The Fatman Has Landed

Here we go. I started to exercise yesterday. I have this stationary bike that my mother in law gave us a few months back. It’s old but it has a tension adjuster so you can make it harder to pedal. It has a speedometer and an odometer so I can tell exactly how fast I am not able to pedal and how exhausted I get after a tenth of a mile.
It’s great for the ego, let me tell you.
The handlebars were all out of whack, one grip higher than the other. It squeaks like a mouse chased by a housecat and there is just enough wobble to give you motion sickness. I used it once while my wife was watching one of those man hating movies on the lifetime channel that I love so very, very much
I gotta tell you, I was so motivated to work out after that.
Wouldn’t you be?
Needless to say that was the last time I touched the damn thing until Saturday. It instantly became an extra clothes hanger when it was in the bedroom and so the wifey got me to move it into my office.
That thing could hold three loads on laundry easily if you stack it right.
But that was too convenient and a couple of weeks ago I took it downstairs. And there it stayed, untouched.
My friends and I have been talking about playing softball. I was a pretty good ball player back in the day and I started to think about how flabby and soft I’ve gotten over the last few years. It’s not a pretty picture. Not to worry, I am not going to post picks of my almost ‘dickey do’ and my ‘dunlap’.
You know ‘dickey do’ and ‘dunlap’ don’t you?
As in “his gut sticks out farther than his dickey do”, and “his gut dunlap over his belt.”
Yes, the afflictions common to middle aged men. And I am quickly approaching the middle age. But I am going to try and fight ‘dickey do’ and ‘dunlap’.
Today is my fat Tuesday.
I am fat and it’s Tuesday.
But with any luck, next Tuesday I will be less so.
The seat isn't terribly comfortable.
Which is a nice way of saying that my ass is sore.
I figured that if I am going to make a return to playing softball or something similar, I needed to get my wind back. So I found myself on Saturday afternoon in my office at home staring at this bike thingy. I had just returned from watching the Dominican Republic Baseball team take batting practice at the Houston Astros Spring training facility which, as it turns out, isn’t all that far from where I live.
Except for Moises Alou (outfielder – San Francisco Giants) and Willy Mo Pena (outfielder – Cincinnati Reds), they weren’t nearly as big as I always thought them to be. Most of the guys were about my size.
Six feet, two hundred some odd pounds, give or take an inch and about ten to twenty pounds of muscle. They ran and exercised and invested in themselves. Something I never did. All I have to show for my younger days was a dickey do dunlap and bad knees.
Well, David Ortiz was in fact sporting a dickey do dunlap if I ever saw one.
But he was also smashing baseballs into a low earth orbit.
I’m not a world class athlete and I don’t think I ever was. But I started wondering what had changed from when I was younger and still playing to now. I could go the easy route and blame it on the wife and kids and life and work and blah, blah, blah, waa, waa, waa,
No.
That would be too easy.
I realized with startling clarity that I had just given up.
Grown lazy.
I simply didn’t care anymore.
And you know what? I’m not really sure that I ever did in the first place.
I got home and I wanted to play. I wanted to grab a bat and play and it was with no small amount of sadness that I realized that I had let myself go. I had devolved into a overweight, out of shape schmoe that lived to go to work.
It should be the other way around.
I should work so that I can live my life.
So as the sun was settling into the afternoon sky I sat down on the bike.
And I started to pedal.
I watched the odometer turn slowly and I listened to the whirring of the wheel and the buzzing of the pedals and cranks as they spun on their bearings.
After three miles or so I was winded.
Three miles on a stationary bike? That wouldn’t even get me out of my housing subdivision.
Damn.
But I felt better.
Weird. I was woefully out of shape.
But I still felt like I had stopped the process of decay.
Not physical aging, I mean more of an emotional process. I know I am not getting younger and that eventually my body will fail. It happens to all of us. But I realize that I can make what I have better. I can get lighter so the knees aren’t quite so creaky and the dickey do dunlap has to move on.
They have to go.
Last night I got back on the bike and started to pedal.
Before I knew it, I had gone ten miles on the damn thing and I had worked up a little sweat.
And I felt great. The legs were wobbly and I was a little woozy but I did it.
And this morning? I did it again.
10 miles.
When I get home today?
Why not? 10 more miles.
I want suddenly to see where this road takes me.
And maybe lose something along the way.