Exercise? Yes. But make it fun
Adding a pedal-driven hydro bike checks that box
A week ago, I half-walked, half-ran up a steep, long flight of stairs at a Seneca Lake shoreside cottage. I went to retrieve a windbreaker from my car parked high above the waterfront dock of a cousin. I made it. But I was sooooo winded - with my heart pounding hard in my chest - that I had to lean on the car to recover.
Days later, I wrote my Finger Lakes Times newspaper column (printed at the end of this Substack post) about my epiphany that I really-really needed to get into better shape - particularly in the cardio area.
Easy peasy? Not for me. I don’t like exercise for the sake of exercise. Most health club scenarios of machines and pulleys and barbells turn me off. Ditto for treadmill trotting. Instead, I try to ramp up my exercise-like activity with something arguably fun. Tennis, pickleball…
Enter Toto, the name we dubbed our new hydro bike. The hydrobike will complement my already fun exercise in my rowing dinghy. The boat gives me a pretty good cardio workout as long as pull hard on the oars for timed stretches along the river. The hydrobike will add solid leg work and heart-rate increase - provided I push the pedals hard enough for timed stretches, too.
Alas, my exercise specialist wife says that’s all fine, but not enough. I need to regularly climb hills near our riverside home to cap it off. Not sure yet how I will have fun doing that, but I am pondering on it.
And the name Toto for the hydrobike? We plan on putting a basket on it for our dog Biscuit to ride in - a la Toto in the Wizard of Oz.
Write On, published July 24, 2025 in the Finger Lakes Times
Adding some Finger Lakes’ cardio
By Michael J. Fitzgerald, columnist
When I arrived in the Finger Lakes more than a week ago, I would have said I was in really good shape for hiking and walking, plenty of which I had planned.
I was so bloody wrong.
I had already spent a week-plus at Lake Chautauqua, walking everywhere around the village of Lakewood, danced one afternoon to an ABBA tribute band, roamed the halls of the high school I graduated from in 1966 and joined my cousin on some of the many walks she and her dog took daily around the neighborhood where I grew up.
In the weeks prior to leaving my Pacific Northwest floating home to come East, I walked plenty, too. A daily trip to get the mail involved a walk along a long dock to a ramp to the parking lot. Then a hike up the road to the mailboxes at the highway. The round trip was a half-mile plus.
When I went to the grocery store, I parked as far away as possible from the entrance, ensuring a long hike to enter the market with an equally long trek back to the car lugging groceries. I also returned my shopping cart to the farthest grocery-cart corral from where I parked.
It was all good exercise, I believed. Except it was nearly all on flat ground, something my exercise-specialist wife repeatedly reminded me later lacked “good cardio.”
She nailed it, as usual.
All my walking and smugness about my preparation had done little to make me ready for climbing steps from the water’s edge of Seneca Lake to the cliffside cottages high above, usually traversing wooden staircases that seem to go up forever.
The steep staircase steps stretch from beaches in front of cottages to homes perched on hillsides, often seemingly hundreds of feet above. In one case, the house itself was snugly tucked in at water’s edge, but the parking area at the top was high above. A visit required a careful walk down narrow steps and a heart-pounding trip back up.
At most of these lakeside homes, the steps to the front door twist and turn with landings that offer people a respite to catch their breath before moseying on.
I did some serious moseying and a good deal of heavy panting as I ran out of breath on two particularly challenging steep staircases. One was 76 steps with several landings. The other seemed – at first blush – like an easy-peasy climb of 51 steps with few landings. But I hadn’t factored that the very sharp incline of the fewer-steps’ staircase made it more diamond run than bunny slope.
My first thought was, ‘I’m too old for this.’ But apparently it’s lack of use of heart and lungs, not years on the planet. Or so my wife says.
After a week of climbing up and down visiting folks at lakeside cottages, I can feel a small increase in stamina. I also have a far greater appreciation for how the high NY humidity can suck the energy right out of me. But I can also see I clearly need a lot more cottage staircase climbing before I attempt to scale the local holy grail of hiking, The Gorge at Watkins Glen State Park.
Whether a new, tough regime works or not to get me to the top of the Gorge right now, when I head back to the Pacific Northwest, I plan to add a measure of the many steeper-incline hills I’ve been avoiding around my riverside home, instead of sticking solely to flat shoreline paths along the water where, I must say, strolling is delightfully easy.
Cardio, cardio, cardio… my new mantra.
Fitzgerald has worked at six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for two news services. He splits his time between Valois, N.Y., and the Pacific Northwest. You can email him at Michael.Fitzgeraldfltcolumnist@gmail.com and visit his websites at michaeljfitzgerald.blogspot.com and michaeljfitzgerald.substack.com.