You're never too old...!!

The other day I decided to return to my old gym. It's been so long since I visited them - a bit like my last confession in that regard. With the 10k walk coming up on the 26th April the pressure is now on to get fit. Besides I still have membership in the gym until the end of May. Foolishly I took out a 2 year membership with a friend and then as soon as we began to pound the treadmill together - Murphy intervened - she got a full time job and I began to work in the office with Kevin and that was the end of that! So essentially I've been paying for nothin' for the past two years - hate that! It takes a bit of the sting out of it when I remind myself that my friend who joined up with me is an accountant and very sensible with money - so we're in this frustration together.

What's even WORSE and further adds to my shame is the fact we have a fully equipped home gym out in the garage complete with treadmill, exercise machines, t.v. music sound system, mirror and loudspeakers! It's disgusting I know - I should be the fittest person in the world - there is absolutely NO EXCUSE. At least Kevin uses it - phew! that's takes the sting out - a bit at least. I even paid a personal trainer to come in and show me how to use the machines in our home gym and what happens? - nothin' - that's what happened.

It gets even more insane...here I am with membership in an excellent gym...a fully equipped home gym out in the garage and then what do I do? Yes - the insanity to get fit intensified - I took private weight training sessions with super fitness guru Sherry who has enticed me to do the 10 k walk. It was the best for last - that's for sure. The problem with the other two was I found it next to impossible to 'do it' unless somebody was expecting me - if you get the drift - life gets in the way! Then of course I started the YOSA year and questioned all my fiscal insanity - the exercise thing stood out as being a classic example of how I was messing around and making an ass of myself.

So the guilt about wasting all that money, and the thought of the 10k ahead was enough incentive to get me back to both the home gym and the paid gym - both at the same time. It was in the HG that I was listening to Pink the other day and it was in the PG that I encountered a remarkable woman last Saturday. I had just walked the chip trail and was feeling full of the joys of spring, so decided, on the spur of the moment to pay a visit to my long lost paid-for-gym. It was like I never left - I keyed in, and the cheery voice on the machine said "Enjoy your workout". I answered back to the invisible woman "I'll do my best" and in I went.

I tried not to LOL (laugh) when I found myself alone with two women - one lady was a Mennonite as you could tell from her dark clothing. She must have been sweating profusely (which is the object of the gym after all!) - as she rowed away to God's knows where on the rowing machine dressed in a long black heavy woolen dress with strange head gear and clunky walking brogues. In fairness to her she was doing better than me! The other lady was remarkable - an 85 year old by the name of Ruth (who was far fitter than me - that's the LOL part!).

The two of us got chatting and that was the end of that - I did no work out apart from one or two machines. Ruth had responded to my smile and began talking like as if we were best friends. She was so lonely and at the end of our little chat asked me if I would like to meet up for a coffee one day - so now I have a new friend! She told me in a nice motherly way that I was not using the machine properly - which is true I wasn't - and that if I went too fast, I could do myself an injury. Easily known she used to be a teacher! She suggested that I invest in some private lessons to really get to know the machines. I didn't tell her that I felt I had 'invested' enough money already on exercising! She would have been shocked.

Ruth is an artist in her spare time, volunteers in her church and attends the gym 3 times a week. She drives her own car and is not against falling in love again. She was widowed some years ago and was just about to marry her husband's good friend, when he died too some 3 years ago!

Ruth had lots of other amazing life lessons to teach me such as - persistence is the mother of miracles - the importance of putting a luggage tag on your walking cane - no matter what life throws at you, just keep on going - that exercise keeps you mentally alive - and best of all that 'You're never too old!' She had had a tough life, with many health problems and her youngest child was knocked down and killed when he was only 6 and stuff she did not want to 'burden me with'.

She left her home in Ontario when she was 15 because her father detested the snow and horrible climate. When they sold their home she single-handedly painted the inside and outside of their 8 roomed house before coming out to Victoria in 1939. They packed all their possessions into a little box and away they went just like the pioneers you read about in stories - except this one was real! They arrived to a little shed in the middle of nowhere on Vancouver Island with no running water, no electricity. Her mother bought a piano for herself and her sister. They were home-schooled, going into the nearest big town to sit exams. Ruth and her sister used to perform little piano recitals and entertained themselves with - need I say - Simple Abundance!! Hello! Sound familiar?

O.K. I do not want to live in a shed in the middle of nowhere with no electricity or running water. It's just the way her eyes misted over when recalling the happiness of her life back then when everything was so simple and unspoilt - close to nature and making your own music.

Sure I know I didn't use the gym the way it was intended to be used - but I've got a new friend and a brand new attitude now!!

Cheery Billy Bye and remember...You're never too old!

Do something nice for yourself today.

Patricia Delisha xxx