Who Needs Excercise Equipment?

Just move to a city with an enormous, incredibly steep hill, a hill that’s so steep your car and legs think it’s almost vertical, and you’ll never have to worry about cardio excercise again. The street I live on is popular for walkers and joggers, who climb from the level of the lake to the cemetery at the top of the hill. You can’t drive all the way on the street because some places are so steep that the sidwalk goes up in stairs and your car has to go around to another street to weaken the grade. Since we’ve moved in, I’ve watched countless people huffing it up past my house all day long. And I’ve felt guilty, because I’m rather slothful in the excercise department. Today while Ms. Crazy Preschooler was off with her father (who has a week of vacation) I strapped the youngest critters into the double jogging stroller. The more than two mile walk down the hill was beautiful and easy, just as I thought. In fact, we didn’t even go down to the very bottom of the hill because that is the steepest part of all, and I just didn’t feel ready to tackle that yet. And I was glad that I didn’t, because the grade of the hill is truly something to behold. My calves haven’t been stretched like that walking up a hill for a long time, maybe ever, including hikes in the mountains. And no matter how smoothly a double jogging stroller pushes, two kids still weigh a lot when you’re walking uphill for more than two miles. My face was red, red, red, and it wasn’t even warm. I haven’t had a workout like that for a long time, and I took a lot of little rests along the way. Granted, I am disgustingly out of shape. It is so nice that little kids don’t notice that, or care that you stop for a second every time you see a dandelion on the side of the sidewalk not exactly to give them the joy of holding yet one more dandelion, but more to catch your breath. I’ve never been an excercise-with-other-people type of person. I hate sports that involve teams and other people in general. Why anyone would torture themselves with RUNNING up that hill, I just don’t understand, but I have a great deal of admiration for them.