“Oh, The Horror” Travels with Bad Beds (Late July 2009)
We have been through ‘traveling with torturous beds’ many times before. Strange mattresses and just bad beds—oh the ‘horror’! Whether it’s the guest beds at my brothers’ houses, bad motels, or even the dreaded foldout couches, trying to negotiate through your day after you have had a permanent crease etched into your spine is no picnic. Somehow, feeling like you slept on concrete with a four inch metal pipe being ground into shoulder blades doesn’t make you exactly bright and chipper the next day. Ah, the hide-a-bed--what exquisite torture. Please, sir, may I have another?
I remember some time back giving up the bed for a fold out sofa in Newport, Oregon. We had two friends join us in this condo with a great bead and the oldest pullout you could imagine. The mattress must have been 2 inches thick—I swear. And, of course, when I laid down on it, one of the main supporting bars hit me square across the back. I felt that one for a week. I still can feel it now, after 15 years. Isn’t it amazing how the mind can remember pain so well?
Maybe I Should Get In Shape? (July 2009)
I have decided to go back to yoga after a 20 year hiatus. I needed to do something. I started in college and stuck with it into my thirties until my job and other commitments got the best of me.
Teaching children is the greatest, but it’s the other stuff that goes with it that makes it hard. Sometimes I liken teaching to nine months of holding your head under water and coming up for air around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the end of March. In June, you’re actually allowed to come out of the water for a couple of months. Here in the past ten or so years I think the water has become increasingly more stagnant and swamp-like, thanks to so many school reforms, bad politicians and tax initiatives. How many times can one foul ones water supply before everyone gets a ‘poo-flood’?
So, we joined the “Y” in June and I now can choose from about six different yoga classes—a variable smorgasbord of ‘pretzels and pain’. I have been proud of my accomplishments in the past month. I am bending and twisting quite well thank you. I now have some strength in my shoulders and upper arms. However, the first week of sessions absolutely got me. I pulled a muscle in my lower right back and over stretched some tendons in the back of my left calf.
This last injury was probably actually caused from dancing in a musical last April. Marianne directed the show, “Once on This Island” which was a great success. I told her I couldn’t do the show because it opened Holy Week, which is the most intense time of a Musician in the Episcopal Church. Yes, even more than Christmas. There are about five services during that time, and any thought of prancing around a theatre stage was out of the question. Plus I had a spring concert with our community a ccapella singing group, The Vintage Singers, so I had no time for a play.
Well, Marianne didn’t have any mature men audition, who could sing. So by a ‘force-out’ situation, I became the old man of the show. All the other performers were in high school, college-aged or their 30’s. Oh, just to make it work better for me, she also moved the show forward one week so it opened the week after Easter. Thank you sweetie, I love you too.
I don’t think this out of shape 50 something body could have worked so hard to learn the excellent dances our 17 year old, slave-driving, choreographer created. It was obvious for the first month that I might not make it. Still, I think I pulled it off. I lost about 10 pounds and felt better than I had in years—even though I screwed up this tendon behind my left knee. I’m getting better. I’m not quite dead yet--feeling much better.
So this day’s class was very crowded and I didn’t recognize the instructor at all. She hadn’t been teaching classes for the last month, but I guessed the regular gal couldn’t make it. She started off briskly and had us bending and contorting in ways I never have thought or wanted to move. We all got through it, but that was very intense for lower intermediate class.
The “Yoga Nazi” as I began to think of her, also kept a pleasant smile on her face, but knew precisely what posture she could inflect next to really challenge us. Afterward, I checked with Harry, a long time acquaintance to see how he was doing. He has about eight years on me, but handles himself well in the class. I taught both his kids, directing one as Scrooge in a school Christmas play. Harry himself was our Narrator/Mysterious Man in mine and Marianne’s joint production (she directs/I do the music) of “Into the Woods’. He is also on the board of the Community Theater in which we are so active. Harry usually cheerfully greets and says goodbye every Tuesday when I see him. This day, he mumbled ‘see ya” as he left, looking like he’d ripped a muscle in every possible body quadrant. Yoga makes you feel so centered. It’s great.
I have been preparing myself, physically, for the marathon of Tuscany. It’s all built on hills, and the buildings don’t have elevators—that’s what we’ve been told. Dario Castagno, who’s book “Too Much Tuscan Sun” exposed American (and other nationalities) tourists for their “out-of—shape-ness”. He was really was amazed the huffing and puffing of the folks he guided. From a cultural perspective, we came out looking pretty pathetic. I vowed to myself, as I read his book, never to be like that if or when I go to Italy.
So I have been walking the hills of Roseburg to get ready. Okay, a year in advance, but if I don’t start now, when will I? Let me tell you, I now know that Roseburg is built on hills. At first glance from the freeway, I-5, that ‘tears’ the town in half, it’s a flat, cozy river valley with the meandering South Umpqua running through, and bumps of high hills, like Nebo and Callahan ridge, that break up the ‘hundred valleys of the Umpqua’. Over the past 20 years the town has slowly spread out and up the sides of these hills, in a very hap-hazard way. Some developers have tried to keep the hillsides in tact, while others have scared in so deeply, we’re just waiting for the next big rain during the monsoon season for all those half and million dollar homes to come sliding down into the older neighborhoods.
During my summer break, I recharged my body by taking walks, a mile or two, around the greater neighborhood area of our southwest home. I have had some physical problems, three hernia operations, gout, and various bronchial-asthma related issues, that can sometimes limit me. The flat part of town, where we live, gently sloping down to the river and has been great for walking. Now that Marianne and I have a goal in mind, I have decided to push myself and take to the hills—literally. Just a block away to the east, the southwest hill of town rises up sharply. Mt. Nebo is on the east end, near I-5, and the ridge to its west might not even have a name.
I had been up the first street, Winter Ridge, which end in a field after a cul-de-sac, and it was a challenge. Our neighbors, old friends, Peter and Lana, who live at the west end of the subdivision, first told me about the work out. Once I return from the hill top I traverse the side of the hill and take every opportunity to take a one block cul-de-sac or side road to climb more of the ridge. The highest street is Military and the last uphill assault is a killer. It gets your heart pumping and the sweat a poring. On a summer morning, there is nothing healthier than ‘huffing and puffing’ my way up there, and taking in the Roseburg vista as I try to keep from passing out. I figured if I keep doing this throughout the coming school year I might be ready for Tuscany.
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