So much for New Year’s resolutions. I only had one — to start exercising in the morning again — and I haven’t done it once. In fact, I’ve been more true to my evening scoop of chocolate ice cream than my poor old running shoes; they’re five years old and still look brand new.

This column is an admission I guess, somewhat of a forced one at that. A colleague up north, who knows I bragged in column a few months ago about how I was getting up early to walk with the wife, recently asked why I hadn’t yet come clean about quitting. You’d better write about it, she said, your readers deserve to know.

Barf.

Truth be known, I have felt a bit guilty. Hitting the snooze button over and over again isn’t as easy as it sounds. It’s like the scoop of ice cream. You tell yourself, “Just one more night, one more scoop and I’ll start tomorrow,” only in this case it’s the snooze button. I don’t do that with the ice cream.

Being so untrue to oneself leads to self-destructive behavior. This week, for example, I decided it’d be cool to get an overhead shot of Bruce Montgomery’s property and the beach access at Wonn Road. You know, the one that’s half ours. If you haven’t heard, the long-contested access was split 50/50 in a settlement OK’d by the county commissioners on Tuesday. The conditions were strict: people can get to the water, but they can only launch half a canoe. The same goes for lunches. Anyone caught with a whole sandwich on the beach will be cited, so eat at your own risk.

Anyway, The Record’s imaginary drone is in the shop so an overhead photo required a plane ride. As usual, the paper’s stand-by pilot, Fred Lundahl, was more than happy to help. The weather’s clear, he said, let’s go for a ride. Yeah, it was a ride all right. Shortly after we took off — as in immediately — Fred announced that the wind seemed to have picked up.

He knows I was a skydiver in another life and that I’m squirrelly about small planes, particularly when it comes to landing in them. I highly suspect the wind isn’t the only reason why we “had” to do that dive-bomb approach over the trees and onto the runway. Feign all the surprise you want, Fred, I’m on to you.

I’m just kidding. He’s an awesome pilot and it wasn’t that bad, at least nothing a couple scoops of ice cream couldn’t fix.