A small update today

no movie watching this evening. I worked throughout the day on a couple of projects that HAD TO BE FINISHED (gotta love those days) and around 8:00 forced myself to head to the gym. I always find it incredibly odd to get out of the gym with a second wind. I went in tired and ready to sleep and came out ready to take on the world (or more realistically to come home, see Angela asleep and proceed to sit and read gadget and political blogs for a half hour).

Tonight at the gym was mostly spent doing one of the weight circuits they have. Sometimes it's easier not having to think... just proceeding from station to station doing as many reps as I can before moving on to the next machine. Now, there being a couple of circuits at the 24 Hour Fitness that I work out at, the key is to pick the one that looks the emptiest. I THOUGHT that I had picked right. There was one other guy and he seemed to be moving fairly quickly. I sat down at one of the stations and started my routine. As I finished I slipped over to the next one (clock-wise) and discovered that my fellow traveller was doing his circuit counter-clockwise. blergh. Oh well, no big deal. I move over to the other half of the circuit so as to not be in his way and start to do some leg presses.

While I'm not the buffest guy in the world, I take a certain pride in my quads. They've always been the one area where I've had some power. I think that might be the reason that I originally got back into cycling. I might not be able to climb but I can sit and pedal all day. Anyway, I dig doing leg presses because it's the one time of my workout where I can just set the pin all the way at the bottom of the weight stack and watch the entire set of bars go up and down. I realize that it's not the same thing as a squat and that I need to be adding more squats into my various routines but allow me my one parlor trick indulgence.

In the middle of my set an interloper invaded the circuit... Not that I had communicated with my 'circuit partner' but I felt like we had an understanding... heh. He'd work his way around the circuit on the other side and I'd work around from my side. But to add a third person, a late middle aged, slightly overweight woman in wearing a skin tight jet black polyester jumpsuit carrying a yellowing tan towel. Miss tan towel went straight to one of the machines and set the towel down gingerly on the seat pad. Then, striking some sort of a pose reminiscent of a Congolese fertility dance she entered into a weird sort of gyrating squat and sat down. Keep Austin Weird indeed.

She did a few reps on her machine and got up. One would hope that she'd notice that I and the other guy had moved one machine to the right and continued our workouts and that she could follow suit but that would be too easy. She got up, shook out her towel, and bounced off to a seemingly random machine in the same circuit. The delicate balance was even more upset! Again with the dainty setting down of the towel, the V-ing of the legs and the weird squat and derriere extension into a sit. About this point, the other guy left. I'm not sure if he left because he was done or if he was annoyed but I didn't really want to have to fend for myself. I continued my circuit and hoped as I finished each exercise that she wouldn't decide to pogo over to the machine that was next in my loop and managed to avoid her for the most part.

Anyway, workout done, I headed off to the sauna. I have a gym membership mostly so that I can get out of the house. That said, I have some sort of a strange addiction to sitting in saunas. Maybe it has to do with growing up in Minnesota. It's vaguely Finland-ish an the Finn's certainly love their saunas. Anyway, I went in with my iPod and vegged out as best I could. I opened my eyes to see the older asian guy sitting next to me talking to a wiry graying white man with his head buried in a newspaper a little further over. Apparently the conversation had been going on for a while by this point and the wiry one was giving, well, really barking directions to the guy next to me about how to get healthy. Every few seconds I'd hear "Eat more vegetable." "Don't eat bread." "Eat breakfast every day." "Go to bed earlier." It went on like this for a while. There wasn't really any interlocution just these barking instructions. Then, the barker walked out of the sauna and the asian guy started talking to his friend/wife(?) in japanese. He looked kind of dejected. It was really rather odd. Anyway, I sat for a few more minutes and finished the game of solitaire i had started on my iPod and headed home. There are odd people everywhere. I've just always seemed to run into more of them at the gym.

More tomorrow.