Behold the Rowing Machine

Hello and if you are a rower, may the oars be with you.  Or, if you are an indoor rower like me, may whatever passes for oars when you go through the motions and effort of rowing be with you.

If you have an oscilloscope interfaced with the internet, you can get a better picture of what ethernet waves look like.

From 1976 until 2004 my main physical activity for the sake of health and happiness was long distance running at an easy pace.  To win races, perhaps the "no pain no gain" approach needs to be a significant part of daily running.  But I was only running for the health of it and there was lots of gain with no pain.

But by  2004, some pain was showing itself in a knee which had been injured while I had been on active duty in the Marines and so I began looking for a replacement for the aerobic activity of running.

Behold the Rowing Machine!   Actually, I've never thought those words until a few seconds before writing them in this post.  The first time I saw a rowing machine was when I visited a YMCA in El Paso, Texas.  If my thoughts could have been translated into words at that moment, they would have been something like, "What's that?!  Why is it in the back of the room?  Why doesn't anybody use it?  I think I will walk over there and get a closer look."

Upon closer inspection, it looked like the thing to do was to sit on it and pull the handle attached to a chain.  I did.  It felt okay but didn't feel like work.  But I was cautious and decided to limit myself to 30 minutes of gentle use, and see how it felt.  I was surprised that after 20 minutes or so of doing something that didn't feel like work, I started to perspire.  The monitor mounted on the machine indicated I was burning calories almost as fast as if I'd been running and I was impressed.

I looked up Concept 2 on the internet the next day, phoned them, and a week later UPS delivered a rowing machine to behold at home.

From then on I had a way to consider the dream of life while rowing in the privacy of home.

This is the end of the beginning post in this blog.