Does fitness depend on your state? Josh Magill discusses.
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I don’t look good in spandex — never have — but when on my road bike I do it for the butt padding. I also do it to someday look good in spandex. TMR columnist Rob Akers would say I’m lying to myself, a mask of deceit that hides the real me or the real problems I have in life. It’s much more than that; it’s the truth of who I am.
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A few days ago my wife walks in the back door sweating. Buckets of moisture that I’ve never before witnessed her shed, which makes me cringe, but at the same time excites me. Not like that. I’m motivated because it is only the second time I’ve ever seen her in spandex biking clothes. Her face is red, puffy and her arms hang down like an exhausted orangutan after racing through the jungle trees.
“How was your ride?” I ask, a little too enthusiastically. The glare on her face could kill so I dodge it hoping she will find one of the children to devour. Instead, she smiles. “It was good, but my butt hurts.”
I tell her about Akers’ recent column on my website; We’re #1, Baby!, in which he compares his town of Huntington, West Virginia with Boulder, Colorado based on a survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The survey says that Huntington is the most obese city in the nation and that Boulder is the nation’s healthiest city. Akers initially says the difference is that Huntington residents average ten years older and have less job opportunities than Boulder residents. I could buy that possibility because Colorado has one of the lowest unemployment rates of any state, but then he begins to fly into the fantastical Never Land.
I have relatives that live in West Virginia, but I haven’t ever lived there myself. I’ve driven through it a couples times and once got lost on the back roads where I heard the high-pitched twang of a banjo … Ding-Da-Da-Ding-Ding. The words “Boy, you gotta a purty mouth” came to mind and I shivered uncontrollably. I’m kidding. (Or am I?)
Akers says the folks of Huntington, and by extension, the people of West Virginia, are brutally honest and that the survey-takers got that from them when asked about their health. Yet, he laments that the “good folks of Boulder are still trying to impress someone. When DHHS calls, they are much more inclined to lie while eating a snack after smoking their fourth joint.” This from a guy who admits he has never been to Boulder, but has been to Denver (I’m guessing on layovers with his commercial pilot duties) and it ranked among his favorite cities.
What?? Is this a case of knock the best because they won? I should note here that West Virginia had three of the top ten most obese cities in the country (also Charleston & Martinsburg). Colorado — where I live, just south of Denver in Parker — had three of the top ten least obese cities in the nation, with Boulder at #1, Ft. Collins at #2 and Denver at #7. So really, Akers is saying that the whole state of Colorado is a bunch of liars and West Virginians are the most honest people on the planet? Maybe and maybe not; it could just be he has to use that way of thinking to feel better about West Virginia being found out, caught in the act of enjoying being fat, happy with their “prostate[s] the size of grapefruit[s]” or having “takeout teeth” and “wear[ing] Depends.”
The scheme of we-are-uneducated-and-had-to-fight-in-wars isn’t gonna work. It is a way of saying that they have an excuse for being unhealthy, a get-out-of-jail-free card. Akers even bluntly states, “the people of Huntington are unhealthy and they are proud of their unhealthy habits.” But the people of Boulder are “saddled with college debt, driving a car they can’t afford, living in a house that is several times the appropriate size, and holding a membership at the country club.”
I grin at my wife, waiting for her reply. I know it will be explosive after her nearly nine mile bike ride, but I’m not quite sure what to expect so I lean back just a bit. “HE HAS GOT TO BE KIDDING!!” she yells, throwing her sunburnt arms into the air. I grin again because I know she’s caught it, infected by the healthy gene that living in Colorado spawns. My wife knows that I’ve been to Huntington, WV once and she knows I have lived in Ft. Collins and Denver, and spent a portion of two years romping around the streets of Boulder. It’s where I first saw the greatest volleyball player ever — Karch Kiraly — play in the sand in 1995. It’s where I first decided I wanted to be a writer, watching all the artists of different types share their talents. It’s where I first understood that I needed to make a way for myself in this world.
I think about Benny DeVoto — a brash, intellectual and honest writer that won the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes — who berated the Maine coast in his Harper’s column in the early 1950’s. He used some four letter words like “slum” and “neon.” An editorialist of one of the weekly newspapers took DeVoto to task on his disparaging words, and then asked him to come back and see the real Maine. (DeVoto died shortly after the editorial was published and never got the chance.) So in that same spirit, I asked Akers to come take a bike ride with me this summer; I wanted to show him the real Boulder. His response amused me: “Every time I am in Denver, I need to catch my breath when I get out of bed. I cannot imagine actually trying to do something strenuous like peddling up the Rockies. That might be enough to kill me dead. On that I will pass, but I will be glad to share a doughnut with you anytime.”
Would it kill him? Maybe and maybe not.
My wife continues to ramble on about how we have no country club membership, two dumpy cars that we paid off with hard work and sweat, and that we “sure as heck don’t live in a house several times the appropriate size.” She asked if Akers had ever read the three personal essays I wrote that we’ve dubbed “The Fat Chronicles.” She asked if he knew that we aren’t thin beautiful people, but people just hoping to live long enough to see our children get married and play with our grandkids and maybe our great-grandkids. Does he know that we are all fighting the battle of the bulge in this country? We’re just better at it in Colorado.
“Maybe and maybe not,” I answered with a grin.
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I still don’t look good in spandex, but now when I ride, I wonder … is Boulder the healthiest city in the nation? Like Akers, I don’t know that it matters, but they — and all the folks of Colorado — are some of the most honest people in the nation, even when answering surveys. I know they are striving to be the best they can be the only way they know how. The real question is … are the people of Huntington and Boulder, the people of West Virginia and Colorado, that much different?
Maybe and maybe not.
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Photo credit: Travis/flickr