I'm getting back into it in the reverse of the order I left it. I'll start off with walking my dog, Haley, and maybe eventually resurrect my beaten-up and welded-together NordicTrack. (Maybe I'll just spring for a new NordicTrack. Better yet, maybe I can find a lightly-used one on the secondary market. Most people haven't used theirs as long and as hard as I used mine.)
I've been building up to this for a while. On Saturday, my dog Haley got her midsummer shave. She no longer looks like a collie in a luxurious orange coat; now she looks a bit more like a yellow lab. Sort of.
Haley, July 12, 2004
After prepping her with a dose of flea and tick treatment, she was ready to venture out into the wilds of semi-suburbia.
I have two alarms set to go off at 5:00 AM and 5:03 AM. Usually I am awake a good 45 seconds before the opening notes of Coldplay's "Clocks" begin playing on my CD clock radio, and I manage a micronap between hitting the snooze bar on that alarm and hearing the far ruder sound from my more conventional clock radio's alarm.
On a typical morning I will play with the snooze bars on these two clocks until at least 5:30, letting my distorted sense of time in my hypnopompic state give me the illusion of long stretches of additional rest, more than I would have experienced if I had simply slept an extra half-hour. But not today.
Today I was up after the first alarm. No time to check the TV to see if the missiles had been launched or the aliens had landed at Washington, D.C. No, this morning it was up and at 'em time, just a few seconds to redirect my circulation before springing out of bed and waking up Haley. Her tail drummed a happy sound against the washing machine in the laundry room, her favorite spot to sleep.
After a quick stop to perform morning ablutions, pull on a pair of shorts (for decency's sake I decided not to walk around town in my underwear), throw on an overshirt, stuff a small plastic bag in my pocket (for cleanup, if necessary), and pull on my Ron-Jon's cap with extra-long visor (minus the silly flames), we were just about ready to roll. I snapped on Haley's leash and was almost out the door when I realized I had nearly forgotten my house keys. A quick trip back to my pants from the day before yielded the vital pieces of metal, and we were off.
We walked along a path we had never taken before. It would result in a round trip of something like two-and-a-half miles, which doesn't sound like much unless you're a pair of old, out-of-shape dogs like us who haven't been on a walk of any great distance together in several years. The trip out wasn't bad, since it was mostly downhill. But I expected the sky to be a little brighter at a few minutes after five in the morning just three weeks after the longest day of the year. Instead it was a mottled gray. Oh well.
When we reached the turnaround point and it began to rain, I realized that maybe I should have taken a minute to watch TV this morning.
So there we were, as far out as we would get on our walk, at the bottom of the long, steep hill that leads from just a few yards above the river level to the ridge where my house sits, as the rain came down softly and gently, leaving us both undeniably wet.
Well, there was nothing to do but slog back through the rain. It wasn't too bad, although I was practically dragging Haley by the time we got home; a few more blocks and I would have had to carry her. I toweled her off once we were safely in the house, stripped off my soaked hat and overshirt, and got to the business of making coffee and breakfast.
Not an auspicious start to my new exercise program. I was sore and tired much of today, and I am sure Haley was too. It is supposed to rain through the night and into tomorrow morning. But I'm sure Haley will jump up, bright and early tomorrow morning, hoping to go for another walk. I'm not sure I'll be able to say no.
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