Day 11: Mr. Roper

cardiomachine: 20 mins leakybeaky, 15 mins ellipsis
(read James Joyce's Ulysses)
stretching: yes
pushups: twenty
crunches: thirty
breakfast: one eggs, beans on toast because I wish I were British, an apple, vitamins
lunch: dry salami, maple yogurt (Australian-style), cold cauliflower soup (Ara's mom's recipe), a few brussels sprouts
apartment clean?: reasonably

Last weekend we saw DV8's To Be Straight With You at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and it was one of those rare pieces of art that was both politically effective and artistically virtuosic. Not least because of a monologue, made up of text from an interview with a young Caribbean homosexual whose father stabbed him when he came out of the closet, a monologue which a dancer performed while performing Olympic-level feats -- with a jumprope.

A fucking JUMPROPE.

Keith (see yesterday's post), who is friends with that dancer, and told me that the dancer had once been a competitive jumproper, and that the director just decided that he'd have his performers use what they know. Keith said, "You know, they say that ten minutes with a jumprope is as intense a workout as a thirty-minute run." The Jump Rope Institute (yup) confirms that this is true (click here). Of course, I could never jog because the impact is bad for my bad arches, and so, the elliptical and exercise bike are my albatrosses.

Cut to me in the stretch room at the gym today. One of the biggest difficulties in this new fitness plan is simply getting to the gym -- when I need all the time I can to deal with pressing dissertation deadlines, and plays that just won't get written, an unnecessary trip away from the home office fucking sucks. And I hear this Indiana Jones whoop-crack sound and I look up from my downward-facing-dog and see, again,

a fucking JUMPROPE.

One of the other things I hate about the gym is how laws of probability necessitate that most of the people at the gym on any given day will be people who go to the gym regularly. Fucking in-shape undergrads walking around in muscle shirts while I grunt through my paltry twenty pushups don't you judge me. And one of those very fit undergrads was right there, jumproping.

And it was so cool. Criss-cross, double spins, or whatever the hell, superfast, I just watched in awe for a second, which was embarrassing, and besides, at the gym, you're not supposed to look directly at anyone, which is another reason why I hate it.

And another thing I hate about the gym is the elliptical, because all that work doesn't go anywhere, because elliptical-walking is neither a transferable nor an impressive skill. But jumproping, as we have seen, is. And if I do that frequently enough, I could have something neat to whip out at parties.

So I bought a jumprope. Weighted handles, for my fitness enjoyment. And now, two days out of my weekly four, I can get my cardio in without going all the way to the gym. The foot impact, which is light if you're doing it right, shouldn't be a problem for my feet. In fact, I think it might make me lighter on my feet.

Oddly, I just realized that the dance piece we saw at Yerba Buena the week before that had a major section that mimed a jumprope, which we discussed at some length in the car on the way home. THE FATES HAVE TOLD ME TO JUMPROPE.