After randomly choosing one goal out of the 36 I have listed on 43 things, my first one to address is taking up a sport. I always thought of sports as something you watch on TV or something that athletic people do. I tried some team sports when I was a child, but most of the experiences were traumatic. I never was good at sports and perhaps more, I hated the competitiveness of it. I was surrounded by too many people who believed winning wasn’t everything-it was the only thing.
Today, I know there are several sports that individuals participate in and there are many that are not extremely cutthroat. I came up with some criteria:
1) There should be some physical activity. Chess and Scrabble are sports too, but it does not give the body much exercise. It doesn’t need to be too strenuous. In fact, I tend to injure myself often. In my college years, I tried running two different times, but quit when I developed shin splints.
2) I do not want to participate in a sport where I am surrounded by the disciples of Bobby Knight, ready to rip me into shreds when I do something wrong. It should be fun. Getting screamed at is not fun. However, it would be nice to have a reward from doing it. I don’t need medals, ribbons, or glory. I would, however, like to get some sort of satisfaction from what I do.
3) I would like to participate in the sport all year long or at least most of the year. For example, skiing sound fun. But it’s something I could only do six to eight weeks out of the year.
4) The sport shouldn’t be too expensive to get into. Golf is fun. But I don’t think it’s fun when you pay $30-40 for the opportunity to shoot 40 strokes over par.
After some thought, these are the sports I’m interested:
A) Hiking / Walking – This is an activity I used to do somewhat regularly. You can get a decent workout. But it is not violent to your body. I’m very interested in doing it. It might not be the best time of year…it’s hunting season. However, there is something called Volksmarching, where you can walk a several mile course and win pins and patches.
B) Mountain Biking – North central West Virginia has many miles of rail trails, which I could use to my enjoyment. I wish I had more mechanical aptitude to fix them. And another thing—I don’t see flying a downhill trail in the forest, I see myself with my arm in a sling when I think of riding a bike downhill.
C) Geocaching – This is like a treasure hunt, using a GPS unit to find things. I never thought much about it because I figured GPS units were expensive. But I want to see how much they cost. And if they are too expensive, maybe I could do letterboxing, which is similar to geocaching, but without the GPS unit. I suppose Orienteering could fit into this category, and also the hiking one above.
D) Disc Golf – This is another sport I have known about for several years, but I have never tried. There is a municipal park near where I work which has a disc golf course. I do not have a lot of experience throwing Frisbees, but this could be fun.
My next task is to learn more about these….
