I settled onto my eliptical trainer today, all set to sweat out 45 minutes of hell. It was the first time since pretzeling my left ankle some three-and-a-half months ago. So I climbed aboard the torture bitch and held on for dear life just waiting for the left wheel to pop and my achilles tendon roll up my leg like a cheap window shade.
It was the opposite, though. No pain except from my eardrums after listening to the gym's horrendous Muzak for 20 minutes. Earlier in the day I thought about checking the juice in my own walkman (I haven't come to terms with calling it an iPod. To me, if I have ear phones stuffed into my wax holes and music comes out of said phones, then the source must be a walkman) but then the other voice - the risk taker in my head - said, "Screw it pantywaist! Live on the edge! Don't charge up the walkman, work that cheap-ass Mac battery until that bastard shrivels up like an old man's pecker." And I'll be damned if I'm going to let some piss ant voice run my life. So, I cranked away despite on the machine despite the urge to swallow my tongue from hearing songs from pre-teen girls who probably know more about sex than Jenna Jameson, or me for that matter.
Then, as if I needed any more reason to grab a fistful of my own pubic hair and shove it in my ears to block the noise, I got a gym cardinal rule breaker on the elliptical machine next to me.
"iPod went on the blink, eh?" Said a bald-headed, 60ish tub of whip cream and Milwaukee Light Beer (because he's watching his figure). If there's one rule/pet peeve I have at the gym, it's to not talk my ear off (or at least keep the talking to a minimum) while I'm working. Why would folks want to talk with someone who's sweating a small salt pond under his ellipitical?
"Uh-huh," I say, keeping my eyes straight ahead, seemingly glued to the CNN channel (the talking heads were talking about the spike in gas prices, which lead me to think the rise in gas around this end of the gym may stifle further questions/discussion. I did have some questionable swiss cheese on my sandwich this morning, I could start a chemical reaction), so as to not engage beady-eyed gym gabber.
"Can you believe gas is $3? How can folks afford it? I can't. I drive a golf car from my home in Westbrook Village over to the gym. That along saves me $30 I bet. It's that damn Bush and his oil cronies. They're the only folks who can afford it because they're making all the money."
I wanted to explain just how illegal that was, driving a putt-putt mobile on city streets, not to mention about as smart as giving a power saw to a cerbral palsy patient. But I knew that would kick start a conversation, and with 15 minutes of hell remaining, that was not a road I wanted to run down.
"Uh," I said. He still didn't get the hint. Tom Petty's "Free-fallin'" came over the Muzak (the one good song during my walkman-free time and I started day-dreamin' of sending Jawin' Joe out the plate glass window behind me - giving him his own "free-fall" down to the freeway below. I reminded myself, however, that such an act would bring more people up my way and they'd all have questions. I know if I told them the reason everyone in the sweat pen would understand, but it's the principle of the thing, I'm there to work, not discuss illegal immigration, the war in Iraq or whether Miller Lite is less filling or tastes great.
"I really like these ellipticals," said the lardball with legs. "They are so easy on the knees and work up a good sweat. You seem like a natural on it. How often do you come by? Speaking for myself, I'm a 6-day-week gym rat. I take the Lord's day off, and back at Monday after I finish volunteering as a..."
You know how words just trail off into an empty void of silence when you quit focusing on the speaker. That's what happened here. The dude kept going on while I grunted through a 3-minute sprint period, and I think I could have made it through without hearing his voice again had it not been for the beer keg of a human pressing 125-pound handheld barbells and grunting with each thrust as if someone taken both nipples and twisted them until they came clean off. "One," he screamed, and I watched as his spotter held onto the lifter's biceps, using almost as much force as the schmuck doing the real work. 125-pounds? Seriously? What the hell are you battling every day if you must push that kind of tonnage up 10 or 12 times? Early I did some weight work and it felt like my shoulders were ripped open by shishkabob skewers ... and that was with 10-pounders. I know, I'm a friggin' beast.
"Wow, I don't make that noise unless I just had a carne asada burrito with jalapenos and fire hot salsa. God help you if you're heading into the john after I've had my way with it."
That was it. I hit "clear" on the machine, grabbed my stuff and bee-lined it out the gym. Of course, I wasn't rude, I grunted an angry "uh," in reply and then gave him my own gas hike.
Your carne assada is no match for my flaming butt of moldy swiss cheese.
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