Serving Up Exercise on the Rocks

Susan A. Beers is looking for some hardy folks to go rock climbing with her. Or for that matter skiing or swimming or hiking or anything that takes physical effort.

But mostly, the physical fitness advocate wants them to take advantage of rock climbing, which she said is the newest craze in exercise.

“The population is getting more physically fit these days, and many of them are looking for another outlet to strengthen their bodies,” the Laguna Beach woman said. “The rock climbing craze is at its beginning.”

Beers, women’s athletic director at Fullerton College, said the rock climbing class she is forming through the college would be another challenge to her and others who join the innovative exercise program.

“It will be another mode of expression and another way to put your body through physical maneuvers,” she said, noting that the class will first take to the “mountain walls” at the California Ski Center in Anaheim.

After learning rope handling, knots, climbing styles, hand- and footholds, plus survival skills, the class will take a climbing field trip to a nearby mountain.

(For registration information, call (714) 992-7126.)

“People sometimes ask why anyone climbs mountains, and now they ask, ‘Why climb rocks?’ ” she said. “I give the same answer to both: ‘Because it’s there.’ ”

Swimming and hiking were favorite exercises for Beers when she was growing up in Tucson, but she moved to California and traded the desert for the ocean.

“I loved the desert and always had time to hike in it, but now I like the ocean as well,” she said.

Besides her Fullerton College work, the Chapman College graduate is a world traveler, downhill ski instructor, ski tour guide, screenwriter and author.

She is writing an exercise book, hoping to demonstrate a way to live a healthier life.

“Exercise isn’t just a way to help a person live long, but to improve the quality of life as they mature,” she said.

Beers, 42, sailed round the world with the World Campus Afloat ship in 1967 in what she said was a memorable trip.

If her book sells, she said, she could continue sailing, but this time “I wouldn’t have to go third class all the time.”

Traveling is her greatest joy. “I’ll go anywhere,” vowed Beers, whose regular morning exercises include a three-mile run back and forth to the beach from her hillside home that overlooks the ocean.

“I love to start my mornings that way,” she said.

During her 15 years at Fullerton College, Beers once thought of changing careers. One summer she got her real estate license and started selling property.

“I thought about my role in life a great deal, and then decided to make a larger commitment to education,” she said. “I want to make education my life’s work and hope to instigate changes while I’m there. I hope to make a difference.”

Beers also said that after turning 40, she found much of the joy from life comes from being a contributor.

“Your satisfaction comes from giving, not just taking from life,” she said. “It could become a hollow existence if you just take.”

Santa Claus is an innovator these days.

For instance, Santa and Mrs. Claus (Doug Hoxeng and Rosi Gruse) stopped off in a vintage fire truck at the Los Alamitos Casa Youth Shelter, a temporary haven for runaway teen-agers and other troubled youths.

Then they whisked some of the youths in the truck to a nearby Good Earth restaurant and treated them to breakfast. Last year Santa and Mrs. Claus showed up in a limousine.