It's That Old Time Again

Tomorrow, well, today given the hour, is my birthday.  I'd say I'm a half-century old, but that happened two years ago.  I don't know if that means everything is downhill from here or uphill.   The older you get the more some things become easier, while other things grow more challenging.   Physically, I am no longer able to do an ariel without putting my hands on the ground.   I remember deciding when I was young that the day I couldn't do an ariel from a standstill, I would be very old indeed.  

That time has long, long passed.  My days of gymnastics are fond memories but much faded at this point.   I loved doing cartwheels and what I learned was the more powerful "round-off" version of the cartwheel.   To do a round-off, you do a cartwheel but the second leg off the ground catches up with the first and both feet land at the same time, giving you more rotational energy to spend with the next move you might want to do.   

When you watch gymnastics competitions, round-off are the first thing the gymnast does before the back handspring and then the power move like a flip with twists or, in Mary Lou Retton's case, a double back layout.  

I never got to that high a level of skill, but I did enjoy doing ariels, a cartwheel where your hands don't touch the ground.  With enough push-off, you can do the cartwheel without even needing to put your hands down.   I would back up and run as fast as I could and launch myself into the cartwheel, trying to go as far over as I could before putting down a hand or two. 

Eventually, I realized it wasn't speed that mattered, it was the launching angle that did.   Along with enough initial push, if you flung your body over in time with the kick over, it was possible to do an ariel from a standing position.  

When I figured that out, I was so pleased with myself.  I didn't need to touch the ground anymore to do a flip.   And boy did I do a lot of them.  As I got older and quit gymnastics, I still kept up the ariel skill for many years, although it grew harder as I got into my late teens and twenties.   

Today, even a cartwheel or round-off is a bit of an accomplishment.   It won't make my back and neck happy, but the sensation is still one that I enjoy.   Tomorrow, when I get up and have had some coffee so I can get my much older body going, maybe I'll try to do a cartwheel and see how it goes.   If there's no blog post tomorrow, you'll know I didn't make it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter and I play games in the car.  Today, my husband picked her up from school and I told him maybe they'd get to play some of her games.  "Oh," he told me, "she already has a game she plays with me, it's called the 'crazy self-driving car' game."   

The Big Boy Update:  My son came downstairs, unable to sleep at almost one in the morning.   I asked him to help me with the filming I was working on.  Could he push the record button for me as I recorded takes.   It worked perfectly, after two one-minute recordings he said he was going to go back upstairs and go to bed.