 year ago when the brothers and wives spent the beginning of Christmas vacation on the ski slopes of Colorado's Rockie Mountains. The first day we skiied it was pretty dang cold outside with a little bit of wind. Everyone of course bundled up the best they could and went out anyways because, after all, most of us don't get to enjoy mountain skiing very often. And the result of everyone's best efforts to stay warm was a failure. They froze. They did....not me, though. I was comfortably warm and on the verge of sweating because I was so dang out of shape. So out of shape that I couldn't keep up on the second day. At the end I couldn't even enjoy myself because I was breathing hard the entire time.
Fast forward to present day. Not much has changed for me or my brothers. My oldest brother is the one who went to West Point and was in the Army for about 6 years. Obviously he had to keep in shape while in the Army, but that frame of mind has carried over to his civilian life. He works out regularly. The other brother also is a gym rat, coupled by marrying a woman who worked for several years as a personal trainer. And then there's my dad who has played an hour or two of tennis every single Wednesday night for the last 30 years.
That's not good for me. That makes me the weakest link. I don't want to be the parasite of the trip -- feeding off of others strength. It just won't work. At the same time, I really can't afford to spend $80 a month on a Lifetime Fitness membership. So I devised a plan that would allow me to get in shape, but for minimal cost. You see, J's apartment has a workout room on the main level -- free for all residents to use. It has two treadmills, two elipticals, two bikes, and free weights. I figured that pretty much covered what I needed, so I figured out a schedule with J that worked with her weekly schedule and didn't take away from her plans, but still allowed me to workout for free.
Well that plan, while genious I must admit, was rather forcefully squashed when the workout room had a small electrical fire, which caused the sprinklers to go off. The sprinklers' design successfully stopped the fire from spreading in a matter of seconds. However, the sprinklers' design also doesn't have a off feature. Fire sprinklers run until all of the water is gone. So yeah. Workout room is now flooded.
Crap. Now what?
That "now what" moment resulted in purchasing a membership to a club, that I now frequent 3 times a week. I've since come to realize that I'll be able to push myself much further in the gym environment, but I also cringe at the thought of spending $500 a year on membership fees. The moral of the story is, though, I'm actually enjoying going. It pushes me out of my comfort zone, which is always a good idea.
Oh yeah, and the icing on the cake of this story is that J's workout room reopened on Friday. Now with new bigger TV's and digital cable. Awesome. Oh well.
