Okay, call me shallow, but I chose my gym largely because the day I was taking a tour of the place, one of the women there was giving CPR to a hamster.
Who could argue with that? I mean, you could tour every gym in North America for a year without finding a woman who would give the kiss of life to domestic rodent. (Well, outside the world of professional wrestling, anyway.)
Sure, there was a good excuse - one of the women who work at the gym had kids who were distraught that their hamster was lying around the Habitrail with a smoker's cough, so she promised to take it to work and keep an eye on it throughout the day. Unfortunately, Fluffy went into a full-blown cardiac trauma about halfway through the day and she had to do SOMETHING!
So, as it turned out, I happened to come through the door of this gym just in time to see a team of fairly hot fitness gyrls trying desperately to inflate a hamster's lungs with an eyedropper. Never mind that these attempts were ultimately futile and Fluffy ended up swimming toward the light - I was hooked.
Mind you, it took something along the lines of a dying pet to get me to sign up at this place. It's not that this gym is a BAD place; it's just not MY kind of place. I have a few hard and fast rules about what makes a good gym:
1) It should open absurdly early in the morning so I can work out before I'm fully awake and can find plausible reasons to blow it off.
2) There shouldn't be too many attractive people in Lycra - just enough to enhance the view, but not enough that I'll be sent to the Ugly Fat Person's Room.
3) It should have a "heavy bag" that I can kick the crap out of if I've had a really rotten day.
4) It should have a great, manly, athletic-sounding name - something like The Sweatbox or The Grunt Shack.
5) Ideally, it should be run by a retired, small-time boxing promoter named Roscoe, who smokes a fetid cigar and calls me, "Kid". ("Welcome aboard Kid - we've saved youse a lockah. Don't puke in it.")
I'm sad to say that my new gym fits almost none of those criteria. It is full of neon. There are hundreds of mirrors. There are, at a rough estimate, 3,000 exercise machines lined up next to the juicebar. For that matter, the fact that there IS a juice bar is not a good sign.
My new gym - or as I like to call it, The Prettyboy Lycra Preening Society - has three main factors in its favor:
1) The surly, sleep-addled crowd that I hang out with at five in the morning are less annoyingly perky that the prettyboys who slink in around noon. We are grumpy, unkempt and can barely form coherent sentences - the sort of people who SHOULD be hanging around a gym.
2) The extremely attractive woman who works there three days a week provides a note of joy and grace to my otherwise grumpy, unkempt mornings.
3) They don't actually make announcements over the P.A. system until much later in the day. I happened to drop into the club one day when the Resident Afternoon Counterdude used the intercom to let everyone know that Banana/St.John's Wort Smoothies were now on sale at the juicebar. If this happens on a regular basis, I suspect the REAL workouts happen when people try to heave barbells across the room at him.
4) They have a steam room. Yes, a steam room is a selling point for me. I don't anticipate ever spending time in Russia, but if I do ever find myself in a room full of drunk, sweaty, middle-aged guys beating themselves with willow branches - they'll be shocked at how well I fit it. I'm ready for them.
5) There is always the off-chance that I'll see another hamster getting CPR.
The fact of the matter is - in spite of my griping - I kinda like the place. I've actually had a couple of interesting conversations. During the height of pre-election foolishness, a Vietnam Vet and I spent 20 minutes or so in the steam room grousing about the prevalence of idiots in American politics.
"Hey," he gasped through the steam, "I didn't fight a war so morons like these could line their own pockets!"
"Me either!" I assured him.
A moment later, however, I realized that the fact that I am a veteran of the Gulf War meant that is exactly what I'd fought for. A gym membership is a small price to pay for a moment of self-awareness like that.
Then, there is the girl at the counter who looks like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I can't say that we've ever had a DEEP conversation, but I HAVE talked with her - one time at any rate.
The trouble was with the exercise bike - I couldn't get it programmed. Lord knows, I tried. I spent 15 or 20 minutes one morning, trying to get it to accept my commands. I felt much like Capt. Jean-Luc Picard trying to convince the on-board computer to accept my command codes.
"Enter Program Selection," the bike instructed me.
I punched in my choice.
"Enter your weight," the bike continued. (I was starting to resent its tone. I'm willing to bet it says "Please" to the women in Lycra.)
I obediently punched in my best estimate of my current weight.
"Enter Program Selection," it told me again.
Furrowing my brow, I did so.
"Enter your weight," it ordered me, clearly toying with me this time.
I did so in an unamused manner.
"Enter Program Selection," it told me.
"Oh COME ON!!" I yelled at the bike. (I am willing to work with an exercise bike, but only if it shows me the proper respect.)
"Enter your weight," the bike responded.
At this point, I went to Buffy for help.
She was cheerful and perky and very helpful. She came over to "my" bike with me and seated herself in it. She started peddling to get the electrical systems up and running.
"OK," she said. "What program were you trying to use?"
To my credit, I didn't even blush as I told her. "Fat Burner."
To HER credit, she was unfazed by this and simply proceeded to the next stage - punching in her weight. I was shocked to see that this was 97 pounds.
"97 pounds!?" I demanded. "I have SOCKS that weigh 97 pounds!"
This didn't faze her either - obviously, I struck her as the type of guy who WOULD have 97-pound socks.
There is justice in the universe - the bike didn't work for her either.
"So, what do you think?" I asked her.
"It's broken," she said, shrugging and going back behind her counter.
You have to respect that kind of aplomb in the face of a losing situation.
