Nordic Trackin'

I love my Nordic Track. It's old, its little performance tracker thingy bit the dust a couple of years ago, and I really should give it a good going over with a Swiffer cloth, but a half-hour on that thing makes the general craziness of my average day melt away. Not as much as doing a mile of laps in the pool will, but I don't have a pool in my sunroom. And I don't need to worry about chlorinated water seeping into my goggles on the Nordic Track. And I don't have to put on a bathing suit to use it, either.

Some history on this wondrous piece of machinery: I received it as a Christmas present back in 1992, although it was somewhat belated (due to the timeframe of ordering, delivery, etc.) and actually arrived the second or third day of January 1993. It was the last present my ex ever gave me--but what a doozy of a gift. Which made it that much more unbelieveable--so much more of a disconnect--when he returned from a week or so in Los Angeles in mid-January to declare that our nearly 12 years together were over. I mean, who gives their sweetheart a big-ticket gift like that if they are planning on ditching the dame? I can see you are way ahead of me on this one--someone who is feeling rather guilty. Believe it or not--astute observer of human nature that I am--THAT penny didn't drop in my too-trusting (or too mired in denial) brain for quite some time.

Now, I had wanted the Nordic Track because I wanted to get into shape, and, as I had mastered its admittedly ungainly technique (so much, at first, like patting your head and rubbing your stomach) at a local health club, I knew that if used properly it could give a great workout that was easy on the knees. Since I had (and still have) a wonky knee--souvenir of an aerobics class gone bad during my short sojourn in Boston--easy on the knees was a definite plus. Those were the halcyon days of the stair-master, a torture device for my poor patellae.

The rest of that winter and into the spring, though, I didn't use the Nordic Track to get in shape. I used it mostly to try to get warm. When you drop 20 pounds or so in a matter of a couple of weeks, you tend to get a bit cold. And my apartment in San Francisco didn't have central heating, so it tended to be pretty cold and damp, especially since the infamous drought had broken with a vengeance and every day brought chilly rain and winds that seeped in through the loose window sashes. But a few minutes on the Nordic Track had me sweating. And, sometimes, put me in a better frame of mind. Which is also why I kept it all these years--through the throes of binkdom, the happy surprise of meeting someone who was actually enamored of my dorkiness, and the married bliss that followed. I even sent away to Nordic Track to get a special packing box to protect it in the moving van when I moved to Chicago.

So, I've skied in place--off and on--for nearly 14 years. I sometimes go for months, letting the device collect dust as it hunkers, collapsed but patient, under the north windows of the sunroom--the ones that aren't floor-to-ceiling. Sometimes I use the thing every single day. I'm trying to get into the latter phase, because, aside from providing a really good workout, hopping on this ancient exercise machine and striding along to the oldies on my iPod makes me feel good. And it is great for building a shapely ass, although with less than a month to go before the infamous reunion, my guess is that even with the great workouts it provides, the Nordic Track has its work cut out for it. And so do I! Yikes!