absent.canadian

Indoor climbing has been a great way to externalize my anger and frustration of late, but it’s really more of a strength-building exercise … and while my biceps have thanked me several times for this, my heart has been asking me for more cardiovascular exercises.

I bought a rowing machine a few weeks ago, and did my first 5,000 metre row last night. This involved 25 minutes of continuous, vigorous rowing.

Rowing is deceptively easy. It works the entire body, so there doesn’t seem to be one spot that gets particularly sore. And when I’m rowing, I don’t find that I get fatigued until I stop; that’s when my otherwise-healthy body turns into a quivering mess of exhaustion.

Shortly after I rolled out of bed this morning, my heart whispered “thank you”. Between the rowing and the climbing, I think I’ve finally found an exercise regimen that I enjoy.

I have officially been in Canada for a week now.  Oddly, the thing I’ve enjoyed the most has been sleeping.  The average night consists of going to bed around 10, sleeping like a log until about 7 or so, waking up, eating breakfast, and then napping for another three hours.  I must have needed it, too, because I have consistently done that for at least five of the seven days I have been here.

I went to a local climbing gym last night.  It was just so-so; the routes weren’t clearly marked at all, and I found their routes ranked very inconsistently.  Still – it was great to get out and do some climbing, and perhaps shake off some of the body mass built up over several days of eating copiously.

A few of my friends from high school organized a very informal get-together a few nights ago; so informal, in fact, that only four or five of us showed up.  It was still a lot of fun, though, and I enjoyed the rapidfire “what happened to so-and-so” questions that always pepper events like this.  To my amazement, I learned about one schoolmate who is doing hard time for his involvement in Canada’s largest cocaine bust around 2000 or so.  Some high schools have the notoriety of a famous politician or actor; we are bestowed with farmers and druggies. 

I’m still on track for my tourist day in Toronto, where I will do all sorts of silly things requested by my faithful blog audience some posts ago.  Look forward to more ridiculous hijinks to waste your bandwidth and precious time with.