A walk

ex·er·cise

/eksərˌsīz/

noun

noun: exercise; plural noun: exercises

1.      1. activity requiring physical effort, carried out especially to sustain or improve health and fitness.

"exercise improves your heart and lung power"

This weekend, my Debi and I decided we needed more exercise and went for a walk. We went to a local recreational lake, Lake Johnson. It's about 3 or 3.5 miles, not sure exactly how long it is...I was more concerned with the elevation. It's really a beautiful lake where you can rent paddle boats, canoes and kayaks with a "walking" trail around it.They call it a walking trail, more like a practice run at Everest, if you ask me, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Lake Johnson: Fembot Kill Zone in the distance

I have fought my weight pretty much my entire life, sometimes I win, sometimes I lose.  Currently, I am kind of winning. I gave up sugar on New Year's (mostly) I have a little every now and then, nothing like I used to. I've lost weight, sure,but the biggest difference is in how I feel about myself, the improvement in my attitude and generally I just feel better. I had to add exercise to my routine, in order to improve the rate of weight loss and I did, a little at a time. I walk everyday, about 3-5 miles, depending on how hot it is, I live in North Carolina and it's summer after all. I used to be able to walk for hours, but that was 15 years and a desk job ago. I don't quite have that stamina at the moment, but I'd like to get back to being able to walk for hours and not even think about it.

If you follow my adventures, you know my last one was a round of Chicken Pox. I feel human again, but I haven't been able to exercise for about 10 days and let me tell you, the body and the brain quickly forget. It was a beautiful Sunday, not too hot, not too humid,  somewhat rare in North Carolina in August and we decided to go for it!

 We had taken this walk many times, once through a thunderstorm, that was...memorable. I remembered the thunderstorm, the exposed section I call the Fembot Kill Zone, the rain and how someone really had to pee, but I forgot about the hills or mountains should I say.

When we arrived, I suggested we walk the flat part up to the Fembot Kill Zone (if you don't know what a Fembot is, check out the Bionic Woman Episodes 19/20, Kill Oscar Part 1 and 3, Part 2 was on The Six Million Dollar Man. The short story is the Fembots all get struck by lightening chasing Jamie and Steve across a dam which looks just like a part of Lake Johnson. And let me tell you, that episode was running through my brain on loop during that lightening storm experience.We walked over the Fembot Kill Zone without incident, I might add and continued to the the hilly part.

As we were walking and talking, I kept trying to remember how steep these hills were and how many? I was secretly wishing my Debi would tap out and I found out later, she was thinking the same. We reached the point of no return and the first really, really big hill. I mean it is practically a straight vertical rise to the sky. Huffing and puffing we made it to the top, how many more were there? One, two, three or more? Racking my oxygen deprived brain, I came up with...nothing.

By the time we got to the third and I hoped final ginormous hill, there were Zombies chasing us and I was about to scream. But no, there was one more, we thought, we could hear the traffic from the road where we parked, we had to be close right? Why did we continue on after the Fembot Kill Zone, why?!

Halfway up what turned out to be the final hill, I broke, I exclaimed, "If there is another hill I will lose it, I can't take this mentally, the not knowing what is around the corner, Debi. I can't do it!" Looking back on it, I may have been a little bit dramatic,but it felt right in the moment.

Then, just as the final Zombie was about to overtake us, Hallelujah! I see the parking lot and the stairs, we made it through another walk around Lake Johnson. As we were leaving, having survived our latest adventure, we looked at each other and said:

"We should totally do this more often!"


Thanks for reading and until next time....Enjoy the day!