Working Out With Wind

Haha! With a title like that you thought this would be off-colour, didn’t ya?

Sorry to bust your bubble.

When I was nine years old we moved to Switzerland. My mom spent the better part of four months before we got there teasing me about some of the changes we were going to be experiencing when we arrived. One of my favorite examples of this special sort of bonding is when she told me that all of the cows in Switzerland have one side of their legs shorter than the other due to grazing in a circular motion around the tops of the mountains. I didn’t know a whole lot about mountains at that time - I had spent most of my life in the Midwest up until then - and didn’t realize that mountains are huge and not every single one of them has a farm at the way tippy- toppity of it; where cows continuously walk around in circles like they have some weird sort of mad cow disease. To my nine year old mind it made perfect sense that the cows would have one side of their legs shorter. I was scared to death and I vowed to make sure that I walked equally up and down the streets. I think I was fairly successful because both of my legs are still the same length. Score!

Yes. They wear bells. And yes. It is awesome!

I was reminded of the short-legged-on-one-side cows when I walked out of a building today in Cheyenne. It was windy. Not just the blustery-and-you-deal-with-it kind, but the full-blown 35 mph gusts that alternate between forcing you to practically crawl along the pavement in order to keep moving forward and then knocking you over when it swirls behind you and you haven’t recovered from the stooped position. It was really fun.

I imagine this mode of transportation would be infinitely more dangerous here...

Everyone always says how windy Wyoming is but I hadn’t really experienced it because the summer was so pleasant, so I guess I didn’t really (want to) believe them. I wish I had a video of my odd zombie walk back the car. I tried to keep my arms down but they kept wanting to pop up to keep me from bashing my face in on some cement.

When I got back to the car I noticed that my muscles were sore, as if I had been working out. I’m not really a fan of that whole ‘working out until your muscles hurt’ stuff so this certainly perplexed me. It was then that I realized that by being forced to keep all of my muscles tensed so the wind couldn’t sneak up on me I was getting a bit of exercise. Totally my kind of exercise – totally the only kind worth doing. Or not doing, as the case may be. You don’t even have to think about it and you’re getting fit! It reminds me of Couch Tai-Bo that was totally the craze between me and some of my friends in High school. It obviously counts because you are exercising. Anyone remember “Sit and Be Fit”? I digress.

Like this, but with kicking and punching instead of towels, or whatever those are. Oh, and old people. None of that, either.

I have a new one now: ‘Working Out With Wind’. Do what you will with that one... I plan to do it every day for the unforeseeable future.