Working Out Hard or Hardly Working Out

Today I made the dreaded trip that every male ends up taking at least once in his lifetime: I went to the gym. Now I’ve been to the gym many times, but that was at Gonzaga and always with friends. The comfort level of having someone else with me who had no idea what he was doing was absent here. But I have too much free time these days and I’ve given up drinking so I headed to out the great Land of Testosterone.

I arrived at the building and it looked like it was out of the 70s (it was) and the lady who swiped my card looked like she was in her 70s (I didn’t ask). Then I got to the locker room and I had to swipe my ID card again. Strange, but I guess they’re security conscious. Finally I get to the weight room …. and there’s a keypad. I was confused and resorted to punching random numbers until someone entered in the correct code. By now I was very excited. What could they be protecting? Would the weights be made of gold? Would the water fountains shoot out chocolate milk?

Alas, the gym was just a gym. So I got to work. There’s one thing that I’ve noticed about the gym: people working out are either total jerks or extraordinarily nice. Example: I was curling and feeling like a bad ass and that I was the strongest person in the world when a guy with forearms the size of my head walks up, snickers, and proceeds to curl twice what I’m curling. Ok, buddy that was unnecessary so I promptly kicked his ass. And by “kicked his ass” I mean “went to the treadmills”. The nice people (and thankfully their the vast majority) pretty much fall over themselves to accommodate everyone else when two people need the same machine. I’m not sure if this is because they’re searching for an excuse for a break or are secretly afraid that I’m some sort of kung fu master.

Now the final group of people at the gym are people who do not look like they belong at a gym. They’re could be wild eyed and don’t know where to start or are perhaps overweight and might feel out of place. These are my people and I respect them. We’re actual human beings trying to better ourselves, not gym junkies that have toes that can bench press my body weight. But if that gym doesn’t install the chocolate fountains, I’m so taking up beer again.