Hay Caliente!

We are having a heat wave where I live, north of San Francisco. We’ve had 11 consecutive days of 100-plus temperatures. It cooled a little yesterday, but our temperatures are still far above normal.

Unless you go before sunrise, it’s too hot to hike in the hills, our favorite form of cardio. So it’s off to the gym with its treadmills, elliptical trainers, stair steppers, and stationary bikes. The machines I refer to as instruments of unrelenting boredom. I’m kidding. We do prefer the great outdoors, but with such extreme heat they look pretty darn good.

Patty and I both use the treadmills. And I have to admit, the ones they have now are pretty slick. There are various programmed workouts you can do on them, such as hill running, random, fat burning, etc. You can also enter your bodyweight and fitness level. All this stuff goes into the computer and provides a read-out on a screen in front of you as you trot along. Want to know your heart rate? Just grip the handles and the contraption measures your pulse.

If it sounds like I’m falling in love, I’m not. This technology has its place. But our dog, Tyra, can’t go with us on a treadmill. There is not the scent of the woods or the sight of deer and birds or the sound of leaves in the wind. No, on most days, we’ll still take our cardio outdoors.

Patty has a fancy iPod and says listening to the beat of up-tempo music is a big plus on the treadmill. I believe her. Mostly, the music selection coming out of the gym’s speakers is dreadful, at least to people in my age group. Funny thing though, over the years I’ve learned to tune it out while pumping iron. But on a treadmill you naturally seek a rhythm, and that tends to bring the beat within the awful noise and often putrid lyrics to one’s attention.

I guess we’ll survive it. The forecast is for our normal temperatures to return in a few days. They’ve been saying that for 10 days now.