Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Gym Rats

I was working out in a gym that I've never seen before. All the machines were filled up except one bicep machine, so I started cranking out some reps on that using the lowest setting. I had it as my goal to do 1000 reps on this one machine, so I figured that I needed to warm up first.

The wierd thing about this machine is that in order to choose the lightest setting, you had to put the pin into the weights at the bottom of the stack. The higher you went up the stack, the more weight was applied.

Anyway, so I got through a few reps and I had to get up from the machine. I forget why, but when I came back to it, the machine was gone. In fact, most of them were. I jumped on one of the leg machines before it disappeared and began using it.

Two guys, employees of the gym, were off to the side on their own respective machines. They had their backs to the wall, and were working out watching everyone. Soon enough, I was one of three people left in the gym. When the numbers got to be that small, they began telling people stories, and give instructions on how to best use the equipment. I just kept doing what I was doing, because none of it was addressed to me.

A young couple walked into the gym, and they began holding their own conversation. The gym employees noticed that the couple wasn't paying attention to them, and so decided to draw their attention to themselves. They began talking over all other conversations. It wasn't like they were particularly boring to listen to -- it was simply their time to talk. When the people in the gym listened to them, they were entertained and educated.

Among other things, one of the guys was telling a story about how he grew up in Arizona and how Halloween was a dusty evening. It was so dusty that ghosts were almost always brown by the end of the evening.

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