A man's STILL got to know his limitations

(NOTE: This post was published five years ago today on September 5, 2016. I went back to it to see if it all still holds true. The answer is yes, except that, as recently pointed out, I don't do long tedious car rides as well as I used to. Other than that, these are still a few of the items on my long list of weaknesses and flaws...though to my credit, I fully embrace them all.)

Harry Callahan was right. Here are mine:

• If you're giving me directions, do not refer to points on the compass unless I'm traveling on a well-marked interstate. Otherwise, you're better off telling me something like, "Now when you get to the Dairy Queen that kind of looks like the Mos Eisley spaceport in 'Star Wars,' you're gonna want to take a left. You'll know you've gone too far if you come to the billboard for Swanson TV dinners." Those reference points I can relate to much better than north, south, east or west.

• Does the job involve hammering and/or basic operation of a screwdriver? Fine, I can do it. Are power tools and/or measuring in the mix? In that case, please see my wife.

• Cutting the grass? Yes, I'm a virtuoso. Landscaping of any sort? Yeahhhh, let's call a professional.

• I can sing the melody. I cannot sing harmony. I long ago accepted this fact.

• Athletically speaking, I'm all about running and jumping. Once you start throwing hand-eye coordination into the mix, you're going to want to pick someone else for your team...unless we're talking about hitting a slow-pitched softball, in which case I'm probably still your guy.

• Writing? Yes. Editing? Absolutely. Grammar question? Most likely. Drawing and/or general design? Next, please.

• Would you like me to dance? Fine, but the music must be limited to an 80s power ballad for which homecoming-type, rock-back-and-forth slow dancing is acceptable. There is no foxtrotting and/or Lambada-ing coming from this guy, let me tell you.

• I'm very good at tedious, long-distance car trips. I can be in that driver's seat for 12 hours and still be raring to go. But if at the end of the trip you ask me to parallel park on a busy street, I will melt right before your eyes. Really, my body will turn to liquid and I will enter another state of being that prevents me from even attempting to wedge the vehicle into that tiny space. A similar phenomenon occurs if you ask me to drive a stick-shift.

• I will sit spellbound for an hour listening to Mahler. I will not do the same for Merle Haggard. I'm also ready on a moment's notice for an all-day session of M*A*S*H* binge-watching, but I cannot abide more than seven consecutive minutes of almost any CBS sitcom, "The Big Bang Theory" excepted.

• Roller coaster? Sure, I'll come along if you'd like. Spinny ride? Sure, I'll puke on you if that's what you're looking for.

• I max out at roughly one beer or one glass of wine. Beyond that there's trouble. As for hard liquor, my preferred maximum there would be zero.

My position on spinny rides and roller coasters

Earlier this month, Terry, Jared, Melanie and I spent a day at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. (They actually spent two days there, while my trip was cut a bit short by the need to fly home and get back to work.)

It was a long, hot, exhausting day, given how much ground we covered, how much time we spent waiting in line, and how warm and humid Central Florida tends to be in August.

There was also the fact that I took a couple of supposedly "non-drowsy" Bonine tablets for motion sickness as we entered the park. The pills certainly did their job in terms of preventing motion sickness, but they left me increasingly sleepy as the day went on and absolutely wiped out by nightfall.

If those were the "non-drowsy" formula, I would hate to see what happens when you take the "drowsy" stuff.

In any event, I have undergone an interesting shift over the years in the way I experience amusement parks. When I was younger, I would not go on roller coasters but would go on virtually anything else, including the rides that spin you round and round until you want to puke.

Now it is the opposite: I love virtually all roller coasters, and you couldn't pay me to endure a spinny ride.

I'm not sure why I acquired a taste for coasters later in life, but the faster the better, as far as I'm concerned.

I suspect I would have liked them all along were it not for a traumatic experience on the Double Loop at Geauga Lake back in 1979 or so. It was my first roller coaster, and I got in line to ride it by myself.

To that point, I had never experienced that stomach-drop feeling of going down a really steep hill so quickly, let alone the feeling of being inverted. The intensity of both scared me, and it was a good 15 years before I got back onto a roller coaster of any size.

Now, as I say, I'll go on any of them you want me to.

But the rides that go in a circle? Like the Witches Wheel and those terrible teacups? No, thank you. There's not enough motion sickness medicine in the world to stem the intense dizziness and general feeling of prolonged misery that hits me if I do the round-and-round stuff.

Maybe it's an age thing. All I know is, my days of tolerating the spinny rides are long in the past.

I'll do the merry-go-round, I guess, but even watching people ride it makes me feel a little queasy (that's a true story), so I need to have a barf bag in hand before mounting the fake horse.

A man's got to know his limitations

Harry Callahan was right. Here are mine:

• If you're giving me directions, do not refer to points on the compass unless I'm traveling on a well-marked interstate. Otherwise, you're better off telling me something like, "Now when you get to the Dairy Queen that kind of looks like the Mos Eisley spaceport in 'Star Wars,' you're gonna want to take a left. You'll know you've gone too far if you come to the billboard for Swanson TV dinners." Those reference points I can relate to much better than north, south, east or west.
  
• Does the job involve hammering and/or basic operation of a screwdriver? Fine, I can do it. Are power tools and/or measuring in the mix? In that case, please see my wife.
  
• Cutting the grass? Yes, I'm a virtuoso. Landscaping of any sort? Yeahhhh, let's call a professional.
  
• I can sing the melody. I cannot sing harmony. I long ago accepted this fact.
  
• Athletically speaking, I'm all about running and jumping. Once you start throwing hand-eye coordination into the mix, you're going to want to pick someone else for your team...unless we're talking about hitting a slow-pitched softball, in which case I'm probably your guy.
  
• Writing? Yes. Editing? Absolutely. Grammar question? Most likely. Drawing and/or general design? Next, please.
  
• Would you like me to dance? Fine, but the music must be limited to an 80s power ballad for which homecoming-type, rock-back-and-forth slow dancing is acceptable. There is no foxtrotting and/or Lambada-ing coming from this guy, let me tell you.
  
• I'm very good at tedious, long-distance car trips. I can be in that driver's seat for 12 hours and still be raring to go. But if at the end of the trip you ask me to parallel park on a busy street, I will melt right before your eyes. Really, my body will turn to liquid and I will enter another state of being that prevents me from even attempting to wedge the vehicle into that tiny space. A similar phenomenon occurs if you ask me to drive a stick-shift.
  
• I will sit spellbound for an hour listening to Mahler. I will not do the same for Merle Haggard. I'm also ready on a moment's notice for an all-day session of M*A*S*H* binge-watching, but I cannot abide more than seven consecutive minutes of almost any CBS sitcom, "The Big Bang Theory" excepted.
  
• Roller coaster? Sure, I'll come along if you'd like. Spinny ride? Sure, I'll puke on you if that's what you're looking for.
  
• I max out at roughly one beer or one glass of wine. Beyond that there's trouble. As for hard liquor, my preferred maximum there would be zero.

Wait, why does my shoulder hurt? And my leg? And my hip? And my ankle?

This is the year in which I turn 46 years old. It doesn't happen for another six months, but I'm well aware it's coming.

Do you know what's interesting about turning 46? It's that you've moved inexorably and undeniably into the second half of your 40s.

It's like you spend the years from 40 through 45 going up a roller coaster hill, and when you turn 46 you crest the hill and start barreling down the other side. The idea of being 50 suddenly looms large.

All of which is fine, in some sense. I mean, time marches on without any help or hindrance from us. You either try and fight it (and ultimately lose) or you go with it.

I try to put myself into the "go with it" school, but there's one thing I can't help but noticing: Something on me is always a little bit painful. Not hugely painful. Certainly not debilitatingly painful. But there's almost always a little soreness somewhere on my body.

Right now it's in my right shoulder. And the frustrating part is that I have no idea why. I don't recall having used that shoulder any more than normal in the last few days. Yet if I lift my right arm over my head, I feel it in the shoulder.

Once that starts feeling OK, it will be the pesky left calf that flares up during my morning walks. Or a twinge in my right hip. Again, nothing that would seem to require medical attention, just a series of constant annoyances.

As I understand it, this isn't going away, either. It will just get worse. Little by little, the pains will be more annoying and more frequent. It will start being two things that are sore at any given time rather than just one. And they'll start affecting the way I go about performing certain daily tasks.

This is something that will be years in the making, but eventually it asserts its dominance over all of us, no matter what we do.

It doesn't help that I don't strength train. I walk. My heart is healthy and so, I think, are my bones. But I need to lift weights to help my muscles and tendons remain strong and pain-resistant. I'll start that at some point before I turn 50, I promise.

But if I were smart, I would start now. Joints respond well to resistance exercise and I could hold that soreness back a bit better if I would just carve out a few mornings a week for some dumbbell work.

So will I? Again, yes, eventually. When things aren't so busy. (I'll give you a moment to laugh ironically at that statement.)

Of course, by the time I'm able to free up a couple of hours of gym time a week, my memory will be shot and I'll forget to do it anyway. So maybe aspirin and Ben Gay are my only hope at this point.

Why I don't like going to amusement parks these days

I guess I'm getting old, because I have no desire to visit amusement parks anymore.

The one closest to us is Cedar Point, which as amusement parks go definitely ranks right up there. Cedar Point has something like 8,000 roller coasters, all of which are designed to scare you.

At least that's what they do to me. I'll go on any ride in existence, mind you. I'm not so scared that I chicken out completely. But the fact remains, "terror" is a key emotion whenever I ride one of those Class A man-sized coasters.

There's also the cost. When I was young, my parents paid my admission fees, so I never really had any idea how much it cost to get into a park. Nor did I care, really.

But now, I realize I paid less for my first car than it sets me back for my family of seven to get into Cedar Point.

(For the record, without coupons or any of the other highly prevalent discounts the park offers, the total cost for my brood to go to Cedar Point with tickets purchased online is $314.93.)

Then there's the whole waiting-in-line thing. I talk to people all the time who say things like, "We waited two hours to ride Millennium Force. It was great!"

They don't mean the two-hour wait was great, but they also act like two hours out of their lives waiting in line to ride a four-minute roller coaster is OK.

Is it OK? I don't think it is. I think it's ridiculous. But then, I'm not Cedar Point's target demographic, either.

They're looking for parents like me, of course, but parents who are willing to pay for their kids to come, buy tickets, and spend even more money on food, cheap midway prizes, and the occasional box of saltwater taffy.

Actually, I'm good with the taffy. It's probably my favorite part of the Cedar Point experience. But to get to the taffy, which we purchase on our way out of the park to go home, you have to endure everything else that's thrown at you.

Like, for instance, the other people. If I could hijack Cedar Point and have it to myself for a day like Clark Griswold at Wally World, I'd be fine with it. But you actually have to share the park with others, many of whom smell.

I don't want to be too indelicate here, but visiting Cedar Point on a 90-degree day is like spending time in an Egyptian prison. You're going to walk away having inhaled the bodily fumes of people of all shapes and sizes, along with the bonus parting gift of several million newly acquired germs from touching handrails, bathroom doors, the occasional dead animal, etc.

Then there's the spinny rides.

"Spinny," meaning those rides that go around and around and around. I don't do "around and around and around" nearly as well as I used to.

I don't do it well at all.

I can get through a turn on, say, the Witch's Wheel. But afterward, the rest of my day is ruined. I walk around for hours feeling dizzy and nauseous. I can't keep down the comically unhealthy Cedar Point food. I can't even see straight when my son asks me to win him a stuffed penguin by shooting a water gun into a clown's mouth (a game that, by the way, costs $5 per turn to play).

And I pay $44.99 just for the privilege of experiencing all of this!

I'll tell you what: The next time you want me to come with you to Cedar Point or Six Flags or any other of these money pits, I'll just give you my $44.99 and spend all day at home repeatedly jabbing myself in the eye with a hot poker. That way, you'll be 45 bucks richer and I'll be a lot happier than I would be at an amusement park.

Everybody wins.