New upper-body fitness dream

I've wanted to try rowing since I was in my twenties, but never had an opportunity. Now that I'm looking into various ways of strengthening and toning the upper body, I've begun thinking about that again.

Wouldn't it be great to have a form of upper-body strengthening/toning that didn't require standing inside in a room and performing strenuous activity, but that allowed you to be out in nature while doing this exertion--at least sometimes? Well, rowing definitely fills that bill. Ok, so rowing works out your lower body as well; I'm not against doing some extra lower-body aerobics if it's complementary to my cycling, and rowing looks like it would be.

I did a little searching today to see what's available in terms of rowing possibilities where I live. There is a local club, but it seems to be geared mostly toward women, oddly enough. Plus, they use racing sculls and I'd actually prefer using something closer to a row boat or canoe. I also don't like the idea of going in reverse while you're trying to get a good aerobic upper-body workout: seems like a recipe for accidents.

Well, with some further searching I came across this:


There are actually a few different desgins/companies putting out this sort of thing. This design gives you essentially the same workout as you'd get from traditional rowing, but you face the direction of your boat is heading, rather than having your back towards it, as in traditional rowing. Incidentally, these are drop-in units that allow you to covert many types of boats into a forward-facing rowboat

This is exciting. I'd love to try one of these. Heck, I'd love to do something like this as my main form of upper-body fitness for most of the summer. But a few things interfere.

First, these things are not cheap. From what I've seen in my searches, you could easily sink 5 grand into a boat like this for two. With some economizing--like maybe by picking up a decent used canoe--you could spend maybe a grand or two less. That's still a pretty hefty price for yours truly.

But that's not even the main detriment. The main problem for me with this sort of fitness option is that I'm not very near any body of water where I could use it. At least not near enough that I wouldn't have to load the thing onto a trailer and haul it a few miles with my car. If I lived within a few hundred feet of a lake or river something like this would be more realistic. But hitching a trailer and loading an unloading a boat each time I want to go and do some upper-body strengthening? It's a bit impracticable, to say the least.

Then, there's the storage problem. Where do you keep your 15-18 foot canoe when you're not out on the water? For many people that would pose a problem, but for me it's an insurmountable obstacle.

But I'm going to keep dreaming. Who knows, maybe one day I'll live somewhere where owning and using something like this would be more realistic, or maybe I'll find a place where I could rent one on occassions when I wanted to do this?

It's an inspiring idea. I'll file it away in the category of great fintess concepts I'd like to try out.