Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Signs from Above
Yesterday, I decided to go to the gym for the first time in months. I don't know what spurred that thought. Maybe it was the fact that I'm going to be graduating in a few months and want to look good for my commencement speech. Maybe it's that I'm starting a new job tomorrow, so I want to start looking good for that. More likely, it's that I'm going to a water park in the Wisconsin Dells this weekend and think I can lose 50 pounds in 3 days.
I belong to Bally's and have had a membership for almost 6 years now. I used to go every morning when I worked in the suburbs and lived in the city. Traffic going out of the city was just the absolute worst. It could take me 1.5 hours to get to work in the morning when it would only take 30 minutes without any traffic. So I decided to wake up early and go to the gym in the suburbs on my way to work. Every morning for almost 2 years, I woke up at 5:00 and went to the gym. I had two motivations. One was beating traffic. The other was getting a woman, since I was newly single.
Well, a couple years later, I was unemployed and engaged. That pretty much stopped my trips to the gym. No traffic to beat and no women to impress. (I love how getting married, or even dating someone, totally ruins your desire to look presentable. If there were no such thing as divorce, I'd probably weigh 600 pounds right now. But I have to keep myself under 300 just in case The Wife decides she's had it with my fat ass.)
I've been to the gym here and there over the last few years. I'll generally get in the mood to get in shape for a few weeks or months. Then I'll go on a 2 week ice-cream-eating bender. I'll go straight from Dairy Queen to Culver's to Baskin Robbins. By the end of the two weeks, I'm snorting sprinkles and main-lining Blizzards.
So yesterday, I decided to go to the gym. Of course, I was running late and realized that I'd only be able to do abotu 15-20 minutes on the treadmill. Given how much exercise I've had lately, I figured it was better than nothing. When I get to Bally's, I go to the locker room to put my stuff away. Since I was going to be heading straight to school after the gym, I brought all my clothes and planned on showering at the gym. The problem was that the showers weren't there anymore. Shit, I'd been away from this gym for WAY too long.
The way the locker room is set up is that there are a bunch of lockers (shocker, I know) all around. To the right, there a 3-sink vanity that extends the length of the wall. At the end of the wall, there's a door that leads to the showers and sauna. Well, there was a plywood wall that prohibited entry to the vanity and the showers. D'oh!
I walked to the front desk where I found out that the showers were in fact operational. You just had to access them through the pool area. Okay, that's not bad. At least I don't have to drive 15 minutes back home to take a shower. So I do my 15 minutes on the treadmill and head to the locker room to shower. I thought about undressing and sauntering over to the shower in just a towel. Then I thought I'd be arrested and charged with ugliness. I packed a bag and headed past to pool the showers. I got undressed and got under one of the 6 showers. I turned the knob and got nothing. Shit. I walked to the next one. Still nothing. Double shit. The next nozzle? I got a trickle of water. Hmmm. I can make this work. Kind of.
I managed to shower and get out of there on time. But I think there's a lesson here. It's that someone doesn't want me to work out. Someone's making this harder on me than it needs to be. Because someone doesn't want me to lose weight. And that someone is me.
I belong to Bally's and have had a membership for almost 6 years now. I used to go every morning when I worked in the suburbs and lived in the city. Traffic going out of the city was just the absolute worst. It could take me 1.5 hours to get to work in the morning when it would only take 30 minutes without any traffic. So I decided to wake up early and go to the gym in the suburbs on my way to work. Every morning for almost 2 years, I woke up at 5:00 and went to the gym. I had two motivations. One was beating traffic. The other was getting a woman, since I was newly single.
Well, a couple years later, I was unemployed and engaged. That pretty much stopped my trips to the gym. No traffic to beat and no women to impress. (I love how getting married, or even dating someone, totally ruins your desire to look presentable. If there were no such thing as divorce, I'd probably weigh 600 pounds right now. But I have to keep myself under 300 just in case The Wife decides she's had it with my fat ass.)
I've been to the gym here and there over the last few years. I'll generally get in the mood to get in shape for a few weeks or months. Then I'll go on a 2 week ice-cream-eating bender. I'll go straight from Dairy Queen to Culver's to Baskin Robbins. By the end of the two weeks, I'm snorting sprinkles and main-lining Blizzards.
So yesterday, I decided to go to the gym. Of course, I was running late and realized that I'd only be able to do abotu 15-20 minutes on the treadmill. Given how much exercise I've had lately, I figured it was better than nothing. When I get to Bally's, I go to the locker room to put my stuff away. Since I was going to be heading straight to school after the gym, I brought all my clothes and planned on showering at the gym. The problem was that the showers weren't there anymore. Shit, I'd been away from this gym for WAY too long.
The way the locker room is set up is that there are a bunch of lockers (shocker, I know) all around. To the right, there a 3-sink vanity that extends the length of the wall. At the end of the wall, there's a door that leads to the showers and sauna. Well, there was a plywood wall that prohibited entry to the vanity and the showers. D'oh!
I walked to the front desk where I found out that the showers were in fact operational. You just had to access them through the pool area. Okay, that's not bad. At least I don't have to drive 15 minutes back home to take a shower. So I do my 15 minutes on the treadmill and head to the locker room to shower. I thought about undressing and sauntering over to the shower in just a towel. Then I thought I'd be arrested and charged with ugliness. I packed a bag and headed past to pool the showers. I got undressed and got under one of the 6 showers. I turned the knob and got nothing. Shit. I walked to the next one. Still nothing. Double shit. The next nozzle? I got a trickle of water. Hmmm. I can make this work. Kind of.
I managed to shower and get out of there on time. But I think there's a lesson here. It's that someone doesn't want me to work out. Someone's making this harder on me than it needs to be. Because someone doesn't want me to lose weight. And that someone is me.
