I was getting the edges sharpened on my five-year-old, end-of-ski-season, 50-percent-off skis, when I ran into my old ski buddy Obie Fast. He is almost 75 years old, and I asked him how he will get into shape for the upcoming ski season that is just around the corner.
Here is his story:
As you know, skiing requires a lot of energy to make turns all day long and since I am slow to develop my own energy field, two years ago I embarked on a new regimen of exercise denial. I don’t perform any exercises of any kind, but I’m very careful what I eat. I store all of that unused exercise energy somewhere deep in the major muscle groups of my body, so that when I get to a ski resort, I can explode onto the ski scene that very first day (or, so I thought).
Here are just a few of the very easy energy rules that are listed in my new book, “The Obie Fast Way to Limitless Energy” that will create energy and then store it up for later use.
1. Never climb a flight of stairs if there is an elevator or an escalator nearby.
2, Never, ever, be the first person to push back from the table after a meal. Take your time and eat all the leftovers. I prefer a lot of pasta and, in particular, Kraft Dinner so I can save the extra money and buy lift tickets with it.
3. Big Macs, fries, shakes and fried chicken will help increase your blood pressure. You are going to need it elevated so it can work overtime pumping all of that extra energy through your system and into your legs and arms of steel you will have when you follow my patented “Obie Fast, don’t waste time exercising formula.”
4. Check your waistline regularly. Watch it grow into one of Obie’s newly discovered laws of gravity. Heavy bodies move down hills faster than lighter ones.
5. Buy a new snowboard outfit. They are bulky enough to make you look like a sack of cats on the way to the river. But with luck you will fill it out in time for the early season skiing if you follow my diet religiously.
6. Always eat a baked potato with lots of sour cream and bacon with each meal. This will expand the waistline so that you won’t have to lean forward to help your ski tips hang on. Just stand there and a lot of that extra food will settle right where it belongs, directly behind your belly button.
7, If you intend to take up ski racing this winter you should starts with NASTAR courses. Absolutely buy a downhill speed suit so that if you crash and burn all of your bones will be in the same bag.
8. If you have access to a bicycle, don’t even think about riding it unless it has three wheels and you ride it in a parking lot that your wife drives you to.
9. Make sure that there is either a Ben and Jerry’s or a 31 Flavors ice cream store with convenient parking nearby on your commute to and from work. A thick milkshake has enough calories to supply a grown person with a full day’s allowance, but not someone on “Obie’s save up energy diet and workout plan.”
10. A lot of people will tell you that this store-up-your-energy formula flies in the face of conventional “work-out” wisdom. But heck, they laughed when someone invented the rope tow so skiers no longer had to climb up to ski down. Look at what good shape those skiers are in now that they don’t have to get all of that extra exercise climbing the mountain. Today any skier can make dozens of runs a day instead of only one or two in the old days when regular exercise was popular.
“My name is Obie and I approved this message.”