Raising the Bar

My 80-something active Mom who never smoked once in her life now needs an oxygen supplement since a bit of invasive avian lung-crud has reduced her blood-oxygen levels, and my 90’something Dad who was once a very able-bodied Midshipman and Annapolis crew-team rower can’t hardly lift a 8-foot 2×4.
They were both into healthy lifestyles and eating right (as Missionaries it boils down to the Scriptural-advice of 1 Corinthians 6:19, “Your body is a temple, don’t put anything bad into it.” ) before it was a fad – but Dad also always eschewed the Jack La Lane life of “Physical Culture” – of the Venice Beach bodybuilder types who did handstands and chin-ups and weightlifting for show, and my own youthful strength training as such was was in swimming and water-polo and bicycling – cyclic, endurance based activities rather than ground-pounding or lifting things.
For one thing, I started early and took Swimming and Polo on purpose, so that I never had to spend another Jr. High moment among the acrid stench of sweat-socks and nasty towels and weird PE teachers ever again. Water with a bit of chlorine was clarifying, clean, and refreshing – even if practice started at 6:00am on cold days rain or shine – and rain was just water in the air. The strength that built lasted a long time, and helped me while tramping around odd places on this wet rock, but time has a way of eroding things and replacing them with gauzy memories.
Now in our second half-century, with my a bunch of trauma-induced University desk-weight lost by She Who Endears Us, we are kicking-away at the side of the pool so to speak, and kicking away from the Groaning Table of fatted-calf sloth and the wretched zombie-life of Cubicleland. It’s reported that Strength itself is a desireable goal, and now is the time to restore our capability – so we’re hefting hand-weights and doing crunches and reading Rippetoe’s Starting Strength, and watching the DVD — and now looking for a bar.
Rippetoe says, “For home gym purposes, a 28.5mm or 29mm bar will be the most durable and provide the best service over time.” As a Pro-Level Capitalist Consumer the advice is blandly generic however, and being totally unfamiliar with the inside of a sweaty-stinky gym I have nowhere to begin and there is no familiar landscape of brand-names to guide me. Do you get the Super-Sumo Yakuza II Japanese bar, or the EinfachGewicht Überheber-3000 machined on an X-Y-Z-axis device from pure Edelstahl on the Continent? I dunno.
The only advice I recognize is, “…expect to pay around $300 for a good bar.” But as a Pro-Level Capitalist Consumer I really hate shopping from the right side of the Menu, you might end up with something inedible. Oh well…and where am I gonna put this stuff, in the garage? What about the motorcycles?
UPDATE: Found it under Resources > Equipment: “We recommend the 20kg Burgener & Rippetoe bar.  Here’s the Guys and here’s the Gals versions.

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