I mentioned last week I had joined the Senior Center in Hurst in order to have access to their gym. It's a great gym and I enjoy my three day a week workouts. I start out on the stationary bike and ride 5.5 miles which gives me a good warm up and burns calories the equivalent of a Snickers bar. Since I don't eat Snickers bars anymore I'm already ahead for the day! Since joining I think I've ridden to downtown Dallas and in the coming weeks I should be able to ride home. I didn't even think of the side results of the stationary bike. Aside from burning off the residue of hundreds of Snickers bars, the exercise is actually helping my leg improve. I'm going more and more without my cane now and hope to give it up completely soon....please do not mention this to Debbie.
When I first started my workout regimen I was warned to ease into it. Although the fire department is next door it would still take precious minutes to arrive if my heart seized up on me. I started with the lowest possible settings on the computer. As I gleefully road along, the screen kept repeating, "Hello! Is anyone actually riding me? You can go faster if you wish but don't hurt yourself fatso!" I eventually turned on the TV instead of reading rude computer comments. I've worked up to a fairly aggressive setting now. I plugged in the parameters today and turned on the TV. Instead of watching Mayberry, RFD, a large message appeared on the screen that said, "No TV for you today fat boy. We're going cross country". Thirty minutes later I had covered 5.5 miles of the worst terrain in Texas. My heart rate got higher than I've been able to achieve in any of my earlier activities of eating nachos and watching reruns, I was gasping for oxygen, sweat was pouring off me and I still worked off only one Snickers bar.
Before the ride got too hard I noticed a new face walking into the gym*. He walked kind of like Fonzie on Happy Days....you know the subtle strut I'm talking about. Although he appeared to be about a hundred and had not a hair on his head, he was still in amazing shape. All the ladies started yelling, "Hi Coach!"....a disgusting display. He walked around and greeted all the women. He seemed to ignore the men. As he walked past my bike I made eye contact and spoke. He looked at me for a second and said, "Eh."....not "Eh?" like "excuse me I didn't hear you" or even "EH!" like "I don't know you but feel I should respond". It was just a flat......eh....Giving him the benefit of the doubt I should say that although my comment to him in my mind was structured, "Good morning my good man. How are you today?" it came out of my mouth as "doin?" All in all our short conversation said everything each of us was interested in hearing.
No one introduced me to Coach so I had to make assumptions based on events. Coach walked over to the weights and started pumping iron. Slowly several ladies gathered around him and picked out weights for themselves. Coach then said, "Welcome to class ladies! Are you ready for your workout?" From these actions I assumed Coach was actually a real coach and not some pervert cruising the center looking for hot chicks. As they worked out I also developed the additional assumptions, 1) Coach's name is probably Muffin....Stud Muffin....Coach Stud Muffin. Yeah, that's it. 2) I have a lot more hair than Coach and that is why I don't have as many muscles. 3) I'm beginning to feel a bit uncomfortable from all this fixation on Coach. Fortunately, about that time I hit a large hill in the program and had to concentrate on not dying.
Wednesday I'm going to back up my parameters a bit before my ride. Hopefully if it's cross country again it will be in New Mexico instead of the Texas hill country.
*Editor's note: Although Mr. Mihills referred to a 'face' walking into the gym, he actually meant to say 'someone walked into the gym I had never seen before'. Mr. Mihills has been notified that faces cannot walk anywhere.
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