Mexercise

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To pass the time and improve my health, I have decided to use the workout room at the hotel. Exercising in my room has not worked, and I know that I need to lose about 15 to 20 pounds around the equator. It was one of my goals when I came to Mexico to lose some weight and exercise more, so I head off to the hotel gym with the best of intentions. The first obstacle encountered is the location of the room. It is on the second floor of the hotel. I would have to climb stairs to access it. Stairs! Don’t they have elevators in Mexico? I decide that tomorrow would be a better time to exercise, and I walk 2 blocks to the party store and buy a package of white powdered donuts, as a reward for thinking about exercising. I consider the walk to the store as enough cardio for the day, and greedily consume all the donuts at one sitting. Promising myself that I would do better tomorrow, I turn on the television.
The next day after work I come home and quickly change into some workout clothes, ready to hit that gym, even if it is on the second floor. I will count climbing the stairs as part of my routine, sort of an architectural stair master. Entering the weight room, which I sometimes call the weights and measures room, where you are sized up as either amateur, too late, what’s he doing here, heart attack candidate or accepted muscle bound comrade, I casually stroll among the machines. Luckily, the room is empty, and I can take my shirt off without fear of reprisal or laughter.
Not having much experience in the training room, I study each of the contraptions for their possible use. It used to be so simple. There was a bar with something heavy on it, and you picked it up as many times as you could without getting a hernia. Not so any more. The devices were multifunctional. Depending on where you sat and what you pulled, pushed or lifted, the targeted muscle or muscle groups were developed. Proper form was also important, and since my form is far from proper I chose the treadmill. Walking I can do, even though the treadmill is also now a high tech machine with pre-programmed speeds and inclines, designed to test your mental acuity as well as your physical prowess. If I can only find where to turn the machine on, I can start my rehabilitation.
Walking and half walking running for twenty minutes I collapse on the floor in a heap, trying to find my pulse to see if it is elevated to the recommended level for my age group. The pulse chart tells me I am in good shape for a seventy-year-old woman, and I am happy. No matter that I am a fifty-year-old man, because I did not anticipate living through the exercise session. Just for fun I lifted some weights on one of the contraptions, and then escaped back to my room before anybody else came to exercise.
Now, all of life and the natural processes around us are about balance. Equilibrium is essential for the stability of the planet. It is the same in the processes of the human body. Exercise and physical stress one day need to be balanced by utter lethargy and slothfulness the next, so that the body can recuperate from the unnatural strain of intentionally lifting heavy things or walking faster than necessary. Water will find its level and the body will find its natural form. If a person eats a whole package of donuts one day, and does not lose those calories through activity or liposuction, the bodies’ form will take on the donut shape, as mine has. In order to get my body back to its natural contour, I will have to counteract thirty years of milkshake drinking, Twinkie stuffing and fast food junking that have been my caloric fuel. If only there is enough time. Now where did I put those donuts and the remote?

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