Blow Torches, Goiters, Mexico & Gary Busey

January 12, 2011

Are you all aware of this 10,000 steps a day business?

So my doctors all said – get out, walk.. so I’ve gotten out.. and walked. It was slow going at first, I could do about a block or so before getting pretty fatigued and out of breath. Fast forward to now-ish… I’m walking 6 days a week, sometimes seven and doing just under 5 miles a day. I walk at a quick but not ridiculous pace, and there are plenty of hills in my neighbourhood, so depending on the route it can be challenging.

I heard about this 10,000 steps we each are to walk per day in order to maintain our health… so being a very trendy, current event-y individual – I went on down to my local sports merchant and procured myself a pedometer… yep… virility has long since flown the coop…. it’s only a matter of time before I shave my legs to help with wind resistance… what saves me from completely throwing in the towel, taking up shuffleboard and joining the local seniors mall walkers association… well, what saves me is this sentiment –

So there is a purpose, like Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man – I’m getting better, stronger, faster with each step. I’m all proud and feeling pretty darn good about myself and how far I’ve come in a relatively short time, then I bought the pedometer…

So I get the Devils calculator home and proceed to expend more calories opening the package then I ever have walking… seriously what is up with those clear plastic packages everything comes in now? Why bother retro-fitting buildings to make them earthquake-proof, just cover them in this packaging, all new construction – same packaging…. buildings would be indestructible for all eternity… I’m not even sure a nuclear blast would crack them open…. Alas that is a discussion for another day.

I get the package open with the help of some sulfuric acid, dynamite, a blow torch and the lasers Reagan wanted for his Star Wars missile defense, and finally there the little fella sits on the table, staring up at me. You need to enter a bunch of information, height, weight, stride length, head circumference, pupil diameter, number of teeth, toenail thickness – and a what seems to me overlong section on goiters…

I get the information entered and I am all systems go, for the inaugural walk, with the meter ready to record my every step. Off I go, I did 53 minutes of walking at my regular decent pace, got home, filled with anticipation – how many steps did I do, I’ll bet I obliterated the 10,000…. pull the meter off and take a look……. 4374.

I don’t think you can quite grasp the beautiful, graceful arc the pedometer made as I hucked it as far as I could out my back door. I think at one point it caught a bit of the early morning sun and it glinted for just a second, almost a wink – a sneering nod to the futility of ever coming close to the 10,000 steps. Are you kidding me, I walked nearly 5 miles, for almost an hour and that wasn’t even half of the recommended daily step count.

Hey Participaction Canada, suck it. Why not make the daily allocation 75,000, doesn’t matter – it’s just another number I’m never going to be able to attain… how about 250,000….. why not just recommend everyone walk to the Mexican border every morning and back…. before total despair set in, I started running some scenarios, maybe the 10,000 steps were for little people, or kids, or old people who take 19 shuffle steps to my every one… perhaps they meant animal steps, counting the four legs so every one of my steps needed to be multiplied by four….

Admittedly, these seemed highly improbable and more than a little far-fetched, but come ON! — Snappy Jesus in a Zoot Suit who has two and a half hours to walk everyday? Then I read the fine print, the 10,000 is an accumulation of your total steps taken for an entire day. So when taking that little nugget of info into account, I was well over the 10,000 – my daily total averages around 14,000 including the long walk, without that I would be under… not too bad for someone with a desk job…

The inspiration for all this health is three-fold… first for me, second for my family and third for Gary Busey, we used to hang out – after his motorcycle accident he was in quite rough shape – but he has become the wind beneath my wings…. to see how far he has come, thru the struggles, the torment, the long cold walk back from the brink of doom to live a vital, healthy life as a functional vegetable is stunning.

Besides, dude is ripped now… check it…