glorious weather!

by show of hands, how many of you sat around the house like lazy bums when you finished your homework in elementary school? middle school? high school?

that's what i thought. exactly zero.

it struck me, yet again, yesterday that kids of this young generation at my school aren't overweight and lazy because they overeat. they're overweight and lazy because they don't play outside. i know kids live in this neighborhood. you'd be hard pressed to find one playing outside at their house. i'm sure in this day and age of parents' paranoia over anonymous bogeymen doing God-knows-what to their progeny that they're a little less likely to let their kids play in the front yard. with that logic, you'd think that you'd hear a little more noise and such coming from backyards. nope. yesterday afternoon, it was like this neighborhood was empty, with nary a kid behind any of the doors. i know that's not the case. parents are too stressed and overworked to leave work at a reasonable hour for their kids to get out to play. no wonder this generation's favorite answer for, "what's your favorite thing to do?" revolves around games made by nintendo, sony, and microsoft, not spalding, russell, or wilson.

once in a blue moon, i'll see kids out playing in the leaves, but never out riding their bikes. maybe the streets are rougher in suburbia these days than they were back when i was a kid, but i doubt it. my best friend alex lived around the block from me. we'd hop through neighbor's yards to get to one another's houses. our parents weren't petrified of us getting bitten by the neighbors' dogs or getting sued for trespassing because we knew each other. i took those same dogs for walks after school each day...er, they took me for walks each day. i remember us falling off our bikes, falling off trampolines, getting into scrapes with other kids in the neighborhood. this kid matt that lived on my street got hit by a car at least five times to my memory. on his bike, off his bike, skateboards. come to think of it, maybe his mom should've been more concerned...

keeping afloat

it ain't easy learning the ropes all over again. i'm staying afloat. barely.

climbing and cycling are keeping me sane. we went for a nice, long bike ride on sunday in gorgeous weather. my place to old town alexandria. stopped for lunch by the river. laying around in the grass, watching people walk their dogs, push their infants in strollers, playing beach volleyball, stroll with their spouses, talk with their grandparents. grandsons in matching getups with their grandpas. young moms teaching their toddlers. old folks in their sunday best. locked the bikes up, checked out the torpedo factory and the plaza on the river. street musicians and balloon animal makers. kid smile producers. birds birds and birds. shakespeare lovers performing a midsummer's night dream.

heading back north along the potomac on mount vernon trail. water break at gravelly point to watch the planes take off at reagan. families everywhere. bikes everywhere. subarus with sailboats on trailers. tahoes with speedboats. a taxing final three or four miles through rosslyn and some neighborhoods to get back here. two bikes sit in my apartment now, hers and mine.

started bouldering again this week. lots of power lost in the top roping hiatus, but i think it'll return reasonably quickly. i'm gunshy about the left knee, but it ought to be in fighting shape by the time hound ears rolls around.

here's hoping anyhow...

water, water, everywhere

i just finished reading life of pi. it was a long overdue read, considering everyone i know raved about it when they read it. i thought it was going to give me a different perspective on religion. teach me respect for other religions. not so different from my own outlook, "they're all different passports to the same afterlife." or something like that.

for those of you who haven't read it, go get it. it's a great story. slow going at first, i polished off the second half of the book yesterday after taking about a week to read the first half. oddly, pi's struggles to stay hydrated got me thinking about water.

water. we all need it. as kids, we didn't like it, but we drank it. a glass of water was unheard of. other sources, however, bring me back to those hot summer days playing outside. what triggered this? yesterday, i had a nice cool drink from a water fountain. in elementary school, water fountains were the best consistent source of water. i remember comparing notes with classmates on which ones worked best, which ones were the coldest, and which ones tasted good. yesterday, that water fountain was a blessed elixir to soothe my parched throat. exceptions to this rule are water fountains in churches and those that are outdoors. they just don't taste right. kids these days probably don't compare these notes, as their parents are more likely to send them to school with water bottles. i even had one boy who claims his mother told him never to drink from the water fountain.

coming in a close second is hose water. i thought clowe was getting a drink from the hose on saturday when we returned to his house. that earthy, metallic taste. i used to drink more than my belly could hold. it was just cool enough, never the first stream though. that was the water that got heated up and had the strongest hose flavor. just a hint of rubber or vinyl and the metal pipes. delicious!

incidentally, water has been in the news a lot lately. cities such as atlanta banning bottled water in light of environmental concerns. i thought i'd heard it all. then i saw this. ridiculous, no?

on childhood obesity

a few weeks ago, i mused about the obesity epidemic in this country getting worse, not better because of the poor example adults are setting for the children in their lives. it is affecting children. on one hand, the children don't see the value in exercising. on the other, a father dies too young, and his 12 year-old son sets out to not emulate that example. is that what it will take to turn some lives around? check this video.

fat kids

an epiphany today. first, some context.

got it? on a borrowed peugeot road bike today, i soaked up the sunshine and something occurred to me. our green spaces are going to waste. the reason it's so hard for people to exercise and stay in shape when they're adults is because they're not doing it when they're kids.

how did i come up with this theory? first, i suck at bike riding. the best i ever did was the 3 miles or so to forest glen middle school way back in the day, and that took us 45 minutes there. home, much longer because of detours to the five and dime and the baseball card shop and fights in the park across wiles road. (no, not me fighting, watching others fight since that was the cool thing to do in middle school. back before weapons were part of the equation.) landed on my face once on my way to high school before i discovered that riding your bike to high school was decidedly loserish. so, long story short, my bicycling skills aren't so great. going on bike rides with her is generally an exercise in pain because she's better than me at it.

second, there were no kids having fun being outdoors on the trail today. ok, so there were a few tottering along or riding in trailers behind dad's bike. no kids playing in backyards. no kids enjoying a glorious spring day. it goes in cycles, but the most common answer i get when i ask my classes about hobbies is a list of gaming systems not sports. when we were kids, the world was perceived to be safer. we were allowed to go places and do things without the aid of minivans and mommies. we learned how to be responsible for ourselves and make good decisions on our own. neurotic parents these days (rightly or wrongly) don't trust anyone to do the right thing when it comes to their kids. they don't let kids have fun independent of them, let alone play neighborhood pick-up games of football (tackle in the grass, two hand touch in the street).

parents need to make a concerted effort to get their kids in the habit of being active. the kids emulate what they see. they don't see mom and dad doing it, they figure it's not important. worse yet, mom and dad do it, but complain about it, so the kids immediately assume the worst and resist it even more. i try to set a good example for my students, but it's harder and harder to make that connection with classes these days because of the climate and culture of schools. but this isn't a school rant. this is an exercise rant. get out. be active. parent or not, we all need to do so. don't wait until you have kids. you'll be old and tired by then. get in that habit now while you're just tired. don't treat it as a chore. do what you enjoy.

viva fun!