The Most Amazing Gym Trip EVER...

I joined a gym this weekend, and although I admit it is every bit as intimidating as I was led to believe, perhaps as Stephen King says, nothing is nearly so scary as the unknown and untried. Monday morning I rolled put of bed at four twenty AM. Now, I thought waking up at six was a hardship; but this was just crazy! I peeled myself from the warm depths of my bed, pulling on thin gym clothes like some half crazed zombie. I think even the dead would balk at a four twenty awakening. But my mother and I were filled with this strange and undying determination. So we filled up our water bottles, grabbed our granola bars and drove to the gym, meeting a friend. Believe it or not there is a whole group of mentally unstable individuals who congregate at the gym at a crisp five AM. Mostly consisting of conceited, muscle kissing young and middle aged men and a few young and unknowing girlfriends who didn't know what they were getting themselves into. There were men on treadmills, lifting weights, talking next to mirrored walls, and working out on indescribable torture devices. We found our friend on a treadmill and headed up the stairs, bypassing an overweight middle aged man in the hall doing burpees. Upstairs there was a man and a woman working on two of a long row of elipticals like mindless runners, their arms swinging back and forth rapidly like an angry grandfather clock, hands clinging to the tops of each bar. Their sneakered feet moved in blurs, and their eyes remained glued to one of the four TVs hung in a row before the elipticals. Nervously, the three of us stepped onto a machine each, setting in the frightening conditions of our own ensuing exercise. Our friend attempted to shout instructions while working her own machine, and we pretended to listen while we pressed random buttons and tried out the results. "Don't stop walking!" Eventually turned into groans of "It feels like I'm walking in sand!" And our eyes turned to the news on the nearest TV monitor. The end of the cooldown saw me bent over the lower bars of the eliptical, sweating ways I had never sweat before. My face was covered, and despite protests from a certain person concerning foreboding on the wiping of sweat I found myself doing so anyways. Next we moved on to the women's weight room. Mainly because almost no one is ever in that room at that hour, we felt safe trying out the various outdated machines with outlined picture instructions of men and women wearing short shorts and poofed out hair. Honestly they were styling, but we still only had a few moments to devote to that room. The gym experience is hard at first... But it was quite the experience to add to the list, and I won't mind going back... Tomorrow...