FITNESS : Are We Having Fun Yet? : So much for those trendy, super-efficient, high-tech exercise machines. It turns out father may have known best after all.

My father has always been one of those no-frills, down-to-basics kind of men that would drive any woman who likes pampering and luxury totally crazy.

To him, any hotel that puts a mint on the pillow is ostentatious--give him a Motel 6 any day. A car with electric windows just has more things that can go wrong with it--he’ll take the hand-rolled version. And a power lawn mower is just noisy and unnecessary--give him the old-fashioned manual type any time.

Luckily for him, my mother has never minded not having luxuries like an electric eggbeater. I, on the other hand, rebelled like any gadget-age daughter worth her salt.

My home, I decided, was going to be a doodad heaven: an electric knife sharpener, food processor, microwave oven, remote control-operated TV, electric lawn mower--anything, in short, to make life easier.

And life did get easier.

So much so, in fact, that I was forced to buy an expensive, trendy piece of gym equipment for my home just so I could get some exercise.

Now if I could only use my fitness machine the way it was intended.

“It serves as a very nice ornamental hanger for my clothes,” says 29-year-old Chris Palmer, who has found a similar use for his weight machine.

He’s now trying to sell it in the want-ads for $650 or best offer.

“For the first three weeks I was totally dedicated and worked out on it every day. But then I stopped and I never touched it again. It’s been the same way with my stair-stepper.”

Part of the problem, says Palmer, who works with severely emotionally disturbed children in the Ventura Unified School District, is that his life is just too busy to make time for the machines.

But there’s also a touch of the hamster-on-a-wheel element to it: The machines are a boring, unnatural approach to fitness that just isn’t, well, fun .

“I don’t think a lot of mechanical gadgetry can replace throwing a football with your brothers and stuff like that,” Palmer says.

Then there is the problem of motivation; machines such as stair-steppers may be trendy, but you need a compelling reason to get on one.

And nothing I can think of could possibly compare to the reasons I have to walk up real stairs every day:

“Mom! He’s killing me!”

“Mom! Your computer’s falling out the window!”

“Mom! I think my shoe is on fire!”

Why would anyone pay $500 for a machine to simulate that?

“I have three flights of stairs right outside my apartment, but in California, everyone would think you were odd if you walked up and down stairs,” Palmer says. ‘ But maybe we don’t love them as much as we once did. Maybe their time has come and gone.

In Ventura, there’s an entire store that’s banking on it.

Play It Again Sports is based on the consignment-clothing store idea, selling people’s unwanted gym and barely used sports equipment at a fraction of the original cost.

The store, part of a three-year-old national chain with 250 stores, opened eight months ago.

Business, says manager Jim Raulins, is great.

Just about every day, someone calls to find out if they want a practically new weight bench, a rowing machine or a stair-stepper. In the middle of the store is a pile of used, cast-iron hand weights, stacked like metal dinosaur bones.

“There’s a certain kind of trend, a certain kind of fashion to fitness equipment,” Raulins says. “A few years ago, everyone wanted a rowing machine. Then it was a Nordic Track. Then it was a stair-stepper. Now I’m just waiting to see what they come out with next.”

What they come up with next just might be what they came up with a very long time ago.

Hammacher Schlemmer--the same hopelessly trendy company that puts out gadget-filled catalogues with items such as personal shiatsu massagers and waterproof lawn speakers--has been offering an antique fitness machine in its summer catalogue that’s a new hot seller.

It’s a manual lawn mower, for $139.95.

“It’s a very popular item now,” says Cindy Cowell, a sales representative for the company. “I’ve taken a lot of orders for them.”

A desire to be ecologically correct and not spew fumes into the air, as with gas-powered mowers, may account for some of the sales.

But customers also may be discovering the highly aerobic benefits of pushing the machine across a lawn.

I did. I got my first manual mower a few weeks ago.

It’s cheaper than a lot of fancy gym equipment, it accomplishes something in the process, and it’s actually kind of fun.

Of course, this would not come as news to my father.

He knew it all along.

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* THE PREMISE

Attitudes is a column about a variety of current trends and issues.