Near Death Experience | Japanese Crackers

It was with great effort that I got up this morning, not quite wanting to face the day yet. Tamie, good sweet wife o’ mine, was gracious enough to get up with Layla and let me sleep in. I eventually felt guilty enough to pull myself out of my slumber and zombie-walk into the living room to greet my girls with a friendly “uuuuugh, is it still early enough to say ‘good morning?’”. Man do I love weekends =)

With nothing but the obvious bit of R&R planned for the day, Tamie, always eager to go jogging, figured it was the perfect opportunity to head out for a bit of a run. I, not so eager to even think about jogging, figured it was a good chance to give the parents back in Ottawa a call. So while Tamie sweated under 40 degrees of mid day sun, I stayed air conditioned with the kid to call her Nonni and Chinni online. A good chat and an hour later, Tamie came in the door exhausted, explaining just how blistering the sun was before going take a long, cold shower.

As she showered, I thought about things and came to a conclusion myself. I’ve recently been having an email conversation a friend who has been lamenting about how quickly getting older seems to meaning getting heavier. Having put on my own fair share of weight recently, I couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment. Now, I’m not saying it’s just age that is putting on the pounds – I mean, I’m sure the beer and cookies might have played a small part in their nightly consumption, but age does get its fair share of the blame. The last email I received had the a number, a big 238 lbs of a number in it. Crikey! It was a scant 2 years ago when we were both hovering between 180-190 and worrying about the double century mark… oh, to be so slim again.

So with that in my mind, and inspired by Tamie’s industrious (or maybe insane) jogging today, I thought it was a good time to break the ol’ rollerblades out of retirement. I’d been talking about it for more than a year (I think it was my new years’ resolution… of 2008). Man, time flies. So like an old war veteran suiting up after a long spell of peace, I suited up in blades and wrist guards into the battleground of sun, traffic, and old ladies on bikes. It’s a dangerous world out there.

I got off to a pretty good start – felt like I’d never stopped blading. The wind was blowing just right, the traffic lights were green at every corner I approached and I was flying down the road at a good clip. I was free, and I was loving it. I was inspired to do this every day! Thoughts of waking up early and starting the day with a similar invigorating rollerblading session filled my head as I passed pedestrian and car alike. I couldn’t remember why I stopped.

Not ten minutes had passed before I was drenched in sweat, the sun beating down stronger than anything I’d ever experienced in my life. What little breeze there was only seemed to pick up the heat from the pavement causing even more discomfort. The old ladies on the bicycles I’d passed earlier seemed to pick up their pace and fly by me as easily as I had them only moments prior. Insulted, I tried to use that as motivation to keep my legs moving and not to die. I lowered my cap, focused on the few feet in front of me and rollerbladed like I was chasing women one quarter their age. And to my great surprise, I caught them. They were stopped at a traffic light, which I almost missed, but I caught them.

At twenty minutes, my legs were like rubber. I could barely breathe. I thought I was a goner, for sure. I wasn’t even insulted or embarrassed when those same old ladies walked past me pushing their bikes. The only thing on my mind was survival – I had to make it back to the air conditioned haven we call home. I rolled along at what I’ll call a leisurely pace for what seemed like forever until I finally made it back to the finish line. It was with great agony that I peeled off my rollerbladed and made my way up to the third floor — it’s not easy standing and waiting for an elevator as slow as ours.

After a quick 45 minute shower, I finally felt like I wasn’t going to pass out or pass away. I was anxious to check out the stats I’d collected on my spiffy new google phone. Tamie had used it first when she went jogging and found she ran over 7km in just under an hour at average speed of nearly 7km/h (funny how that math works out, eh — good thing google is smart enough to figure all that out for us). I, too, had carried my gps-enabled toy and found I’d gone just over 6km in 30 minutes. Check out my maps page here, if it works. Yah, she ran farther than me, but let’s face it – I’d like to say she’s in much better shape than I am but, honestly, I think it was because I’d gone out later in the day and the sun was so much hotter.

Exercise out of the way for another year, we went out to pick up a couple things we’ve been meaning to get. Tomorrow is Tamie’s sister’s birthday so we picked up a couple things for her (Tamie didn’t think she’d like some oversized, slightly-used, like-new rollerblades). While we were shopping, Layla wanted to ride on the merry-go-round she’d been on in the past (her memory is getting to be a bit of a pain sometimes). Since she’s spoiled, we gave her the 200 yen and let her go at it. She plunked the first coin into the slot no problem. The second one she tried a couple times. The third time she dropped it I put it into the machine for her at which point she started yelling, got off the merry-go-round, and cried until it stopped. Luckily at the end, it spit out a card which she was more than happy to collect and show off. Phew!

We eventually made our way back home where we had dinner (chicken caesar salad and potato-crust pizza, for those curious). Actually, I just wanted to mention the potato-crusted pizza because I’d never heard of such a creation. I’m pretty sure Tamie made it up due to the fact we had leftover potatoes in the fridge, but it actually turned out pretty well.

So that was our day. I call it a lazy day, but in all honesty it was one of the unlaziest days I’d had in months, if not years. Who knows if I’ll stick to the rollerblading, but I’m certainly going to try. And to Mr. 238, I know you read this — the gauntlet is off, good sir. We’ve talked about self-improvement for a long time, well the time is now. So step up! I look forward to reading about your adventures in rollerblading!