Feel the Burn

I am not, nor have I ever been, an athlete.  I do recognize, however, the many health benefits that come from regular exercise, and one of my goals while living here in Canada has been to increase my activity level for general health and well-being.  I am not getting any younger, and the butter here is delicious.  I need to offset the butter intake, people.

I have tried to find activities that I enjoy so that I can overcome the gravitational pull of "Let's Make a Deal."  This winter term, I decided to enroll in a barre class for the first time.  The course description billed this as a class that incorporated elements of Pilates and dance with the aid of a ballet barre.  The term "low-impact," a favorite of mine, also appeared, along with the promise that I would leave "feeling incredible."  I used to enjoy dance classes way back when, and I like Pilates.  How bad could it be?

The description of the class is accurate.  I do feel incredible after each session.  Incredible here means, "amazed at the fact that my limbs did not shake off my torso and that I did not collapse from over-exertion as the techno music pulsated along to the oxidation of my dying cells."  Did I mention this class is called, "Barre Burn?"  No?  I should have known that anything with the word "burn" in the title is not designed for me.

The instructor of this course, I am convinced, is not human.  She is a machine.  She teaches an hour of a higher-level barre class immediately preceding my hour-plus-long class, and her energy never flags.  In fact, she always goes about ten minutes over on our time, which I know because after about the first 15-20 minutes of class, I look desperately at the clock willing myself to go on.  She was not present for the very first class session, which I have decided was a shrewd marketing technique.  Her substitute on Week One made me believe I could have a shot at making it through an entire class without praying for sweet, sweet death.  The first week that she did teach, I was unable to climb stairs without agony for four days.  I overheard her say today that she was going to take a trip for a full two weeks "down there" and was going to steal ideas for more barre exercises.  I am convinced her trip is not to Mexico or Arizona, but rather to Hades, and she is going to the Devil himself to find even more ridiculously painful and sadistic routines.

This powerhouse instructor has a charming habit of counting reps down from eight, after you have already done about 2,000 motions.  Just when you think you have survived, she says, "and hold!"  She then counts even longer and then commands you to pulse the motion in a new and horrifying direction.  I did not know that so many muscle groups could simultaneously submit their resignation to me.  Then, of course, you have to do everything again on the other side, for the sake of having both hemispheres of your body despise you.

The "aid" of the barre is debatable.  By the time we get to the barre, I stagger toward it after having been worked to near-death in the middle of the floor for a good 25 minutes.  The exercises at the barre feel easier than what has just transpired, but my legs are still shaking in protest of every bend, stretch, and yes, even standing still seems impossible.  I try to save my miniature collapses for moments when the machine is looking away.  I jump back in just as she is saying something like, "Just when you want to give up, keep pushing and breathe through it!  This is when the body feels the change!"  Her programming is apparently also suited to work as a doula.  Why I am doing this?  Lady Gaga sings overhead, telling me that I am holding my leg in a hydrant-ready pose "for the applause, applause, applause..."  I don't hear anyone clapping, but somehow, I manage to hang on during this portion and am rewarded by...FLOOR WORK!

I can usually see the light at the end of the tunnel by the time we get to the floor.  Even if the exercises there are difficult, at least my legs no longer have to support my body weight, and the pesky hand-weights that cannot just be 2.5 lbs each because they feel like the weight of the western world are cast aside.  Plus, we will soon be stretching, thank goodness, and the techno remixes will give way to a slower-tempo ballad of hope and inspiration.

I know that the stretches feel so much better because of all of the abuse my body has just endured.  But what feels the absolute best to me is the last cadence of music and the "Thank you ladies; you all were great!" that means I can profess to my classmates that I, once again, surprisingly, did not require medical attention, waddle to my car, and drive home.

The machine personally told me I did well today (our last session of the term) and asked me if I would be enrolling in the next session.  I may have told her that I was moving out of the country soon, which is kind of true, if soon is "within the next four months." If you can't use your lack of Canadian citizenship to avoid pain and suffering, then when can you use it?  There is some small part of me that would re-enroll, but that part is probably not any of the muscle groups below my waist.

News Flash: It is STILL Winter

Hello, friends.  I realize that I have not posted anything on this blog in a long while.  I have had many thoughts and good intentions about writing a post.  I wanted, for instance, to tell you all about the indoor Christmas parade I attended in Edmonton, wherein a woman from a local dentist's office dressed as a tube of toothpaste and some greyhound rescues were dressed as reindeer.  Vixen, in particular, was not amused.  There were mascot performers and some people from an organization known as the Knights of the Northern Realm.  It was quite a display.  It was the best (read: only) indoor parade I have ever attended.

But that was December.  Several long months ago.

And it is STILL winter.  But, take heart.  The sun returned at the bus stop a few weeks ago after a long absence!  There are also still festivals in this fair city.  A few weeks ago we went to the Silver Skate Festival.  Outdoors.  It was a high of zero degrees Fahrenheit.  We were undeterred, but I think I almost lost a toe, or two.  My toes aren't that great, anyway, but I would like to keep the full set for resale value.

Almost everyone up here who knows I am from Virginia asks me how I am handling winter.  I tell them that even Virginia has had a rough season this year.  They are impressed by your snow totals, I must say, Mid-Atlantic folk.  I have managed quite well, I think, to survive this long winter without losing my minds or my happy spirit, but I have to say that one thing, above all else has bothered me about winter here:  One basically has to guess where the lanes to the roads are located, especially when it is actively snowing at night.

They manage to mark where stop lines would theoretically be at intersections.  They put up signs to show where hypothetical medians go.  There is no such aid for tracking the lanes themselves.  You are on your own.

Last night, I was driving home from the concert hall downtown, the Winspear Centre for Music.  It's a lovely place, and I had a great rehearsal with the Alberta Baroque Ensemble.  It was such a great evening of music-making, in fact, that I had forgotten all about the weather outside.  As I stepped through the doors with my fellow choristers out into the night air, one man gasped and said, "Not again?! It is supposed to be too cold to snow."  That right there is a phrase I never adequately understood until I moved to Alberta:  "Too cold to snow."

I got into my car and started down the road.  The snow was light, glittery, and wispy-- beautiful, but it was blowing like white desert sand across my windshield and the road.  One cruel joke of highway safety is that lane markers are also white.  There are also no reflectors on the roads here; they would just be broken under the wheels of a plow.  So, Kelley, just pick a spot that looks like a lane and pray you make it home.  That is what I did.  Tractor trailers, oil rigs, pokey little Hondas, and I just made our own highway configuration.  It was terrifying: a snow globe of terror, brought to you by the Government of Alberta.

I feel lucky to be able to write this entry today.  It is an entry of great gratitude that I paved my own path and survived.

Oh, and Saturday will be a downright spring-like 39 degrees.  Cue the robins.