Walking: https://www.urbanranger.com
Urban Ranger [ An Everyday Systems <http://www.everydaysystems.com/> site ] [image: AddThis Social Bookmark Button] <http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php> Search <http://everydaysystems.com/search/> | Bulletin Board <http://everydaysystems.com/bb> | Podcast <http://everydaysystems.com/podcast> Song of the Urban Ranger I am an urban ranger, I walk, it's what I do. The city is my wilderness, Sky scrapers are my trees. I hang my thoughts on lamp posts, And park my dreams in metered spots. I populate the empty lots With my good ghosts, And invest the pavement with diamond recollections. Exertions are my exercise, My labors for effect. I walk to go and go to walk. I walk to work and work that I might walk. I walk to dream up orders For my servile sitting self. No stagnant sedentary thoughts Shall rule this life. But who knows what's for what. I sure walk a hell of a lot. Don't waste my time, what is this? Urban Ranger is an extended metaphor to convince people (starting with myself) to make a habit of purposeful, sustained walking. Man, you are a bad poet And you should be doing your job. Gimme a break. This is the internet. Exertion vs. Exercise It's idiotic. We've invented one class of machine to spare us physical exertion, and another class of machine to inflict it back on us again, but in an infinitely more boring, painful, and useless manner. We view it as the triumph of our age that work no longer means labor, that we can burn fossil fuel instead of living muscle. And yet we berate ourselves that we do not labor in our leisure time, that we do not spend our freed hours in the gym, that torture chamber that is only possible because the automobile and the escalator have saved us so much labor that the surfeit is killing us. It's offensive. Work, dammit, and you won't have to play work later. No, you probably can't kill a caribou for dinner, or plow a field, or do most of the useful work that your ancestors did for thousands of generations. But you can still walk. And believe it or not, walking is enough (more on that below). Let me guess: you don't go to the gym, or strap yourself to the bike machine, or grind the cartilage off your joints jogging around the track, as often as you think you should, if at all. Maybe you go for six months, plateau, get bored, quit for a year, get disgusted, and start up again. Maybe you haven't exercised in ages. You suspect that your problem is a deficiency of willpower. Well, you're off. Your problem is you are squandering willpower on a hopeless task: exercise divorced from purpose. The solution: purposeful exertion; in particular, walking. Walking is *still* useful. It is interesting and pleasant. You can think and observe while you walk. You get somewhere. You don't need any special equipment or outfits. It provides great health returns on very little investment, without the risk associated with high impact activities. And you can do it for the rest of your life. On Thu, Dec 21, 2023 at 3:03 PM Patrick Moore <bertin...@gmail.com> wrote: > + 1 for walking, dog or no dog. I've lived within 15/100 mile of a Defined > Fitness gym for 20 years and have never joined, and I attribute my youthful > good looks to the 10 years I caught back from the slow-down of the temporal > continuum during the 1 winter season I tried riding a stationary trainer > indoors -- very structured 60 minute workout with multiple cycles of > working up to max heart rate, cool-downs, and repeat. Time slowed to > 1/100,000th of its normal flow and I aged, or failed to age, accordingly. > > Slightly more seriously: even tho' I avoid it as much as I can, I really > do think that if you had to choose just 1 healthy activity, walking would > be it. > > And there's shovelglove, which I've been doing very sporadically for 15 > years: https://www.shovelglove.com > > Latterly, I cut the handles down 2 12 lb hammers to 8" and do combined > curls and presses, or at least that's the idea. Mostly, the hammers sit > near my work desk and send dark, accusing looks at me for neglecting them. > But I still do pushups -- straight back, all a way down to touch chest, all > a way up with straighted arms. > > And sitting cross-legged -- good for flexibility. > -- Patrick Moore Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Executive resumes, LinkedIn profiles, bios, letters, and other writing services ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *When thou didst not, savage, k**now thine own meaning,* *But wouldst gabble like a** thing most brutish,* *I endowed thy purposes w**ith words that made them known.* -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. 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