by Steve Sakiyama –
I’ve been walking a lot lately. It started as a way to relieve stress – caused by the intense pressures of writing humour I guess. Up until recently, my exercise has been limited to chasing ice cream trucks or making a break to be first in the dinner buffet line. It’s my Pavlovian response to any bells – ice cream, dinner or otherwise.
I thought about running but years ago my six-year-old son saw two joggers and said: “Hey, those guys are bald.” Based on a sample size of two he concluded that jogging causes baldness. Although it was a classic example that correlation does not imply causation, in the best interests of my scalp I decided that running was not for me. To top it all off, my running style is best described as a tourista in Mexico desperately searching for a bathroom. Fast, but not pretty.
To be fair, I used to attend a fitness centre with big-screen TVs and play with the amazing equipment while watching the Food Network. I learned a lot about muscle groups from the nice people there and began to use words like “quads” and “glutes” without having a clue what they meant. For example: why do we have quads when we only have two legs? And don’t glutes refer to Gluteus Maximus, commander of the Imperial Roman Army who started the gluten-free diet?
I initially worried that if I stayed on a piece of equipment too long, an irritated Arnold Schwarzenegger look-alike would tap me on the shoulder and say: “Hasta la vista, baby.” Although this never happened, after a while I realized my true calling was not the leg press machine but a simple walk in the park. Although I miss the Italian cooking shows and the fun equipment, my workouts are now in a fitness centre called “outside.” Unlimited play time works best for me.
Speaking of expending energy, the atmosphere is a huge energy machine that moves air in response to the unequal heating over the globe. The tropics receive more energy from the sun than anywhere else, so the equator is much warmer than the poles. The atmosphere tries to minimize this energy difference by redistributing it through the movement of massive amounts of warm air pole-ward and cool air equator-ward. It sounds simple, but due to influences such as the Earth’s rotation, these circulations result in complex flows and features that determine our weather such as troughs, ridges and the jet stream.
As we head into this month what kind of weather awaits us on the South Island? The forecast models lean slightly toward an August with normal amounts of precipitation and above-normal temperatures.
Whatever the weather, nature is on full display this month so get outside and move. Whether you walk, lift weights or chase ice cream trucks, it’s good for your body but even better for your soul. Sometimes there are just too many bells in life that demand a response – stretching us in too many directions at a pace that leaves us off-balance and breathless. So get out, enjoy a simple walk and allow your senses to drink deeply from the unlimited, re-energizing power of the wind, sea and sky.
Before you know it, you’ll be walking on sunshine.
~ Weatherwit
