For quite some time now, Miss Terry has been reading about Nordic pole walking, and she decided that she wanted a set of walking sticks. After doing a lot of shopping online, a couple of weeks ago she ordered a set of collapsible Keenfit sticks. They arrived the other day, and yesterday Terry took them for a test walk.

Experts say that using walking sticks puts your entire body to work, rather than just your lower body, turning a simple walk around the block into a total body aerobic workout. The Keen website also says that using walking sticks reduces stress on the knees and lower extremities.

Terry had to adjust the poles to her height, which is easy to do by just twisting the lock rings, and then adjusted the wrist straps to fit her hands. Once that was done, she was off and walking. She said that within just a short distance, less than a block, she could feel the effects on her arms. It wasn’t unpleasant, just that they were getting a new workout.

The sticks also provide extra stability and balance while walking on almost any surface. Terry’s sticks came with three different types of rubber feet for walking on different types of surfaces.

Terry said she liked the sticks not only for their exercise values, but they’d be handy in case a mean dog or a two legged varmint bothered her when she was out walking. I wouldn’t want to be either one, because my pretty lady doesn’t tolerate much nonsense, and she’d give either one a good whap up side of the head!

Speaking of two legged vermin, most of you already know that we came face to face with an armed burglar in our motorhome in early December. When he pointed a gun at us, I slammed the motorhome door on his hand a couple of times and really ground it down hard until he dropped the pistol.

I’m happy to report that a few days later, the creep was arrested when he showed up at an emergency room 75 miles away with both bones in his wrist broken, along with several bones in his hand. He was already a parole violator, and had additional state and federal warrants out for him. The cops tell me that he probably won’t even be tried for our burglary, because he is already facing a litany of more serious charges. I know it’s probably not a Christian attitude, but I hope he has a real good time interacting with the guys on his cellblock, with just that one hand available.

Now that the bad weather has cleared out for a while, Terry and I need to make a quick run to Yuma to check out the buildings at the fairgrounds and start deciding which rally seminars and events will be held in the available buildings. We’ll probably do that sometime this week. We’ll just drive the van over, and plan to come back the same day, which will make it a long day, or, if we run out of time, we may spend the night in a motel, which is never our preference.

Thought For The Day – Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

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Everywhere you turn in the last week somebody is talking about the latest crisis. This time it’s the swine flu pandemic. Oops, that’s the H1N1 Influenza A outbreak. Somebody apparently decided that we can’t call it swine flu, because pigs (or pig farmers) were getting upset.

Somebody e-mailed to ask me if we were still going to the Escapees Club Escapade rally next month. They have decided not to go, because they are concerned about being in large groups of people with this new disease going around. Give me a break!

What about the grocery store, or WalMart? Are you just going to lock yourself inside your house until the “crisis” passes? But remember, as soon as this one is over, there will be a brand new doom and gloom prediction to fret over.

People just need something to talk and worry about between our regularly scheduled media crisis of the moment! The talking heads can’t come onto your TV screen and say “Nothing bad is happening today. Things look pretty good.” What fun would that be?

The World Health Organization (WHO) had reported only a couple  hundred worldwide confirmed cases of this new flu worldwide by Thursday afternoon. A couple hundred people out of the nearly seven billion folks walking around on this planet! I think my odds are pretty good of surviving.

Yeah, the flu spreads fast. But every news report I have heard yet says if you start to feel symptoms, DO NOT go to the emergency room, because it’s probably a minor illness. So we have this major pandemic, but it’s not serious enough to seek medical attention for. Huh?

Yes, several people have died from the flu in Mexico. But let’s remember that a LOT of people die in Mexico every week from things that are no more than a minor inconvenience here. No matter how politically incorrect it is to say, Mexico is a Third World country. That’s why its citizens keep sneaking under the fence to get here!

More people have died in drug violence along the border lately than the flu will ever get near. In Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican border city of 1.5 million people across from El Paso, Texas, five deaths a day in January and February were attributed to drug violence. And that violence is spreading rapidly in the United States. Last year alone, Phoenix, Arizona reported 366 kidnappings related to drug activity. But how many of us are staying away from El Paso or Phoenix?

I refuse to live my life in a bubble, just because some over-coiffed pretty face on a TV screen says there is a new crisis.

As RVers, we have enough to worry about already. Every minute we’re on the highway, some fool is pointing tons of metal at us going 70 miles an hour. Worry about that!

Even off the interstate highway, we can still get ourselves into trouble, as this picture my daughter took Wednesday proves. Somebody was pulling this fifth wheel into a lot on White Mountain Boulevard in Lakeside, Arizona and didn’t think about their rear overhang, apparently. We drove by the scene a couple of hours later, and there were some serious gouge marks in the pavement!

It reminded me of the time I got our bus high centered in Bremerton, Washington a few years back. (Okay, okay, Miss Terry reminded me of it!). But I don’t see any news bulletins about the dangers of doing really, really dumb things when driving or pulling an RV!

Thought For The Day – The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.

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