Walking The Stairs

Having grown weary of choking on lawn chemicals blowing in the spring wind and dodging gravel trucks and texting teens on 55 mph suburbian roads, I’ve recently decided to head into town and exercise on the *locally* famous Stillwater stairs.  For those of you who don’t know them, they are basically the longest in a series of concrete stairways located around Stillwater.  If you’re from San Francisco or various cliff communities in southern Italy you would likely scoff at us. But hey, this is the midwest, and 157 stairs is kind of a big deal for us, all right?

Tourists climb to the top for a lovely view of the Stillwater lift bridge and delinquent teens creep into the buckthorn-filled bluff to smoke weed and feel each other up.  

And then there are those of us who go for the exercise.  We march up and down, down and up, hoping to burn fat and keep our hearts healthy and justify what will surely be a visit, perhaps later that same day, to that patio bar we can actually SEE while participating in said exercise. Yeah... maybe it’s just me thinking that.  

What with my unpredictable schedule, I’m at the stairs at various times throughout the week.  And I’ve noticed that there are very different crowds, depending upon when you go.

The dinner hour crowd. 

This is primarily middle aged men.  I generally don’t mind them, even when they are overly enthusiastic (how many steps are YOU doing today, they ask with two [yes, two] thumbs up), although I have to fight off my urge to judge them.  Why aren’t they home for dinner?  Is “the wife” cooking dinner, even though she left work early to pick up kids from school and get someone to a music lesson while she helps the other two with their homework?  I bet she’d LOVE to be taking the stairs two at a time right now while you were home dealing with all of that.  Or, are you here alone because you are divorced and have nothing else to do after work except stay in shape in the hope that you may actually land another woman half as good as the wife you up and left, in which case I usually segue into a brief panic about the potential of running into my own ex on the stairs... 

The weekend crowd. 

This group tends to be the most unpredictable. There’s the very granola looking lady who is always smiling (why?? why is she so happy?) and the guy with the long hair who wears shoes that don’t look nearly supportive enough (should I recommend a new pair to him?  He could at least tighten up those laces. I’m worried about potential low back issues for him...).  Occasionally, there will be the couple that I think must have just gone to lunch in town and are walking home and using the stairs, but then, NO... they are actually there to exercise in Wrangler jeans and matching Minnesota Wild jackets and shoes that aren’t even in the CATEGORY of tennis shoe.  And actually, this couple makes me very happy, because they remind me of why I left my very UNIFORM and suburban neighborhood to come into town.  Weekends are also the time when I tend to see someone who I knew from another time in my life - one of those vague people who you were “friends” with for a specific reason at a specific time and you really don’t think of them at all anymore.  Inevitably, we look at each other with the slightest bit of recognition, and then immediately pretend we have never seen each other before in our lives and move on.  

The early morning crowd.  

Oh come, on, you didn’t really think I’d ever gotten up early and gone over there, did you?

The middle part of the day on any given weekday crowd.  

This is the crowd I like the least.  It’s a mix of in-shape women.  They seem to be mostly around early 30s, but there will be the occasional “just home from college, trying to stay in shape” type or the “wealthy mom exercising with just out of the nest daughter”.  The older mom types are the most likely to be friendly, and they do occasionally say hi.  But the rest of these chicks?  TOTAL bitches.  And the thing is, I’m there, all “sports bra barely getting the job done and yes I’ve got plenty of back flab and yep, that’s a pouch where the stomach just never, ever went back to normal after I popped out three kids in three years”, so why do you have to look me up and down all judgy like that?  My face is beet red and I am panting more than you, with your flat abs and your fancy arm band that is probably tracking every bodily function you have, as well as updating your Twitter and taking Instagram shots of you working out. I know I belong with the weekend crowd and you’d never show up then, because you’re probably busy running a half marathon and catching a nap before you go out with your friends on the Pedal Pub later that night.  And YES, those are ugly bruises mixed in with the ever increasing veins on my legs, because you know what?  Middle aged people like me have YARDS to care for.  We have graduation parties to prepare for. I earned these bruises and stretch marks and wrinkles over many years of being a super mom.  I’m a fucking warrior!!  

So, after years of exercising out here in Suburbia, alone, I’m reminded of the benefits of group exercise.  Humanity is interesting.  Being with other people, even when we aren’t talking, is the perfect combination of annoying, motivational, comical, embarrassing and affirming.  I think I’ll stick with the stairs.