I don’t exercise at a health club. It’s not that I’m against health clubs; years ago when life looked a little different I worked out at a small health club for a while.
These days, I struggle to find time to floss, let alone an extra drive to town to be able to work out. We live in the country and with running up and down to all the kids activities and everything else in our life, a health club just doesn’t fit into our lifestyle. In the time it would take to drive to and from the nearest health club, I can already have my workout done.
Truth be told, training in a busy commercial gym just isn’t as comfortable for me as working out with my family at home. I enjoy training with my husband and children and even with my brother and his wife and daughters. That’s just me.
When I first started making an effort to get fit, my exercise routine consisted of running and occasionally a cardio kickboxing dvd. As the years progressed, and I gained some experience, I began to add more things to my routine. When I got married, my husband introduced me to a new world of ways to exercise. It included calisthenics. Say what? Yes it took him a while to explain that the fancy word basically meant bodyweight type exercises, push-ups, squats, lunges etc. I was so impressed because it all sounded very clever. Then he added more things. Tire-flips, sledgehammers, tabata, HIIT, working the focus mitts; these were just a few of the words and terminology he added to my vocabulary and my workout regimen.
Initially, our home gym included a couple of pairs of dumbells, a skipping rope and a set of monkey bars in the yard that we use for chin ups. My husband wanted to set up a more elaborate home gym in the garage, hoping to include a power rack, bench and a larger collection of weights. Since my husband is also thrifty, we began looking through the online classified advertisements for some affordable used equipment. Lo and behold, he found a complete gym set for sale that included almost everything he wanted with the added bonus of a large punching bag and a stationary bike.
After calling the owners of the equipment, we decided to take a drive and inspect it first-hand. Now as I said before, we live in the country, so we are kind of used to being out on the back roads. But as we followed the directions to this place, the road kept getting more and more desolate.
My husband said “Wow, these guys really live out in the middle of nowhere.”
We drove and drove, and eventually the paved road turned into a dirt road, and we wondered if we’d made a wrong turn somewhere. But we pressed on, and eventually came across a farm that turned out to be the place we were looking for. When we arrived, there was a guy welding the bumper on a large off road vehicle in the yard, the gym equipment was sitting out in an outdoor gym, and the song of crickets could be heard in the air.
We chatted with the owners of the gym equipment, and they told us that among other things, they farmed crickets.
“Crickets? Like the bugs?” I asked
Yes, they were raising crickets to be sold to pet stores across the country. Interesting!
When we left, my husband said to me; “This is the kind of thing you’d see in some sort of thriller movie. Lost travellers come across a farm in the middle of nowhere and they’re raising crickets.”
Anyway, we liked the equipment, but had no way of getting all of it back to our place. No worries, they have a large truck and would deliver it for us. Nice! We gave the farmer directions to our place and he would deliver it the next day.
When he showed up he said, “Wow, what are you guys doing living way out in the middle of nowhere like this?”
My husband and I looked at each other and smiled.
Everyone’s nowhere is someone else’s somewhere.
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