Armchair aerobics

The other day (Thursday, June 4, 2009) I’m about finished our complete circumnavigation of the so-called elitist country-club with our dog.
She loves it. Every morning she demands to be taken there, and we usually can oblige.
It’s about a five-mile walk, completely around both ponds. —Boughton Park was once the Fairport Water Supply.
There are two jaunts through squirrel-lands, and a chipmunk land, plus the walk is almost entirely through woods.
But the footing is terrible; exposed roots, some knotted, cross at least 70% of the paths. They can trip you up and send you flying.
There also are ups-and-downs.
The Boughton Park Commission, which I was long ago a member of, got the wet spots bridged.
I did a brochure for them, and labeled one bridge the “Mead (‘Meed’) Skyway,” after the old farmer who built it.
It was a long wooden walkway, without handrails, elevated about four feet above a wide marshy slough. Reminded me of a skyway.
Don Mead was our maintenance-man at that time, a crotchety old guy in his 70s.
I’m almost done, descending the hill through chipmunk land, a somewhat open area next to an open picnic pavilion installed long ago by the Bloomfield Lions Club on a promontory.
I’m headed toward a peninsula out into the West Pond.
As I come down the hill, I see the older lady who arrives in the dark maroon Buick Century is sitting at a picnic-table out on the peninsula.
She’s facing away from me, overlooking the pond, and appears to be madly spinning a horizontal invisible beer keg with her forearms.
She’s also rocking back-and-forth in a swoon, as if conducting an imaginary symphony orchestra out over the pond.
She doesn’t see me — doesn’t even know I’m there. So I tread quietly behind her, headed out to the point.
All I can think is “Marcy, it’s everywhere!”
Uh-ohhhhhh; now she sees me. She’s rather embarrassed.
“What do you think of my armchair aerobics?” she asks, as I walk back the peninsula.
No comment; what can I say? —I’m sure I now have an inadvertent “deer-in-the-headlights” look.
All I can think is “whatever turns ya on, lady!” But I don’t say that; she’s embarrassed enough already.
“I learned this in Florida from my 86-year-old mother. She’s stronger than me. Every morning she and her friends do this in their retirement gym for a half-hour.”
“Well, a half-hour is what makes the difference,” I mumble.
I’m 65 years old. I get dragged five miles over horrible footing by a dog that pulls almost the whole way, and occasionally lunges off into the underbrush.
That lady is probably the same age as me; perhaps younger. I think staggering around this here park is more fruitful than spinning an imaginary beer keg.

“The so-called elitist country-club” is nearby Boughton (“BOW-tin” as in “ow”) Park, where I run and we walk our dog. It was called that long ago by an editor at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, where I once worked, because it will only allow taxpayers of the three towns that own it to use it. We are residents of one of those towns. —There are two large dammed ponds therein.

Our current dog is “Scarlett;” a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s almost four, and is our sixth Irish-Setter. She’s a hunter.

“Fairport” is a small suburb east of Rochester on the Erie Canal. It had its own water-supply, but switched to using county water. They sold their water-supply area to the Ontario County towns of Victor and East and West Bloomfield. The three towns turned it into a park.

We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western N.Y. Adjacent is the rural town of East Bloomfield, and the village of Bloomfield is within it. East Bloomfield is one of the three towns that own the park — West Bloomfield another.

RE: “Marcy, it’s everywhere!” —“Marcy” is my number-one Ne’er-do-Well — she was the first I was e-mailing stuff to. Marcy and I worked in adjacent cubicles at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired. A picture of her is in this blog at Conclave of Ne’er-do-Wells. At one time she asked how I managed to dredge up so much insane material to write up, and I responded “Marcy, it’s everywhere!”