Back to the Gym

A bit of luck has allowed me to head back to the gym after a few months off.  My project schedule has slackened a bit and they just put a new gym in a shopping plaza I pass on my way to and from work.  Awesome. Here is how the new gym compares with the old one:

It's cheaper.  I was paying $85 per month before, and now I am only paying $40.  To be fair, I paid an extra $15 a month for rental of an out of the way locker to avoid having to feel like I was trying to get dressed and undressed in a crowded subway car.  Speaking of lockers...

No Locker Room.  Just one-person bathrooms.  This might sound like a drag, but, for me, it is actually a huge bonus.  No locker room means no herd of oblivious fat naked old guys (OFNOGs) bumbling nakedly around like untethered pink wrinkly parade floats, nakedly hogging the sinks, or nakedly using the hair dryer to make taint jerky or whatever the hell that one guy was doing. God help me, I can still see it...

New Gym Smell.  Actually, the new place is odorless.  The old gym had a weird smell to it that was one part sweat, one part pool water, and one part Grecian Formula. I still can't wash the scent out of my gym bag.  I am gonna have to get a new one.

No Trainers.  Well, the trainers at the old gym were all fine except for one.  Picture a 40-year-old, pink-haired, ex-punk-rocker-wannabe with who has suddenly taken to the idea of running for class president. Now strip her of an indoor voice and internal monologue, and give her a laugh that would curdle cheese.  That's her.  She does not respond to desperate, psychic pleas for her to just shut up for 5 damn seconds. Although she got "Employee of the Month" a while back, she probably has won "Employee Murdered the Highest Number of Times in the Imaginations of Those Around Her" multiple times by a majority of the people there as well.

Awesome Hours: It's allegedly open 24 hours a day.  Yeah, we'll see about that after I storm out of the house in tears Christmas morning, looking for a way to burn off one giant hissy-fit worth of rage after not getting a Kinect for the XBox (hint, hint).

Convenient: I drive by it at least 10 times a week.  Unfortunately, I have to also drive by a Bojangles, an AJ Gators, and park near a BBQ place to use the facility.  I am looking to the super-fun rationalizations I am going to come up with that convince me that eating an eight-piece chicken dinner by myself in the parking lot of the gym is the good and proper thing to do.

Not Crowded: So far, the maximum number of people I have seen there after work has been ten.  Ten!  A huge change from the old gym.  On Mondays (the traditional I'm-gonna-head-back-to-the-gym day) after work it would be so packed that you may not be able to hit a treadmill at all.  And forget about the whole month of January - resolutions, you know - it takes a few weeks for self-delusion to wear off, see.

Tanning Available: Nice.  Cheap, too.  Five bucks a go, and its tied to your door access fob.  For some reason there is a sign in there that tells you to shut and lock the door before you start (good) but if you try and start the bed without locking the door not only will it not work (again, good) it also disables your building access fob for 24 hours (uhhh...).  I suppose the ED 209 was unavailable.

Cardio Machine TVs: Every machine has an integrated (albeit awkward to operate) TV.  Music channels are available, too.  Much better than having to stare through Maury Povich because all the other treadmills within line-of-site of the other community TVs have been taken.

No real negatives so far, but the night is still young.  If all goes well, I figure I'll have six-pack abs in about a week.  Two weeks, max.