Hula Hooping!

I have picked up what may become a new hobby. I was trying to discover ways to exercise with my knee injury and was told by various pages on livestrong.com that I should try:

• swimming (which won't work anytime soon because it's Feburary and I live in Kansas) 
• maybe a rowing machine (which I don't own or have axcess to)
• or an eliptical machine (which I do)
• cycling (which doesn't seam to work to well with my specific problem as of now)
• upper body weight lifting (groan)
• and low-impact exercises (hmm...)

I then remembered reading something about hula hooping contests between Glee cast members from an interveiw by one of them- I don't remember which... I've only seen 1 episode. I figured hula hooping would qualify as a low-impact exercise. So I treked down to the storage room and grabbed my hula hoop and got to work. My very first go was pretty good. The next 20 or so were dreadful. It was not pretty. I kept trying to start it off, and the stupid hula hoop just fell to the ground. No matter how I tried to move myself to keep the thing up, it refused to cooperate. Stupid hula hoop. By some miraculous act of God, I did figure out how to get myself going eventually. Then I  figured out how to keep myself going. It was awesome. I hula hooped through an entire episode of Say Yes to the Dress, which is actually pretty impressive. Those episodes are an hour long. I did have pick up my dropped hula hoop every minute or so though. I ended up being very impressed with myself and feeling a little haughty about my abilities. I was getting ready to sign myself up for some hula hooping world record setting. I figured to myself "how many people would thing about setting a world record for hula hooping?" if there was any record for it at all, I figured it'd be pretty short. How naive of me. Hula hooping is the sort of thing world records exist for. I googled (google is a verb, right?) hula hoop world records and was lead here. They have some crazy hooping records. The current record holder, Aaron Hibbs, hula'd for 3 days, 2 hours and 54 minutes in 2009. It's recorded on camera here. The very first holder was American Mary Jane Freeze for 10 hours 47 minutes back in 1976. She was 8 years old. When she competed she hula hooped for those 10 hours and 47 minutes straight. They recently changed the rules to allow for a 5 minute break every hour. 
 Either way, I'm thinking maybe I won't be breaking any records. But hopefully hula hooping will end up becoming a hobby of mine. Because it's pretty fun, and it does seam to be a good workout. Weight hula hoops designed for fitness are actually on the market. I just used an old toy hula hoop (still a workout- I broke a sweat!). It really works your core muscles, which will hopefully prove to be a good thing. I'm not sure if I'll see any actual "results," but hula hooping's just kind of fun to do, and it's gotta burn some fat. Right? Even if not, I read somewhere that hula hooping improves coordination. So maybe I can eventually become a better dancer? Something good will come of this!