The Great Boomer Shortage

Sunday morning at 24 Hour Fitness, and 35 or 40 people are working out. It’s the usual assortment of types — guys with major tattoos, guys for whom weight-lifting is probably an intellectual achievement, couples in sweats who park their kids in the child care room, guys whose bearing suggests they’re probably on parole after a few years in lockdown, skinny Latino teenagers slouching around, cute girls wearing iPods, whatever.

While marching along on the treadmill, and again while moving chunks of iron further away from the floor (temporarily) using handy systems of cables, gears, and levers, I’m looking around the room. And it strikes me that everybody there is at least 20 years younger than me. There may be a few over-40s, but not a single head of gray hair is to be seen.

So where are my peers? Is everybody else in such great shape that they don’t need to exercise? No, that doesn’t seem a very satisfactory explanation.

I’m not a jock, for Pete’s sake — I’m an intellectual. I don’t even know who played in the Superbowl, and I’m baffled that anybody would care. So why is it that, among the thousands of steadily maturing Baby Boomers in this town, I’m the only one who cares enough about health and fitness to get out on a Sunday morning and get a little vigorous exercise?

Sure, some of them are coming in in the afternoon, after I’ve gone. Or Monday morning or whatever. I’m not saying nobody ever works out. What I’m saying is that the demographic in the gym is seriously skewed away from my generation. Statistically speaking, if this is a valid sample (and it is — today wasn’t an anomaly), most people in the 55-and-over age group are not getting nearly enough exercise.

Considering the known benefits of regular exercise, this is a little weird. That’s all I’m saying.

Or … no, maybe there’s another thing. As much as I enjoy watching the cute 20-year-old girls work out, I wouldn’t mind feeling, once in a while, that I was doing an activity in the company of my peer group. It’s a little lonely, if you want to know the truth.

Loading In, Loading Out

Thinking vaguely (and not for the first time) about doing some gigs as a solo cellist. I have a couple of hours of very nice backing tracks, which I recorded into my computer. All finished, mixed, and ready to go. Doing two sets would be easy.

Not easy: cartage. I’ve had a minor but persistent backache for the past three days. Looking at the amp I use for my electric cello, I’m thinking, “There is no friggin’ way I could lift that thing in and out of the trunk of my car.” I’ve done it many times, but this week I wouldn’t even attempt it. I know better.

This whole thing about being 60 — it sucks. And I’m ridiculously healthy compared to a lot of people my age. I work out. I look around 24 Hour Fitness and I’m generally the oldest guy in the gym. But then I get a backache from sitting too long in my easy chair.

I need acolytes. Minions. Roadies. Servants. I suppose I could dragoon one of my high-school-age cello students into helping me load in for a gig. That would work once. But not as a regular thing.

Last year I looked into buying a car with a lower rear cargo compartment. Forget it — they don’t exist. And you don’t even want to know how much a van with an electric lift costs.

If I book a gig, I have to know I’ll be able to show up and do it. A backache is not a reason to cancel a gig.

By Bread Alone

I’d like to reorganize my eating habits. Having read the first half of In Defense of Food, I’m convinced: The standard American diet is really bad news. But because I live alone, have never done much cooking, and get nauseous at the thought of eating a salad, developing viable options may not be a stroll in the park.

Yesterday it occurred to me that I’d love to bake my own bread. I used to have a friend who baked bread, and it was always wonderful. But I own none of the required equipment, and I’ve never baked a loaf of bread. The probability of ineptitude is very high. And if I buy all this fancy equipment and then get discouraged when my first efforts are inedible, I will have wasted a lot of money. (I have a history of novel enthusiasms; gotta be careful about spending the bucks on them.)

I may start with vegetable soup. That’s almost bound to be easier. I wonder if they teach bread-making at the local community college, or at the local community center. And if they don’t … shouldn’t they? If I could learn to do it, not just adequately but well, I could teach other people. Yeah, there might be something in that. But first I have to learn to do it.

Food Flashback

Is that a Frito slathered in sour cream dip on your plate, or are you glad to see me?

Just started reading In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan. Excellent book, not only for its insights into healthy eating but also for its pitiless dissection of the American obsession with junk science.

I’ve had high cholesterol for probably 30 years. Pollan’s mention of the oat bran fad took me back to the early ’80s, when a doctor first recommended that I change my diet to lower my cholesterol. I took to baking oat bran muffins. And because they were so dreadfully dry and crumbly, I’d splot big wodges of margarine on them.

As we now know, the margarine was really bad for me. I thought I was taking steps to stay healthy. Somehow I seem to have survived, in spite of my own best efforts.

Cooking anything is basically too much trouble for me. I’m sure my diet would give a nutritionist hives. Just watching me eat it, I mean. But after reading even part of Pollan’s book, I wouldn’t let a nutritionist in my kitchen. So I guess we’re both safe, me and the nutritionist, for the time being.