In a few war-torn countries, food is still scarce. In most of the developing world, worries are such as getting new shoes for the kids before they outgrow the old. In America, millions of unemployed wait in various degrees of dread for the utility bill, after a summer so scorching hot, a friend compared it to Satan leaving the door to Hell open. (One may doubt the door to Hell is in America, but if the road to it is paved with good intentions…)

So what do we worry about in scenic Norway?

Me, I fed my electronic pulse watch with my age, weight and sex. (“Male”, as “No, thanks” was not an option…) The watch calculated my exercise frame to be from 117 to 133 beats per minute. Fine. But it also insists on beeping if my pulse is outside the boundaries. Beep! Beep! And it just so happens that walking fast usually takes me to a pulse of 115, and there it stops. So, alternative 1, walking through the town with my watch beeping furiously.

If on the other hand I try to run, my pulse quickly goes over the higher value, and the watch beeps even faster. Beep beep beep! And more importantly, running also triggers my exercise asthma. So it is something I just don’t do, unless the alternative is likely death.

The obvious solution is to run a few yards to get the pulse up, then walk until it approaches 117 again, and run some more. Unfortunately this looks just as crazy as walking around with a beeping watch. That was not much of a problem way out in the countryside, but the first and last 15 minutes are through the town where hundreds of people are staring, at least if you act crazy.

So how did I solve this? By listening to the voice in my head telling me to Google for the product name and how to turn off sound. A PDF of the user guide (which I had lost) contained a description that, with a little trial and error, did the trick.

So the key to not be seen as crazy is to listen to the voices in your head. Bet you wouldn’t have thought of that!

(OK, it is not literally a voice, like with schizophrenia. More like an independent thought. Still, it amuses me.)

Anyway, I sped up once I was out of the town center, and burned 700+ calories, so I thought it was worth it.