Fitness Center Rant

All right, so no one is commenting. I’ve got a silent group taking a look at this, and that’s okay, I guess. Before you say anything, no, it’s not tracking my visits. I’m smart enough to go in on every browser I use and install the blocking cookie from Blogger to not track my visits. Anyway, unless I hear otherwise, it’ll be business as normal.

I stuck to my schedule yesterday, and my body is happy for it. Kind of have my bum in a sling in Fallout, but I’ll work my way through it. Also, I still haven’t checked out the gym at the office complex, as I was advised that since I get off work at the same time as most of the other people in the complex, it’s going to be stupid busy until at least mid-February, due to New Years Resolutions.

What I do have today is a bit of a rant, and that rant is about the gym, specifically, the fitness center at my apartment complex. For what it is, it’s a decent center, and I’ve written about it before. Most of the time I go in, and it’s people at least earnestly trying to work out, even if they look a bit clueless or are dressed in skinny jeans and a beret. I’ll admit, when I get off the treadmill or the bike, I have no fargin’ idea what’s going on myself.

However.

I got home last night, changed into my workout clothes, which not for nothing were freezing since they had sat in my car all day. Stretched, and walked down in the rain to the fitness center.

First thing I noticed was that the early evening crowd also thinks it’s a daycare. Luckily, no one was playing on the good treadmill, because I have no qualms kicking a 6 year old off the treadmill because mommy and daddy aren’t paying attention. Mommy was on an elliptical machine listening to a radio blaring mariachi music, and daddy was in jean shorts, with no shirt on, strutting around the weight machine banging weights around. Seriously, he’d use one a couple of times, then drop them. Then, after Mommy left with the kid who was crawling over the other equipment in the center, one of daddy’s friends came in, with the music still blaring, and sat at the machine, yelling at each other to be heard over the banging of the weights and the music. Before I left, and I was in there for about 40 minutes, the shirtless wonder decided to abandon the weight machine and try lifting one of the elliptical machines. I almost lost my cool on that, I was an inch away from stopping my machine and going off that it’s crap like THIS that causes the equipment we have to stop working, but I figured he wouldn’t understand what I was saying, pretend not to understand what I was saying, or take a swing at me, which I do not have the patience to deal with right now.

I mean, let’s be honest, what is the mental process that makes you think that this is acceptable? When my wife and I use the fitness center, we alternate. Not once have we thought about letting the Geekling run wild around the center. And walking around half naked? Dude, no one cares about your ego, or how studly you think you are. Keep it up, and I’ll start taking my shirt off while I’m there, and NO one wants that.

Tony