Hello, I must be going.

Guess what? The sprint triathlon thing is on. Again.

You can tell because I came home from the running store with new shoes, a calf-stretching gadget, a roll-your-muscles-flat gadget, a new pair of swim goggles, and this book.

Now, my dropping $200 on sports gear doesn't mean all that much. Spending two hundred dollars on sports equipment is like paying gym dues for three and a half months and then not going to the gym. Please raise your hand if you've never signed up for a gym, stopped going, and kept paying anyway.

OK, you? With your hand in the air? I hate you.

Now to the rest of my fellow losers: thank you. Yes, indeed I kept paying monthly dues at the Big Box gym, six months' worth to be exact, and I did stop going.

So the question is why am I bothering with the triathlon?

Well, I'm thinking about what I want to be when I grow up. I figure I've given this sitting-around-indoors-on-my-ass thing a couple of decades, and it's time to do something different.

So. Let's plan the next couple of decades, shall we?

Would I rather be an apple-shaped wheezing blob with bad knees and ankles, or one of those age-spotted, crows'-footed golf-playing preppy old ladies in the bright colored sports clothes with the short, sensible hair?

Neither, actually.

I'd rather be a stringy-looking old gal with wavy gray shoulder-length hair wearing yoga pants and a matching hoodie from Horny Toad, sandals, Me & Ro jewelry, and a pair of crazy reading glasses on a funky chain.

I don't want to be stuck in my living room watching t.v.

Or drinking iced tea and eating salads with three girl friends at the country club grill.

I want to be hanging around a non-chain coffee house drinking coffee, reading Harper's Weekly, and planning a trip to Hawaii. Or maybe Venice.

So that's why.