As one of my clients, a CEO of an insurance company once told me, “Scott, when I travel my schedule is crazy. I don’t have time to put on my gym clothes and go down to the hotel’s fitness center, let alone drive all over town to find a gym if the hotel doesn’t provide one. I need something I can roll out of bed in my underwear and do in less than thirty minutes before breakfast, because after that I am usually busy until 10 or 11 o’clock at night.”

How many of you face a similar situation?

Ok, maybe you don’t travel extensively for work. How about when you’re on vacation? Or what if you’re stuck at home and you can’t get to the gym-you stay-at-home moms can identify with this-wouldn’t you like a low-cost alternative that is easy to do and requires nothing larger than a shoulder bag to store it in?

Because of these scenarios, my cousin-who travels extensively for work and vacation-came to me with the idea for a great travel fitness product and program. We figured since just about everything is “mobile” (phones, internet, etc.) nowadays, why not fitness? You see, in doing our research we found decent programs with bad products and decent products with bad programs, but nothing we deemed to be extremely valuable to the road-warrior who needs fitness-on-the-go.

Enter KronoFit-fitness you can use anytime, anywhere. We found the absolute best in easily portable fitness equipment (weighs less than two pounds and is portable enough it will fit in a carry-on bag) and I developed a program utilizing the equipment that can be performed in the free space in your hotel room.

The program leaves no stone unturned and KronoFit book includes warm-up exercises, joint-health exercises, strength training, cardiovascular training and flexibility exercises. It also addresses nutrition strategies, as a concern for travelers is eating healthy while on the road. The program offers a 20 minute workout, 40 minute workout and 60 minute workout.

The equipment includes a suspension gym that can be mounted over the top of a door that allows you to do bodyweight exercises such as pull-ups, body rows and push-ups; a set of heavy resistance bands with a door anchor that allow you to replicate any traditional weight-training exercises with between 30 – 200 pounds of peak resistance; a speed-rope jump rope to enhance the cardiovascular program; and the corner stone of our program, the GYMBOSS interval timer-hence KronoFit-that keeps track of your sets and reps so you don’t have to.

We tested this workout on a wide variety of fitness enthusiasts-from a martial artist, a stay at home mom, a CEO and everyone in between-and everyone agreed that KronoFit was the perfect solution for those looking to stay fit while travelling or simply dealing with today’s hectic lifestyle.

How effective was the program? One of our test subjects monitored the workout with his heart-rate monitor and during the 40 minute workout variation hit a max heart-rate of 164 beats per minute and burned over 500 calories!

If you are interested in learning more about the KronoFit program please visit the website at www.kronofit.com and find out how to stay fit on the road and remember-No gym? No problem!

Midlife crises present themselves in many ways, but usually with the same underlying symptom: sudden awareness of mortality. It’s the surprise attack on the battlefield of life; the Pearl Harbor of what you imagined was the tropical idyll that would never end, the thought of which makes you want to get bombed.

I admit it. Every time I read about some guy ten years younger than me who dies after his clogged heart throws a cholesterol hairball and backs up his cardiac plumbing, I start thinking, “Wow! That could have been me! Maybe I should watch my diet and…hey, is that a cream-filled donut?”

In spite of things like other people dying, the gray hair (and lack thereof), wrinkles, sagging, and terminal bloating, I don’t seem to be immersed in a midlife crisis. I’m not sure why, other than I’m a pretty boring guy to begin with. I like things the way they are, changeless and eternal. I still tune in to CBS on Monday nights waiting for new episodes of M*A*S*H to start. (Oh, that Frank Burns! What a geek!) Boring? I’ve put crystal meth addicts to sleep with my life story.

Midlife crises are not pretty. Men afflicted with MC often begin dating younger women. I’ve seen them when my wife and I are out. Some 50-ish idiots with diamond studs in one ear and Bluetooth phones stuck in the other. They look like fat, balding, male Uhuras, vainly trying to connect with the Starfleet Command of their youth. The girls are laughing too loudly at their bon mots (they don’t understand what bon mot means), while the guys throw out hip terms they don’t really understand how to use. “Wanna go back to my hizzle for a little shizzle?” They sound like they’re speaking Yiddish.

Flashy sports car, hip clothes, martini bars. Not sure I could afford a midlife crisis even if I had one. Once I got the car, threads, and jewelry I’d have to find a young girl who thinks a hot guy is one who can’t spend more than $8.00 and change on a night out. Or stay up after 8:00 on a night out.

So for now, even though my peers may be trying to recapture their youth in frantic and farcical style, I’m letting mine slip away quietly, free to go where it wants. Besides, I’m happy with my life the way it is, and with my wife the way she is. You know. Apt to kill me the moment I mention the word Porsche.

Everyone makes New Year’s resolutions. This year I decided to make up a list of resolutions other people should follow, since I can’t seem to keep any of my own. Maybe I should set my sights lower, though I still have hopes I can become king of a small island nation populated with young, beautiful female swimsuit models. Here are a few I’d like to see. Only one each, and fulfilling them would certainly make the world a better place in my book:

Charlie Sheen – Realize that “Beyond the Law” was just the title of a movie you were in.

Sarah Palin – Stop writing books and try reading one for a change.

Joe Lieberman – Find a party you like and stick with it.

Barak Obama – Give up on those cancerous, white, death merchants. You know: Republicans.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – Look for a job in which the last thing you see won’t be a mob of 10 million Iranians calling for your head.

Angelina Jolie – Adopt an American kid, for Christ’s sake.

Madonna – Ditto.

Rush Limbaugh – Ask yourself whether the money you make is worth ruining everything America stands for.

Dick Cheney – More shooting lawyers, less shooting your mouth off.

Tiger Woods – No matter how difficult it may be, try to find happiness and satisfaction with only fame, a billion dollars, and your Swedish model wife.

Hugh Hefner – Lose the pajamas. Unless you have Alzheimer’s, you shouldn’t show up for interviews looking like grandpa trying to find his teeth in the morning.

Did I miss anyone? Suggestions are welcome.

• Now that both my kids are over 21, they ask for fewer presents. Unfortunately the gifts they ask for are usually much more expensive. Like a down payment on a house.

• My wife and I no longer have to worry about getting woken at 5:30 Christmas morning by the happy squealing of kids who want to open presents. We’re old enough now that when we go to bed we worry we won’t wake up. Ever.

• We think we’re so smart because we don’t believe in Santa Claus. Then we put our faith for retirement in Social Security.

• The only reason Black Friday is the biggest and busiest shopping day of the year is because we’re all too stupid to think, “Maybe I should avoid the crowds and go shopping on Saturday or Sunday.”

• More and more, people walking around the malls at Christmastime remind me of the zombies walking Monroeville Mall in Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead.”

• Every new Christmas music CD that comes out has the same dozen or so songs. Can’t we write some new ones? Anyone? Put your hand down, McCartney.

• If Louis Farrakhan did a Christmas CD, I doubt he’d include “White Christmas.”

• I’ve been married more than 30 years. Twice I got presents for my wife she actually liked. This year I’ll get her a gift card and that big, flat screen TV I’ve always wanted. I mean she’s always wanted. Yeah. That’s it. She.

• I don’t want to offend anyone by saying Merry Christmas. So if you pass me on the street, and I shout, “Fuck you, asshole!” you’ll know why.

Many of the chemicals used is cosmetics and other personal care products have been linked to hormone disruption, and cancer.

Saturday 2/21/09

We woke early, to return the rental car and took a leisurely stroll downtown. At the advice of a concierge in the mall, we headed to Red Fin - yes, a sushi restaurant – for what he called their “amazing brunch.” http://www.redfinsushi.com/ The only bad part of this experience was that we didn’t get to try their sushi. The eggs benedict and croissant with homemade blackberry jam was totally worth forgoing true Japanese fare. We finished up our breakfast and headed back to the hotel to pack supplies for the afternoon.

Onward to Wai-Ching in Pioneer Square. http://wai-ching.com/ Pioneer Square is an eclectic little area of older warehouse type buildings which, I’m told, is the oldest part of the city. The buildings themselves were interesting and beautiful, but the best part was the businesses they house: art galleries, coffee houses, strange spaces with “exhibits” of unknown intent on display, clothing designers… We buzzed Chrissy from Wai-Ching and she let us in to her loft inspired office building. As we arrived on her floor – “The Floor of the Cats,” with the signage and mewing vagabonds to prove it – we were greeted by a friendly tabby. Once inside her studio, Nick was in a hurry to get back out and I was left to the unbelievably insightful attention of Chrissy. She sized me up and gave me a few dresses to try on. We worked through all the, “I like this part but not that” and the “how bout we add some…” issues until we had a very good idea of how my completed wedding dress would look. Exciting!!! And infinitely better than the typical vultures-circling bridal shop.

Nick had text’d me his current location and I wandered around Pioneer Square a little on my way to 88 Keys http://88keyseattle.com/. This large open warehouse is a dive bar during the day and a dueling piano bar at night. We had a couple beers and decided that we needed to get going to continue our sight-seeing plan for the day. We walked uphill toward downtown and just happened to notice a sign in the window of an establishment we were passing: “Beerfest Here!” I assumed that said beerfest was happening sometime in the near future, so we quickly popped in to get a little more info. And there we stayed. For the whole afternoon. AT beerfest, at Collins Pub. http://www.thecollinspub.com/ Oops… in a good way. Have I MENTIONED my itinerary??

Collins Pub

After hours (yes, hours) of schmoozin at Collins, we (drunkenly) climbed the Seattle hills back to the heart of town and I promptly remembered that I had started my day with a coat. Back down the hills (a little less drunkenly) to Collins, yay, found the coat, and back up the hills (almost sober) to our hotel. Now mostly sober and 100% hungry, we tried to merge back into the flow of my itinerary. We contacted our friends Aaron and J to see if they wanted to have dinner, but instead decided to meet up with them after and walked down to Ivars Acres of Clams (#1) on the waterfront. http://www.ivars.net/index.php?page=locations_acres-of-clams. We were almost alone and it was a very romantic dinner with my hubby-to-be. Although Ivars is a touristy chain, the seafood was great and the view of the loading docks and wharfs was exactly what I picture when I think of Seattle.

After stuffing ourselves at dinner, we were happy to have a long-ish walk to our next destination. Aaron and J recommended the Black Bottle because I really wanted to go to Belltown and they like wine almost as much as we all like beer (Aaron brews his own). http://www.blackbottleseattle.com/

Black Bottle

Since our Saturday night is never complete without a little bar hopping, we closed out our evening at Cyclops Cafe and Lounge. http://www.cyclopsseattle.com/. Part vinyl-boothed diner, part active art gallery and part Lydia Deetz’s livingroom, my wine-tipsy brain felt right at home. I don’t remember what we ingested, but does it matter in a place like this? Time to head to bed, tomorrow we have to make up for the time warp that is Collins Pub.

Stay tuned for Part III: Tourists!

The Flaming Lips
Embryonic

Joan Baez
How Sweet The Sound

Los Lonely Boys
1969

Grant Lee Phillips
Little Moon

Brian Setzer
Songs From Lonely Avenue

Check out the video for The Flaming Lips – “I Can Be A Frog”

More at HalfSquareTV…

Part 1: Heading West and West Again

Thursday 2/19/09 would have been a better day if the flight was on time. I really wanted to hit up a cool bar or restaurant near our hotel before 2 am, but alas, our 9pm flight left 3 hours late. By the time we landed at the Seattle airport, the downtown shuttles had stopped running for the night. We waited for a little while to take the city bus and, other than the extra time this added to our already late arrival, the bus system was very clean, safe, and the other passengers extremely friendly. By the time we reached downtown, we were completely ready to crash at the Red Lion Hotel http://www.redlion5thavenue.com . We had a very early morning planned, so best to get some shut-eye.

Friday 2/20/09 was the day to discover Washington. We hit up Starbucks at 7am because really, is a trip to Seattle complete without it? We walked with our coffee and told each other that now, since we had gotten our corporate fix, every subsequent trip for coffee would be a mom and pop joint with local flair. We arrived at a branch of Enterprise Rent-A-Car to pick up a cute little Prius, and began our journey to the Pacific Ocean. Now, since I’m not wonderful with geography, I had never realized that Seattle is not actually that close to the ocean. In my planning I discovered that the trip to Olympic National Park and the ocean is about a 5 hour drive. Luckily, this drive is almost entirely breathtaking and interesting.

We travelled north out of the city to reach the Washington State Ferry at the Edmonds-Kingston Terminal http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/ferries/info_desk/terminals/index.cfm?terminal_id=8 . I was scared to death because I’d never driven a car onto a ferry before, especially not a rental car. After the loading began, however, I couldn’t believe how easy it was! I didn’t realize that you just “park” your car in the lane where you pull in, so my vehicle wasn’t quite in the right spot when the traffic in front of me stopped. I think I annoyed a few commuters, but hey, I was a tourist, and tourists get away with everything, right? The ferry ride was fun, easy and beautiful with the mist coming off the early morning sun drenched bay.

The cars unloaded on the other side and we took off on our journey. We didn’t have any specific plans to stop along the way since we had to fit the whole trip into one day, but the second that we saw Port Gamble, http://www.portgamble.com we fell in love and had to stop for a few minutes. Every business and home in this quaint little community is similar in its rustic simplicity and old-world feel. I could imagine pioneers hand building these New England style houses and white-washing the picket fences. The little beagle lazing in front of the rural firehouse almost smiled at us as he sat and watched the sun rise.

After a nice break in Port Gamble, we popped back out onto the sharp curve of the 104 and continued west to the 101. Now the road curved more inland, and except for a few glimpses, we were further from the views of the bay. Getting a little bored of logging trucks and clear-cut forests sheared to the ground, Nick wanted to find another detour to entertain us before we stopped for lunch. Although we had never heard of it, he noticed signs for the Dungeness Loop and we once again pulled off the highway. This drive through local neighborhoods was mostly uneventful, and took a little more time than we would have liked, but we did get to take in a lesser seen view of the Strait of Juan De Fuca and the Dungeness Bay.

At this point, I get to chronicle my true half-squareness because, as a 30 year old, I read and loved the Twilight books and therefore I felt that I had to do a little bit of Twilight sightseeing while we were on the other side of the country. We drove through Port Angeles to find a good spot for lunch and stopped at the visitors bureau for suggestions. The elderly woman there was wonderfully helpful and sweet, AND she was familiar with M-22 in Michigan from her Harley-riding days. On her recommendation, we ate (and had a local Washington beer of course) at Chestnut Cottage, a locally owned bistro of sorts.

Back on the road, a little too full and lazy, we were suddenly jarred into an alert state by a panorama of sparkling beauty through our windshield. We started our decent in the shadow of the towering rock wall of just-budding wild flowers and small waterfalls on our left, and the expanse of the cedar lined Lake Crescent below us on the right. As we meandered along the twisting, narrow mountain road I must have stopped at almost every single scenic turn out to take pictures with my 1973 Minolta. As we got closer and lower into the basin, the water got calmer and more glasslike. The amazing perfection of the lake resulted in crazy photos where you can hardly tell which way is up because of the mirror effect. I thought that this lakeshore drive would never end – in a good way!

But it did – end that is. We had so many grandiose plans for our trip to the national park and now it was already early afternoon. As I drove, we assessed the options and decided on the most important stops, just in case we ran out of time. We turned down La Push Road and after a drive, took at right at the Motel with a huge sign out front, “No Vampires Beyond This Point.” Because our friends Tom and Marta had already been to the Olympic coast, we had to stop first at Rialta Beach and see the crazy “driftwood” piles of full trees all over the beach. It is very bizarre to climb over stacks of barkless sun bleached logs taller than a person just to see the ocean. The setting made me feel like I should be doing yoga poses in the bright sunlight. The man who owns the little motel back at the fork in the road bumped into us on the beach and he told us stories about his past and the area. He was very proud of his vampire sign and we really enjoyed his company. Next Twilight stop, First Beach at La Push. Along the winding road we started to see signs of the Quileute reservation: little houses along the hills and horses in corrals. We reached the end of the road and surveyed the sea stacks from the top of the hill. As we wandered around the deserted landscape, I stopped along the way to click pictures of the stairway in the hillside made out of old tires, the old barn that housed canoes and a rusty old bike half buried in the sand and beach grass.

By now it was already mid-afternoon, and we knew that a thorough trip to the Olympic National Park could last days, let alone hours, so we reluctantly left the reservation. We took a quick drive through Forks and stopped at a roadside drive-thru coffee trailer. These little huts dot the small town landscape out in Washington and you can get a damn good latte, or even a smoothie through their little to-go window. To get to the Hoh Rain Forest, one must drive 18 miles on a slowly winding, densely forested, sloping and climbing, rural 1 1/2 lane paved trail with an exhilarating view. Along the way there were a couple little ghost-town like clearings in the middle of nowhere, a country store, a tiny house. The drive alone took us 45 minutes and there we were: surrounded by towering hemlock, maple and spruce trees – and a phone booth – all covered in a thick layer of moss and fern fronds. Surreal. Completely surreal. The signs outside the unoccupied ranger station read, “Beware of Charging Elk. Please keep a distance of 15 yards at all time.” There were a few trail options and because of the late hour, we decided on the “Hall of Mosses.”

To be honest, the entire forest is a collection of paradoxes. There is snow on the ground but there is greenery growing all around it, the climate is very temperate but it is a rainforest, the area is a highly travelled national park but we hardly saw another soul the entire time we were there. Like I said, surreal. We climbed and meandered and gawked and crunched and crawled and squished our way through the dense forest, feeling all the while like we had landed in a real life Jurassic Park. AND, we found the elk along the way. They were as interested in us as we were in them and we had a amiable standoff for a couple minutes. The elk must have been our cue to leave and our time in the rainforest was cut short because the sun was starting to set. There was no way that I could think of to find my way out there in the dark. With a weird sense of impending doom and awed appreciation, we headed back to the car and made our way out along the 18 mile road.

Wow. What a long day. And we still had so much to do! We headed back in to Forks. Now that we had done all the not-so-Twilight sightseeing, it was time for me to get my fill. We wanted to eat at a quaint little place like I had imagined this type of town would have. We asked a local and she recommended The In Place, “because of their awesome burgers and bar food.” We should have listened to her because the only “awesome” things we ordered at The In Place were the local beers. Their other fare was not so appetizing, but I suppose that’s because we didn’t order “bar food;” we ordered a scallop and shrimp dinner platter with salad bar… that’s really all I need to say. The people across the aisle from us seemed to enjoy their patty melt and club sandwich though. By this time it was getting pretty dark and I was feeling pretty delirious – we decided to find Dr. Cullen’s parking space at the Forks Community Hospital, and there it was, in all of its reflective glory. We also took a drive by their high school and down the main drag. I hate to admit it, but Forks is not at all, in any way exciting. I guess that was Stephenie Meyers point though, right?

Feeling strangely nostalgic and a little like I had dreamed the entire trip so far, we began our long drive back to Seattle. All of the wonder and beauty of the day trip west had been blanketed by darkness, and Nick worked hard storytelling to keep me alert.

Apparently, in our haste to head west earlier, we had completely ignored the cute little town of Kingston on the west side of the bay. We fully planned on ignoring it again, but then we missed the ferry – by 1 minute. We watched the ferry pull away and headed back to find a place to hang out and wait for the next one. What we found? The Main Street Ale House. We made friends with some regulars who come for the karaoke and tireless wedding-style dancing.
The Main Street Ale House

Although we were exhausted by the time we got back to the Red Lion Hotel, we couldn’t pass up Elephant & Castle for a second night in a row, so we headed downstairs to this cool little English pub. http://www.elephantcastle.com We met a few peeps who were in town for business, chatted with the bartenders and ordered more of the excellent local brew until we could hardly keep our eyes open! Time for bed because tomorrow will be another very eventful day (according to my itinerary).

Stay tuned for Part II: The City!