The Liquid Kosmos

Return to the gym

Lately, the gym and I have been enemies, but tonight we had a reunion. As I got to the check in counter I realized that my key chain membership card had once again fallen off and stood in line to get a new one. It took the young black girl 4 times to find me in the computer and after three my innate paranoia kicked into gear. Surely something got screwed up in the billing. Or I haven't been here in so long they assumed I quit, but eventually there was my dorky smile from the picture they took 8 years ago.

She said, "Your hair looks different in that picture."

I told her it should, I was only 12 when they took it. She seemed to like that and took a strange turn toward paying me genuine attention.

"Yeah, it's like you have a faux hawk going."

I looked closer and I did. My hair was trimmed down and looked pretty sweet.

"Which one do you like better him or me?"

She laughed and I walked toward the locker room feeling good and bad about myself.

The plan was simple. Loosen up with a few walking laps around the track then do a light round of the circuit training to "ease back into my workouts."

After about one walking lap, I couldn't fathom not jogging, so I took off and said to myself, "You're gonna do 20 laps." Okay, I said back.

Three laps in I changed my agreement to 10 laps and was finishing number 9 when a friend saw me and started jogging along. We had to talk about a video project and sure as hell didn't want to stop after one lap, so I kept going. I think I got to 16.

posted by The Oscillator @ 10:51 PM