The Evolution of Treadmills

The Evolution of Treadmills 

Originally treadmills or tread wheels was used to harness human or animal power to do grunt work like millin’ grain or pumpin’ water. That was well before the time of powered machines by about four thousand years or so. I suppose in a sense it marks a major development of human kind in transferrin’ energy from one source to another in order to get a job done more efficiently and with less manpower. Treadmills and tread wheels was at the start of the industrial revolution.

Well never mind about human evolution. Lets talk about the evolution of treadmills instead. Out at the Mennonite Village in Steinbach there’s one o’ them contraptions where you got a horse hitched to a long pole which is attached to some machinery in the middle that removes the wheat from the chaff. Pore ol’ Dobbin goes around in a circle all day long, bein’ driven by the farmer who sits on his duff an’ tells the horse what to do. I guess that’s what you call yer raw power twice removed. Just down the road from there is a big wind mill that works on the same principal, but usin’ the wind as the power source instead o’ man or horse power. Of course you got yer water mills too doin’ the very same thing. An’ that leads to the huge big hydro projects which in turn leads to the use of fossil fuels as the energy source to power the giant turbines needed to create the electricity which leads to the defeat of creatin’ renewable energy. But that’s a whole other subject.

Now before you go judgin’ mankind as bein’ just totally stupid, there’s still a few people what got some brains in their heads. In fact, we got one o’ them at our house. She’s not only smart, but she’s sneaky too. See I got one o’ them treadmills in the bedroom that I use to keep myself in some sort of shape. It’s one o’ them collapsibles what stands upright when it’s not in use. It’s got handles on it all over the place. Well if that ain’t an invitation to hang clothes up on, I don’t know what is. My missus, she jumped on that like a magnet. No sooner had I put the treads in the upright position than there was pants an’ jackets an blouses hangin’ all over the dad blamed thing. Well she had to make room in her closet an’ since I wasn’t usin’ it all that much no more, what was the big deal anyways?

Should I argue about it? NO! My treadmill had become a bit of a burden to me an’ I was lookin’ for an excuse to get rid of it an’ there it was: an open air walk-up-to closet an’ I didn’t have to do nothin’.

So now the treadmill has a brand new function it never had before. Talk about yer evolution. I rather suspect that there’s a few more missus’s out there who’s husbands ain’t that keen on workin’ out have adopted the same idea. At least that’s how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin’.