In Search of the perfect workout…Tug of War, Hot Yoga, and other bad choices

I am 31 years old. Not 13, 16, 25, or even 30. I have passed all those milestone birthdays and I am now 31. So by now, I should have learned that eager over-exertion in any endeavor rarely works out well. Slow and steady is the way to go, or at least that’s what the old folks say. But as usual, I eschewed the wisdom of my elders and followed my own foolish desires.

 

Last Friday, my job had a staff fun day. Which, contrary to the images of the forced bonding and fake interactions the words “team building day” conjure up, was actually really fun. There were no cheesy ice breakers and we started drinking before noon. Not a bad way to spend your workday.That was until the tug-of-war started.

 

Now let’s be clear, I have not engaged in any sustained (over three weeks at a clip) exercise regime since Ernie Righetti imposed “hell week” conditioning on my varsity  basketball team back when I was a high school senior. So I am not sure what made me think participating in four back-to-back struggles of rope pulling was going to yield anything but pain and soreness. Predictably, I woke up on Saturday morning feeling like I got into it with Jake LaMotta the night before.

 

Could I let it stop there? No. Instead of, say, adopting a plan of regular workouts like walking or swimming that allow me to build up my endurance gradually, I decided to take my sore and tired ass to Bikram yoga. For the unschooled, Bikram is a type of yoga that is practiced in a room that is heated to 105 F and 40% humidity. It lasts an hour and a half. That’s ninety minutes. Ninety. Ninety minutes of stretching, posing, holding, and contorting your body into positions that defy nature, gravity, and explanation.

 

God sent me an early heads-up that the class was not what he had in mind for me. I wore my Steve Biko t-shirt to class and as soon as I walked into the yoga studio, the woman who would later teach my class asked me, “Is that John Mayer?” Seeing as Steve Biko  1) was Black 2) wore an afro 3) looks NOTHING like John Mayer, not even if John Mayer dyed himself a deep cocoa brown and 4)Was an anti-apartheid freedom fighter not a pop singer, I thought, at first, that homegirl was talking to someone else. She wasn’t.

 

That should have been my sign that she was out of her mind and that I should get the hell out of there. I did not heed the warning. Instead, I rolled into the yoga room, which smelled of feet, and sat down next to my good friends, Kate and Jeanine.

 

For the first minute I was like “oh, this isn’t so bad, well, except for the whole room smelling like feet” Then the heat hit me full on. So Kate, who is an experienced if not confident, yogi says “if you can just make yourself stay in the room you’ll have accomplished a lot”. So that became my goal. Just to stay in the room for the full ninety minutes. Just stay in the room. Just stay in the room.

 

Well that goal went to hell in a hand basket the minute “John Mayer” came into the room. She was ruthless from the beginning. I was tired from the beginning. We bumped heads at every pose. I was still focused on just staying in the room. She had other thoughts in mind, like me putting the soles of my feet on top of my head while inhaling for ten seconds and exhaling for thirty.

 

I thought I was going to die. In fact, I think I did die, at least for a couple of seconds but then her shrill voice snatched me  from the peace of my post mortem and pushed me back into the hellish nightmare of that ninety minute class.

 

By the third pose I was huffing and puffing and trying to simultaneously focus on my breathing, strike the correct pose, and avoid passing out.  Did I mention I’d eaten curry for lunch? With each new pose I could feel my last meal trying to sneak up and leap out. Just stay in the room…just stay in the room…

Soon enough the ninety minutes were over and as I sat slouched in the reception area of the studio, a good feeling started to come over me. I was tired but I felt, somehow, better. And the next day I felt 21, or at least 25 again. I’m not sure what my long-term relationship with Bikram is going to be but I am going to wear a different t-shirt and give it at least one more try.

Now It’s Getting Good

I am coming up on my second full week in Jozi. Work is getting good. After a week of training I am finally interviewing folks and adjudicating visas. I had my doubts about Consular work but it seems very interesting because it forces one to use a host of human interaction skills learned over the course of a lifetime. Basically in two to three minutes I have to decide the credibility of an applicant and the veracity of their story based on a simple interview. It’s more art than science. While most of the people I interview tell the truth, I’ve had a few whoppers. Any story that involves a celebrity speaking to you in a dream and asking you to start a charity is probably not going to fly.

 

Last week I went on a tour of Johannesburg, including some areas such as Alexandra, Hillbrow and Berea, that visitors are typically advised to avoid. There is a LOT of money in Johannesburg and extreme poverty too. In most of the poor areas I visited the people were living in tightly spaces shacks. The shacks are positioned to close together that it’s hard to imagine there is room to walk between them. Most of the shacks don’t have running water and if they have electricity it’s…borrowed. These areas had a lot of vendors on the streets selling fruits and vegetables, little trinkets and generic, mass-produced crafts. There were also donkey carts and mini-van cabs galore. The poor areas reminded me very much of Ouagadougou and seeing them made it hard to believe that the bulk of the wealth in Sub-Saharan Africa was just two or three miles away.

I also visited

First Impressions of Johannesburg

7-12-08

Johannesburg, South Africa

I landed in Johannesburg about 12 hours ago. My flight was grueling but uneventful. The last time I was on a flight this long I went to Australia. At that time, I  vowed never again to ride coach on a long flight. Somehow, I broke that vow, and there I was, again, on a 20 hour flight, with my knees in my chest. 

The plane stopped, picked up passengers and  re-fueled in Dakar, Senegal. The stop was the halfway point between Atlanta and Johannesburg….eight hours done and eight to go. Oddly, a pesticide crew came in and sprayed the plane while we were waiting on the tarmac to take off. They claimed that the pesticides were approved by the World Health Organization and were safe. I remain dubious about that claim. Now that I think about it, my lungs hurt. 

The last time I was in Africa was nearly ten years ago as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Burkina Faso. While I have some fond memories of BF, let it never be said that any of those memories started or ended at the airport, which was, in a word, janky. The tarmac’s footprint was roughly equivalent in size to that of your typical Southfield ranch. The luggage conveyor was roughly equivalent in size to that of your typical COSTCO grocery conveyor. The luggage circled the conveyor once, maybe twice if the operator was feeling generous, and then, swish, all the unclaimed luggage got loaded back on the plane which was idling by waiting to depart for its next destination – Lome.  If you did not manage to grab your bags the first time around there was always tomorrow…when the plane from Lome would come back and redeposit whatever luggage still remained unclaimed. Did I mention there was no jetway? And when I first landed in Ouaga it was about 110 F? Nope, no nice jetway across which to stroll from the tight confines of the plane to the air conditioned air port. Nope.  Just straight down the plane’s steps and across the sizzling hot ranch-sized tarmac straight to the itsy-bitsy “catch me if you can” luggage conveyor. 

Now, given this was my only previous exposure to any airport in Africa (well there was that brief stopover in Bamako, Mali…for some insight on that airport please reread the above paragraph). So you can imagine my great surprise when I landed at Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg which is roughly equivalent in size to Rhode Island. After landing, I was whisked off the plane onto the long, air conditioned jetway and into a marble tiled area that had clearly marked signs reading “Customs” and “Baggage Claim”. At that moment, I  knew everything was going to be all right. In baggage claim there were free luggage carts and many, many, luggage carousels, not conveyors,  but full on, bona fide carousels. Yay! I had already cleared customs so I grabbed my bag and headed toward the exit. Awaiting me when I arrived were two people from my job – one of my co-workers and and a staff driver. We loaded up my stuff in the mini-van and took the right side drive back into the city. While I was cautioned to leave the ‘Stang in the States for fear that it would make me the target of a carjacking, I quickly saw that many South Africans eschewed that warning and made their way around town in all manner of luxury and sports vehicles with not a few convertibles among the cars I saw. 

We arrived at my apartment complex which is lovely but heavily fortified and has guards both at the car entrance and in the building lobby. I can’t stop smiling about my new apartment.