The Beat Goes On

On my twice-daily walks with Willie I strive to maintain a brisk and consistent pace.  The first few days were pretty taxing on me – especially walking uphill – but I’ve acclimated to this new routine we share and look forward to these walks almost as much as Willie.

Almost.

But even when I’m not especially looking forward to these walks – say, when it’s really cold or it’s raining – I’m always happy once we get moving.  The clean, fresh air is invigorating, and I enjoy the feeling that I’m also doing something good for myself – something I should have been doing on my own all along, something I shouldn’t really have needed a dog to do.  But there you have it.

As Willie trots beside me without any obvious effort, I’m aware that my breathing and heart rate have accelerated.  I am walking with a full, natural stride – and monitoring how far and how fast I’m walking with a Smart Phone app called “Moves” – a GPS based app that recaps the number of steps I walk in a day.  At the gym the other day I told my trainer, Chad, about it while doing squats with a weight bar resting on my shoulders.

“So now that I’m doing all these dog walks I’ve been logging at least an hour each day.”

“That’s great, Chad said, setting down his clipboard to look at my iPhone display. “You’re adding at least thirty hours of walking to your regimen each month… and you’re a little above average.”

“I’ve been told that before,” I said.

Chad smirks.  “Personally, I’d rather not be known as “a little above average.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s better than ‘a little below average’”.

“That’s true.  OK – let’s go – you’ve got five more.”

Though my mind wanders while I’m walking, my pace never wavers.  Walking Willie around the neighborhood at this new and relentless clip has loosened my belt over the course of a month but has had one curious side effect: the steady beat of my steps has prompted a surprising mental musical accompaniment comprised of curious selections from the dark recesses of my brain — songs I haven’t thought of in years.  All this walking has switched on an internal jukebox that plays virtually anything that can arrange itself over the steady metronome of my footfalls, a ceaseless beat calling up random selections that cycle in my brain until they’re driven out by something new.  Yesterday, while walking all the way up to Tillson Lake, I “listened” for a long time to Gloria Estefan’s version of “Turn The Beat Around” (step, step, step) “love to hear per-cussion” (step, step, step).  After that retro disco number had run its mysterious and annoying course, it was replaced by – of all things — a polka:  “Roll Out The Barrel” (step, step, step) “we’ll have a barrel of fun” (step, step, step).  Only a demented DJ would spin a mix like that – the DJ who lives in my head and who clearly remembers those dreadful and infectious “Stars on 45” hits from the early 80s – dance club medleys that strung together hit songs with a common tempo and relentless drum track.

I read in the New York Times that when Diana Nyad made her successful swim from Cuba to Florida last September, she relied, as she always has, on her favorite songs. Over and over, she hums them in her head, her strokes falling in time with the music’s cadence: “Ticket to Ride” by the Beatles echoed on one stretch, “Paperback Writer” on another.

That’s very different from the weird chestnuts that bubbled up in my brain this morning after Willie and I headed out the door:  Though it wasn’t quite 6:00 AM the ceaseless beat of my footsteps gave way to “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” (“two-three-four, tell the people what she wore”).  This mixed seamlessly into A Taste of Honey’s disco hit, “Boogie-oogie-oogie” (“so get on up, on the floor, ‘cause we’re gonna boogie-oogie-oogie, til we just can’t boogie no more”).  And by the time Willie and I arrived back at the house I was “marching” to “Onward Christian Soldiers” (“marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus, going on before”).

Willie of course, knows nothing of any of this, and marches to his own internal drummer.  What occupies his thoughts as we tromp along the road on this cold morning I can only guess.