Back in the Habit

No, this blog is not about Maria returning from the Von Trapp family mansion to the convent for a short time in the Sound of Music. It is about escape. Maria was running from love. I drove to Planet Fitness yesterday after six weeks away to escape the quarantine and its routines.

Instead of the 30-minute workout I'd been repeating for a month in my house with walking and light weights, I returned to the gym with its many workout machines and a one hour thirty minute regimen. I sweated, I became tired, I reveled in the variety. I plan to return today. Kind of makes me think of the song by Chicago: Saturday in the Park. The lyrics of that popular ballad were written by Robert Lamm in 1971 (the year I was married) for the Chicago V album published the next year. The opening stanza lyrics are:

Saturday in the park I think it was the Fourth of July

Saturday in the park I think it was the Fourth of July

People dancing, people laughing, a man selling ice cream

Singing Italian songs...Eh cumpari, ci vo sunari [Hey, buddy, what's that sound]

Can you dig it (yes, I can), And I've been waiting such a long time for Saturday.

I could parody those words to become Saturday in the gym...People walking, people lifting, a man sanitizing...and I've been waiting such a long time for reopening. So life is beginning to return to normalcy or the new normal, as some have termed it.

from zerotoalpha.com

I'm ready to start seeing friends and family again...with precautions. I plan to wear the stylish masks my wife made for me, I don't plan physical contacts of welcome, and I'm going to limit distancing and numbers of those with whom I reconnect. With that plan in my mind, I'm ready to practice some Fitness Distancing by getting back in the habit.

Fostering Old Friendships

Our last day in New Orleans began with a small breakfast in the room. We packed and called for the car and a luggage cart. Once loaded we drove around the Crescent City. We went by my old schools beginning with John McDonogh High School (10th and 11 grade) and then Ganus School (6-9 grade). Both schools had changed names and grade levels.

Next we drove along the Pontchartrain lakefront and out to Gentilly East. On our way to the house where I grew up, we stopped for an early lunch at Wendy's. We took one last spin around City Park before heading across the Causeway, a 24-mile long bridge to the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain. We checked into the Marriott in Covington and awaited THE phone call.

We had arranged to have supper with a very special family. Jerry had lived with us for two years in the 1970s along with  his older sister and younger brother. They were three of 31 foster kids we kept in group homes in Shreveport and Tulsa. Now he lives with his wife and three children in Ponchatoula, LA.

The  phone never rang. He did text to meet them at 5:30 p.m. at East of Italy in Hammond. We spent an hour and a half eating pasta and reliving memories. I had coached the middle school football team on which he was the star tailback. He married a lovely lady, and they have three priceless kids.

I found myself singing along with Maria Von Trapp in the Sound of Music, "My day in the hills has come to an end I know." I adjusted the words slightly, "Our days in the swamp have come to an end we know." Tomorrow we head home. It has been a tiring but very rewarding week of making new memories in the Big Easy.