Introduction
Memoir of a Rural Sisyphus-Redux
Bill Engleson
For a few years, I kept a diary of my inauguration into the Denman Community. This column, recently renamed Memoir of a Rural Sisyphus-Redux, will
extract a few of my observations from a dozen or so years ago and share them. Hopefully, they will have some modern times currency. Some will. Some will not. This one was written long before I discovered Pickleball.
Exercise-Before Pickleball
November 23, 2004
Have I talked about exercise? Well, apart from the chain-gang intensity of gardening that I have referenced, probably not. I must confess that I have never been an athletic fellow. I blame, well, no one really. Growing up in the desolate wasteland of my youth, I was not drawn to team sports. It may be now the way it was then…you were either a sporty fellow (or young woman) or you weren’t. I wasn’t. I did play a season of softball somewhere in my early teens. My church fielded the team and as I recollect, we regularly got our Christian clocks cleaned.
One year in high school, a basketball coach decided to form a team of over 6-footers. I went out but was miserable at it.
I attempted boxing as well somewhere in my dispirited teens. One errant punch in the belly of the Nanaimo pub that housed the Nanaimo Boxing Club and that was the end of my pugilistic foray. While there may be some pleasure to be had in hitting someone (and I’m still ambivalent about that notion) getting hit has absolutely no attraction for me, no matter what the Society for Masochistic Inclinations (SMI) have to say about it.
But, back to high school fitness. I recall we had to do a lot of running in those days. Huffing and puffing in the foothills behind NSSS. There were lots of places to hide behind bushes, stare at the sky and dream of freedom from teenage prison.
Over the years I’ve dabbled in brief exercise regimes. For a long time, I swam regularly but a lengthy interruption due to nasal surgery dried up that source of toning. Prior to selling our city house, I did a lot of morning walking. And I’ve always liked to bike.
But now, my inclination to lethargy is my biggest enemy. More later.
Postscript: These days, 2021 and moving into 2022, I play lots of Pickleball…in-between moments of delightful lethargy, now a friend of sorts.
