A2 - Wednesday, June 15, 1983 - North Shore News

The hazards of shaping up

I GUESS it was that joking remark I made about her posing for a painting by Rubens. Next thing I knew, my wife had joined a fitness centre.

Hey, that’s great, thought 1. Soon it'll be like having my own Jane Fonda clone at home. Of course, in my in- nocence, I failed to allew for the inevitable question that came the day she lost her twenty-fifth pound and was getting whistled at on the street again.

“What about you, Chubby Checker?”

It was true. I was no longer the winsome youth whom girls were always wan- ting to mother because I! looked so emaciated. (Never forget, the way to a woman's heart is through your empty stomach.)

Instead, a densely-packed mass of molecules’ had gathered around my navel, rather in the manner of the lava dome prior to the erup- tion of Mount St. Helens. And it wasn't raw muscle, either.

It did seem rather a waste for my trimmed-down beau- ty to come home to Flab- man. Reluctantly, I agreed that, since she had done such a neat job of consigning the fatty tissues to oblivion, I'd try to do the same.

And so I went out and bought) a muscle-building

triceps.

Wonderful.

After a while, by a com- bination of chin-ups, push-

strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

device called a Bullworker, a chin-up bar and some weights to tie around my legs. As I purchased these items, I was careful to ex- plain to the clerks that | wasn't just some guy going through a mid-life crisis, it was just that I needed to add a little bit of “tone” to my body.

Tone. That's one of the buzz-words in the fitness in- dustry. The blurb on the back of the package that the Bullworkers came in stated flatly that within months | would be a “smooth-muscled fighting machine .” The chin- up bar came in a box with a picture of a man whose body was a seething snake-pil of tendons, pectorals and

ups, leg-bends, jogging, Bullworking, light beer and limiting my diet to 1200 calories a day, a slight change in shape began to oc- cur in old Uncle Blob’s bod. So far, so good, eh? Here we are, a typical middle class West Coast couple, do- ing our fitness thing, living happily ever afterwards on Vitamin C among the cherry blossoms. Paradise found.

Of course, Jane Fonda wasn't built in a day. There were times when my beer belly (as critics called it) reminded me of the Buddhist story about the eagle that comes once every century to dust the top of a mountain with a cloth in the hope of

No trace of ‘honest 't

A THIEF startled by a vehi- cle being started up while he was siphoning gas from tt last week responded with = sur- prising honesty.

“Just a minute, I'm steal ing some of your pas.” he yelled at the driver as the vehicle backed towards him in the Gleneagles lot used as an overload parking area for users of B.C Fernes

The driver stopped as re quested, got out and found that sure enough the man was doing exactly as he had

claimed.

He had pnd off the lock- ing pas cap and had a hose tn the tank, leading to a gas can,

His story was that his own vehicle had run out of gas and that he had no money to buy any. But when the vic um of the theft got the thef to turn on the ignition of his own vehicle, the gas guage showed three quarters full

Though the victim let the tmef go, he later called the

pohce about the incident

Soup or Green Salad

JAGER SCHNITZEL

But when the thiefs licence number was traced it was found he had left the address where he was registered a month ago

Pohice are still in- vestigating . Meanwhile. they warn

about other problems which are becoming persistent at the Gleneagles overload parking area

In addition to thefts from vehicles, police were inform. ed of four incidents of van dalism (o vehicles left there

wearing If down.

The lonely hours of self- inflicted torment at the Bullworkers and shambling along the road with weights attached to one’s legs did leave me feeling pretty darn- ed good, for an old gaffer of 41.

But I have noticed over the years that you can usual- ly spot the athletes in a crowd by counting crutches, casts and bandaged heads.

Sure enough, my wife got too enthusiastic and the next thing she knew she had two shin-splints and a_ badly- strained shoulder muscle.

Not many more weeks later, trying to do a one- armed chin-up, I managed to np the muscles in my right shoulder, too. As of today, both of us have to go to a physiotherapy clinic twice a week for massage and ultra- sound treatments, and my wife is now on cortisone. Both of us are too gimped to so much as lift a shovel to get the garden happening.

The bad news is that blobhood yawns again. The good news is that this time we've got an excuse.

A smooth-muscled fighting machine, indeed. Rubens had the right idea.

Pass the salami and bring me another beer. will ya, babe?

1 f last weekend, such as torn

off door handles, mirrors and wipers.

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