Monday, November 29, 2004

There’s this story about an ugly duckling, see, and it says some pretty profound things about change and inner beauty and other New Age shit. I know you’ve heard of it, gentle reader, just as you’re aware that winter–the cold, bleak span of three months–does the ugly duckling in reverse.

You can go into winter looking your best, or at least your moderate best, and you can come out a whole different beast. Slower. Dumber. Plumper. A lot plumper. Even people who worship their BMI charts, who use them to triangulate the exact location of their mortality, may wake one fine spring day and wonder how they rocked their diagrams in a matter of weeks. I’m talking about really rocking the index, rocking it good, and then eating it like a Krispy Kreme donut.

In the interest of avoiding an increase in bodily insulation, I’m investing in a health club membership. My employer promises to reimburse 20% of the cost, ostensibly so I can continue to advertise on the Internet in excellent health. The question, then, is what to do with that membership.

What would you do, dear reader? What do you see in exercise? I enjoy sports, particularly tennis, because there’s the added benefit of winning. Pure exercise, on the other hand, has manifested itself horrifically in these newfangled, Sisyphean contraptions of torture. You’ve got the elliptical machine, the parabolic rowboat simulator, the hyperbolic stepper, and the diabolical treadmill, devices designed to force us into tantric formations ill-suited for human comprehension.

I don’t know about you, but seeing rows and rows of machinery, many of them probably blessed by Chuck Norris himself, brings into question how people of old managed to keep fit. And then it hit me, a snowy panorama of colonial America in the wintertime. It’s 1762. A log cabin. The end of a Christmas feast. Petey the Colonist pushes aside his plate.

“Mother dearest, thank you again for the combination butter-churner and water-boiler! It’s just what I wanted for Christmas. I am going to chop wood now and capture some natives.”

Therein lies my answer. I’m going to do something simple, something unaided by cogs and bolts and the latest Super EFFX technology. I’m going to run. On the track. I’ll do it in one direction sometimes, sometimes in the other, but hopefully always with the general flow of fellow runners. You know what I found out a year or two ago? I used to believe they changed directions for variety’s sake, but apparently they do so to prevent your knees from imploding in a bloody mess.