Mother Nature doesn’t care if you make it or not
A few years ago, on the recommendation of multiple friends and gushing book reviewers, I picked up Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. And I finished it. But I didn’t read it in the normal fashion. I hate-read it. I sat in my easy chair with a cup of coffee or herbal tea or small juice glass with...
Bill Clinton is going to make you a vegan
Bill Clinton is a very persuasive man. He’s persuasive in the way every good salesman is persuasive, which is that you don’t know you’re being convinced of something until it’s all over. There’s a good chance you might not even know then. You might be pretty sure it was your idea all along. Case...
Never forget the Icy Finger of Death
You’ve been baking under the sun for a few weeks now. There’s more to come. Summer feels like an energy leech, sucking away your strength, your enthusiasm, your life force. You long for winter. So it’s time to remind everyone that cold, though attractive right now, can be as terrifying and lethal as fire. To...
Failure to crunch
It might not be your fault. If you don’t like to exercise, or if the exercise you do doesn’t seem to count for much, there are reasons that have nothing to do with your discipline, your will, or your moral fiber. You are not a puss. It’s your DNA. The Wall Street Journal recently...
Don’t know squat about squats?
The world falls into four camps: people who have no interest in leg strength and therefore no interest in squats (you are excused), people want leg strength but fear squats because they have seen too many crippled power-lifters, and people who swear by squats and believe the risks of working them into your routine...
Science struggles to grasp your love handles
You think you know what’s fat, don’t you? It’s defined by pounds, or body-mass index, or how much roly-poly flesh you can pinch between your thumb and forefinger. (Try this only on yourself.) You know fat when you see it. And you can measure it, objectively. Right? And way too many people are way too...
An avalanche of avalanche reportage
The New York Times has weighed in mightily on last February’s fatal Tunnel Creek avalanche, which took three lives near Washington’s Stevens Pass ski resort. Over six months, a handful of writers and graphic designers and web gurus assembled text, videos, maps, slide shows and sound files. The result is a gorgeous package, by turns...
You should be embarrassed if you never feel awkward
You arrive in a new place—say, New York or New Delhi—and you don’t know there’s cheap public transportation from the airport to the city center. You take a cab, pay an exorbitant ransom to be released at your hotel, then realize you could have done it faster/cheaper/more comfortably by bus or subway. But you didn’t...
Gear videos are a mostly justifiable time-suck
When you’re outdoors, gear isn’t everything. It just enables everything. Good gear usually equals good performance: it lets you go farther, faster, with less exertion. It also, often, embodies admirable design. And it’s reliable, which matters always and especially in sports where an equipment failure can mean injury or death. Gear also gives you something...
This week, media find old skiers fascinating
We have a new favorite line of the week, from a story in the Edmonton Journal on octogenarian skiers: during the photo shoot for the story, 87-year-old Hanna Andersen “thinks about doing a jump, something she hasn’t done since she was 85….”* Andersen is one of 20 over-80 skiers in Edmonton’s 400-member Rocky Mountain...
The world needs more exer-games
We have been telling people this for years: what the world needs is an exercycle hooked up to LCD display and a game console, so when you are training during these dark cold months you can stop watching Nancy Grace on the washed out TV at the gym and, instead,...
Sunday quote: December 11, 2011
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” ~ Henry David Thoreau,...
