Gym Rat

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At various times in my life --including now-- I have been a hardcore "gym rat".  I wasn't particularly athletic in high school (OK, I was your typical nerd!), but became an occasional short-distance triathlete in my 20's.  With the birth of our four kids and jumping onto the career treadmill, I spent my 30's as a couch potato.  At age 40 as I reached the point of increasingly senior job assignments  I realized stress would devour me if I didn't start taking care of myself, and I began hitting the gym every morning.  I ended up becoming a power weight lifter (peak lifts were ~450 pounds), martial artist (Krav Maga combat, supplementing the Shotokan Karate and Aiki-Jujitsu I once practiced) and spending a decent amount of time on high intensity cardiovascular exercise. 

There's now no such thing as "too heavy" for me when it comes to telescopes, as witnessed by the fact that I designed Frankenscope to weigh some 300 pounds! Heck, I've even hauled its pieces several hundred yards away from the car.  It was always funny to be doing power lifts in the gym and to tell the other hard core jocks that I was training for astronomy. 

Will get some respect for us astro-geeks yet! <g>



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