Week 9 - Intense

"No Pause Week - Redux" is over, and was a complete success. My back feels better, and I felt stronger and stronger as the week went on. I think this next week, week 9, will be about intensity, and "Bringing It." "Bring it" is a favourite saying of Tony Horton, the guy who does P90. He is an absolute freak. 50 years old and he looks like a superman.
I've been thinking of my own athletic endeavors over the years. I played football for a few years, but I always went where I thought the ball was going to go, and never where it was. I don't have nay glorious moments where I kicked a goal to win the game or anything. I kicked two goals in a few games I seem to remember, a couple of good snaps, but definitely nothing to tell the grand kiddies about. I did karate too, and became a blue-belt. But when I was 13 I discovered golf. I loved it from the start, and I still love it. The smell of certain trees still takes me back to evenings on the golf course when I was 14 or 15, walking around and hitting balls. I would get so nervous before I played because it meant so much to me that I play well. I remember when my handicap was 7 and I was trying to make the pennant team, someone (wrongly) told me that you had to be off 6 to qualify for the team. So in the month before qualification I stopped handing cards in when I played bad, and had the one good round I needed that got me down to 6. Then I beat everyone in the try-outs. So on the night when they announced the team to play the first round at Royal Melbourne (still my idea of heaven), I couldn't believe it when my name wasn't called out. Because you didn't hand you're cards in, they said. I don't think I have ever been so upset in my life. It broke my heart. Looking back, I did the wrong thing, but I was a pretty intense fifteen year old boy, and a quiet word would have put me straight. It's only the last few years of having a son and thinking about how I'm going to treat him and how boys are treated in general that I've realized those men in charge of organizing pennant made a mistake with me. I don't think my life would have been any different, especially golf-wise. I didn't like practicing what I wasn't good at, because I wasn't good at it. I had a temper. I didn't take care of my equipment. I didn't have the confidence I needed to compete and win. All I wanted to do was hit balls, and I didn't really think about anything else. But I probably could have done without that disappointment.
The lowest my handicap got was 5, and that was only for a few months. I began to enjoy going out more, drinking and smoking. I still loved playing golf, but it was dawning on me that I wasn't that good at it.
How would I describe the next fifteen years? Active? Sometimes. Indoor cricket, even outdoor cricket for a while. Bike riding sometimes. For a while there I would ride to Mount Dandenong, carry my bike up the firebreak, and ride down through Fern Tree Gully. I got pretty fit doing that. Kick to kick with Clint and others at Bayswater West Primary. Got fit doing that. But nothing serious, and nothing sustained. Thing is, I never got fat. I was just worn down by smoking. You can exercise and smoke when you're young, but not in your thirties. It's one or the other. I joined a gym here with a mate, and we went a few times a week for a few months. But I thought it was boring. I have never been to a gym and not wanted to rush through my exercises and go home because it's so boring. I do a lot of walking and riding here. I didn't have a car for many years, and I still only drive on the weekends, maybe to a shop or a park. Whenever I go back to Australia, I hate spending the hour or so a day in the car that you have to to go anywhere.
So this is really the first time I have done any regular exercise.
I've been watching "The Watchmen," but not the movie. It's a moving comic, scenes straight out of the comic, but moving slightly, and with narration. It's really good. I wonder how I have never heard of the Watchmen before they made the movie. I'm not a comic reader, but I'm always on the lookout for quality SF, but I had never heard of this before this year. I'm looking forward to downloading the movie and watching it, especially the scenes with Dr Manhattan on Mars. There is no buzz here, of course. Japan and Western movies are strange. Movies are just coming out here now that have been on DVD for weeks overseas. I don't know how it works. This is the second biggest movie market in the world, so I guess if the movie does well in America, they sit back and think about how they can double up in Japan. The Star Wars movies all came out here two months after the rest of the world. So nobody has heard about the Watchmen here yet.
Speaking of SF, I have just finished the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons. Man, I loved these books. I was listening to them on audiobook all last year when I was constantly travelling back and forth between Australia and Japan to be with mum, so they are all mixed up with the emotions and sadness of that time. They remind me of airports, walking mum's dog Maysie around Bayswater South Primary School on cold, grey Melbourne days, and driving to the hospital in Ringwood. My sister has Coldplay, I have the Hyperion books. Audiobooks are amazing, because even though they go for several hours, I can pick a spot anywhere in the book and tell you exactly where I was when I was listening to it. And I mean exactly. For example, I was crossing the court that's off Edinburough Road up where Steven McEacheran used to live when I was listening to the part where Colonel Kassad attacked the legion of Shrikes.
My sister started a blog recently, and she talked about seeing the last time I saw mum, when I left to go back to Japan in June (I think) last year. I kind of remember it, even though I was consciously trying to remember it as it happened. I remember more vividly going to the hospital in Ringwood to visit her those few weeks I was there. Almost every time she'd be sitting in the chair in front of the window with a hand behind her head. She was always in that position the last month. I guess it was the most comfortable. She was so thin. But she always had a smile, and seemed cheerful enough. Leigh talks about us not really appreciating that she was dying. That's what it was like. We did our best to try and be positive in her presence, so the whole thing seemed confused. It's probably easier to be honest with someone in hospital if they've only broken a leg or something.
Anyway, onward and upward, as she would say.