I have a new toy.
This little cutie is now sharing treadmill-time with me and I couldn't be happier. Music, I've found, makes the miles go faster and tunes out the TVs overhead that I have no interest in. Although I have to say with more and more of the Silver Sneaker seniors showing up, the channel is seldom on ESPN when I'm there now. And it's amazing how much you can get out of Rachel Ray even without the audio. But I digress.
I shook the dust off my antique iPod when the treadmill became a twice-a-week (or more, depending on the weather) part of my regular walking schedule, and it served me well for a while. It didn't take long, however, for its age to show and I had trouble getting it to charge. Enter this new Shuffle that's tiny but has a big sound and, best of all, clips to the bottom of my T-shirt.
So we spent some time Sunday night and Monday getting music uploaded to it. The old iPod had a couple of hours of music on it but at some point after buying it, I went through most of our smooth jazz CDs and marked the songs I really liked then Wayne loaded them into his computer. I don't remember what happened to the process but they never made it to the iTunes library or on to the iPod so we tracked those down and finished that process. And I found a half dozen CDs that hadn't been done and we added them to the mix as well. One of those CDs had never been opened, I'm guessing it was purchased just before we bought our last car which came equipped with XM Radio. Our primary CD listening time was on trips so when XM helping the miles roll by, the CDs became relegated to the entertainment center. It was a good CD though and now part of it is on the new little Shuffle.
My little buddy and I covered four miles together this morning and I have to say it was delightful having all that new music to keep me motivated. I caught myself smiling on more than one occasion as a favorite song I haven't heard in a while began to play...it was like hearing from an old friend. And a walk down memory lane, too. Many times we bought a new CD at the start of a trip and listened to it over and over so I associate those songs with the places we visited. The awe-inspiring arches, canyons and colorful rock formations of Utah instantly come to mind when I hear The Rippington's Topaz album. When the linked song came on early in my walk this morning, I was right back on the hiking trails at Canyonland or Bryce...at least in my mind anyway. (Skip the ad, give it a listen and see if you aren't transported to the desert Southwest too.)
There's enough music loaded on my new toy to keep me going for a marathon. I'm not sure my legs would hold out that long but my ears would definitely enjoy the trip.
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