Michael: Tuesday, March 31, 2015

The roosters banter
Like adolescent school boys
With their shrill cackle.

To get in an upper body workout here I’ve developed, with Kimme’s help, a small porch gym since I don’t have the kettle bell or weights I have back home and we don’t feel like walking into town and availing ourselves of the one gym that we know of here in Volcan, which really isn’t much more than an old gym rats idea of gym with a young strong guy as owner/instructor and some very old and well worn equipment. Not that I need everything to be shiny and new, but I’d at least like all the parts to work and feel reasonably safe to operate.

I have a make shift pull up bar that is a long extension paint roller held between chains that are there to either hold plants or a hammock, and it works great. Next month I step up to a 10-9-8-7-6-5 repetition countdown between sets of 500 count jump rope exercises totaling 3,000 jumps with the weighted rope Kimme bought for me. My goal is to build up to 15 pull ups. I don’t know where on the net I came up with that number but now it’s locked in place.

The other piece of equipment I’m using wasn’t intended for me when Kimme ordered it from the states, but really like is the WOSS suspension trainer. She got it to develop the ability to eventually do push ups so I thought it might be more like the wuss trainer, but I’ve discovered it’s remarkably difficult yet enjoyable. Doing push ups off the ground with a system that requires balance isn’t easy for me and I’m lucky I can get to 10 in a minute whereas with my push up board at home I’d do that in half the time then move on to another position and roll out another set of 10 until I’d do 60 push ups in all. That’s not going to happen with the WOSS. I also do lat pulls, tricep extensions, bicep curls, hip raises and suspended crunches. I’m enjoying this workout so much that I’m going to put off getting a kettle bell for a couple of months.

What I can’t put off is a trip to David tomorrow to pick up our papers from the States which we need to file our taxes. Kimme wants to head up to Boquete from there for the Tuesday market which means 4 hours on the bus. But I am hoping to pick up a few exercise related items along the way - some chain lube and a new seat which will hopefully alleviate the rear end soreness I’ve been experiencing. It’s just exasperating that here in Panama that probably means heading for two different bike shops as the shop with the Specialized seat I want doesn’t have chain lube. Crazy I know, and it even exasperates the locals, but it’s not likely to change any time soon.