Gym Folk

The gym -- especially in the daylight hours it seems -- draws a very interesting crowd. I've been going to my local YMCA and working out there daily for a little over a month now. I'm there at roughly the same time most days, and have noticed that a lot of the people that are at the gym when I'm there are also regulars.

The gym thankfully isn't that crowded when I'm there, which is one of the reasons I enjoy going mid-morning. I don't like to be gawked at while working out. I spend 8 hours a day in a proverbial fish bowl, where everything I do is seen and taken note of. The gym, therefore, is my time, and I don't like sharing it. Thankfully, the mid-morning regulars seem to share my sentiment, and there isn't a whole lot of socializing. We come in, we do our thing, and we leave.

However, that said, there is some degree of observation that occurs at the gym. It's human nature. And I, being an avid people-watcher, can't help but notice and observe some of the gym regulars. I've even given them some nicknames in my head.

Shoulders: Handsome guy, mid-late twenties, wears his wedding band, and only seems to ever work out his upper body. He's one of those guys that has the broad shoulders, the big arms, and the very lean, tiny waist and stick legs. Literally, I look at him and giggle to myself, because he looks ridiculous, and most days I wonder how he's able to hold himself upright. And he accentuates this oddity by being determined to always wear dark-colored athletic pants, and a ridiculously bright colored shirt. As if the massive shoulders didn't draw your attention enough, here, let me blind you with my lime green t-shirt. And he works on his shoulders like its his religion, rarely cracking a smile, or looking anything other than serious and focused. Very soon, his spine and tiny waist are going to snap from the disproportionate weight, and he's gonna go down like a felled tree. It will happen.

Gnat -- because he seems to have the attention span of one. This man is probably in his forties, very thin, and flamboyantly gay. He has bright red, green and yellow Nike sneakers, and he seems to enjoy pairing them with bike shorts of one of the matching hues, under whatever color little track shorts he had leftover in his closet from high school thirty years ago. He jumps from machine to machine, always smiling, and never seems to do a full set of anything. He's pleasant enough, and stops to make conversation with whomever seems to be willing to chat. However, I've noticed he avoids Shoulders like the plague. I'm going to guess that they had words at one point or another, lol.

There are other characters at the gym... and I will write about most of them. But for now, I will move on to other observances at the gym.

Treadmills are evil spawns of Satan, that were put on this earth solely to horrify and torture the masses. First of all, whatever little computer thingy in them measures distance and MPH lies. There is no way that in 30 minutes I only ran 2.3 miles. I run an 8-minute mile for Christ's sake. Add to that, that they screw up my stride, make my lower back and knees ache, and make you sound like a stampeding cow when you use them, I am going to continue to do my damndest not to use them.

There are my observations for the day. Shower now, because I stink, and then work. It's my Monday...