A walk in the sun...

Last weekend I took a walk with a friend, for the first time in two weeks, who is stressed out beyond what's healthy because she is still working, from home now, and as usual in American management these days they want more with less while giving mere lip service to how much they know more help is needed and they're working on it and oh, BTW, now that you're working from home you can be on duty and on the job any hour and all hours.  It was a nice pleasant, warm spring day with the verdant outside world of lawns and bushes bursting forth with the colors of the season of resurgence.

We went three miles and listened to birds chirping and watched whole families bicycling by single file, dad in front and mom bringing up the rear, like a couple of ducks shooing ducklings across a roadway, and just worked off the gloominess and despondency of always being inside with no physical contact with others (she lives alone, as I do, and that induces a special languor that easily settles into a blue funk not overcome by calls to or from your friends).  We saw a thirty-something man come out of his home in his green scrubs and get into his car at the curb and called out to him from a safe distance inquiring if he was was going to work, and when he indicated yes, we called out to him to Be Safe.

Everyone maintained respectful distances from everyone else, except for some more closely spaced couples or family units, and mostly went to opposite sides of the street as persons passed by other persons.  And almost everyone had a mask on, the new norm which could be with us for years going forward.

There was some good news.

 My last walk took me past a house whose front yard was littered with little riding devices of all sorts, a baby seat, bicycles, tricycles, little scooters, plus pet containers like water bowls, and I wondered if the parents inside were able to cope with all those kids cooped up on the premises (plus doing the cooking, cleaning, homeschooling etc.) and as we walked by that house, the parents were in the yard, alive, well and apparently ably managing the chaos created by four young children, three dogs and any stray tiny friend that wanders by or in.

In the beginning

It was around this time eight years ago that I crawled into the very back of my closest and found an old pair of tennis sneakers that were fifteen years old. I slipped on some droopy white cotton socks, a pair of cotton summer shorts, a white t-shirt and a sweatshirt that said "Colorado" and went outside to the curb. I took some deep breaths while I swung my arms around. I pointed myself up the street and took off.

Gasping, I reached the top of the block, a quarter mile up. Gratified to have successfully navigated this foray into the unknown, I stopped and walked back to my house in the January chill, huffing and puffing. I was on my way to fitness after decades of sloth.

I was positively glowing. I had started dieting a few days earlier and I was determined that the pounds would drop away. I was already planning to make this three minute dash a daily occurrence. Diet and exercise.

At home my wife watched me come in and offered up her insight. "Two weeks. That's how long these new phases of yours last, two weeks." I showered and went to work.

At the office, my radiant state of exercise bliss returned. I was unusually voluble. I encountered a co-worker and unhesitatingly told her, "I ran today."

She looked at me curiously. "Oh really?"

"Yeah," I said casually. "I put on my shorts and sweat shirt and ran to the end of my block. I'm doing that every morning now."

She looked at me even more curiously. "And do you live on the world's longest block?"

I already didn't like the way this was going. First my wife's two weeks comment, now this. Where was the supportive gush, the effusive praise?

"No," I said a little defensively. "It's just an ordinary block."

"Did you run back?"

"No but there's a little hill at the end."

She laughed witheringly. "You put your shorts on for that?"

This was a valuable observation for me, one that I have always appreciated and adhered to since that day. Go longer (do more). The intention isn't the actualization. The beginning isn't the consummation.

In fact, thanks in large part to this starkly critical appraisal from a neutral source upon my first effort, I was soon up to running two miles a day. I was soon down to wearing size 33 pants.

I am still in those size 33 pants, and have long since given away those stacks of size 38 tent material I used to wear.