"Do you work out?"

I don't think a young lady had ever asked me that before, but it happened last week. And no, it wasn't like, "I thought you said you were in shape, Gramps; do you even work out?" How did that happen? How is it that after more than a half-century, I got that question last week?

I'll tell you: John's cycling class at the Sequoia YMCA, 6-7AM Mondays. As I wrote last week, you get a good workout, nobody will hassle you if you're not up to standing up on the pedals when everybody else is, and at least for my fifty-plus knees, ibuprofen wasn't even needed after the 3rd week. Just going once a week was enough to get me into good enough shape to be asked that.

And who was this young lady who asked me that? A cardio tech -- I was undergoing a treadmill test involving an EKG and some ultrasound movies. One young woman was monitoring my EKG, and the other took my blood pressure from time to time as I exercised on the treadmill. They were talking about interval training and remarking on how quickly one can get the heart rate up using this treadmill on an incline.

Of course, if too many of you come to class, we'll run out of stationary bikes and some of us will have to switch to another day or something. By the way, John is reputed to offer brownies to the winner of his Tuesday night quiz on facebook (which I haven't tried). After eating these, you'll feel like you need to come to class on Monday. A beautiful scheme, is it not?