By Adam Stewart
From the Newsroom
Steve Miller was right; time does keep slipping into the future, and I woke up with a painful reminder of that early Monday morning.
My right hip hurt, not terribly, but enough that I wasn’t able to just drift back to sleep until my alarm went off. The good news is it wasn’t a mystery ache. No, I know exactly what I did that had me hurting. I just did too much of a good thing on Saturday.
The weather on Saturday was beautiful, with a high near 80 degrees and only a gentle breeze, so I got out and spent a lot of the day walking, including an afternoon loop around Carey Park with Michelle. We’re exercising to get in better shape in preparation for a trip that will involve a lot of walking, including a day-long hike up a mountain and back down.
The trip will be in celebration of our fifth anniversary, and we’ve been planning it since shortly after our wedding. We really don’t want to spend the whole trip sore because we’re out of shape. So if you see us out hiking, that’s probably why.
But I logged too many miles Saturday after being mostly sedentary for most of the winter. And I paid for it with sore calves Sunday morning and hip pain Monday morning. The good news is a little bit of a pain reliever and it calmed right down both days.
It’s a reminder that I’m not as young and physically resilient as I used to be, though. When I was 28, I took a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park and spent several long days hiking—hiking farther, over much rougher terrain than last weekend. I didn’t need pain relievers on that trip. I don’t even think I packed any.
That was almost 14 years ago, and now I’m middle-aged, as a former colleague helpfully pointed out a couple of years ago. I ought to get and stay in better shape. I know it would help. But I also know it wouldn’t make me 28 again, and being a fit 40-something takes more work than just being a 20-something. I will try to keep my momentum after our anniversary trip, but it’s going to take work.
The passage of time isn’t all bad, and probably not mostly bad. I’ve matured a lot over the past 14 years, learned about myself and the world and people around me. I hadn’t even met Michelle 14 years ago. And without time slipping into the future, we wouldn’t have anniversaries and milestones to plan for and celebrate.
Adam Stewart is the assistant news editor at The Hutchinson Tribune. He can be reached at adam@hutchtribune.com.