I have a love/hate relationship with my local YMCA. I love that, in the past year of our membership, I have exercised more regularly than at any other time in my adult life. I love that I can leave my chlidren with the caregivers there, and that they mostly have a good time. I love that the facility has been remodeled in recent years so that it's spacious, spotlessly clean, and hardly ever crowded. In spite of all of this, there are a few annoyances to report. This might seem overly ranty, but I've been saving up for this post for a quite a while now.
*People who wear cologne/perfume/body spray to work out. I am a "mouth breather" when I work out, which is quite unfortunate when I'm stuck next to Mr. Old Spice. A few days ago, I swear, I could taste droplets of alcohol in my mouth from the scent wafting over to me.
*Mr. Catalog Model, one of the workers there, always seems to be on duty when I work out. He's an older man and has the good, wholesome looks of a Sears Catalog male model or the guy who played Jack Abbott on The Young and the Restless in the 80s. This guy always has a smug smile on his face. I'm particularly tense when he's prowling around nowadays b/c of two incidents:
1. He approached one of my friends while she was working out and tried to insist that she stop and go take her blood pressure. She works out all the time and happens to have the skin type that gets extremely red while exercising. He argued with her about it and wouldn't let it go.
2. While I was walking on a treadmill a few weeks ago, I noticed a high-pitched noise that I could hear through my earphones. I took them off to make sure there wasn't some kind of alarm going off. Since he was right in front of me, I asked him what the noise was. He said it was my machine, and that sometimes it makes that noise "when heavier people are using it." Thanks. Very helpful.
*There are 6 huge TVs to watch while working on the fitness equipment. For me, the one that's constantly programmed to HGTV is the most pleasant to watch while talking to my friend or listening to My Precious (my iPod.) The problem is that the HGTV tv is stuck in the corner so that it can really only be seen if I'm on a treadmill. I mostly prefer to do the elliptical, all of which have a dead-center view of the Fox News tv. While it is very amusing for a while to note how much news they dig up via YouTube, it's still frankly annoying to read the same stories about Paris Hilton/Anna Nicole Smith/Rosie O'Donnell on a 15 minute loop. Makes me think longingly of the pre-9/11 days when the only channel that used tickers was Headline News. Right next to the Fox News tv is the History Channel tv, which can be good or bad. Yesterday, I was treated to a close-up of a dead drug lord who was shot by agents in the head. Nice. I did enjoy the time a few months ago when they did a feature on old cereal commercials.
*The Sweaty Man. Look, I know all of us sweat when we exercise, but this amount of sweating is insane. He always wears one of those huge muscle-man tank tops, which really doesn't do much absorbing. When I've been unlucky enough to be in his vicinity, I've been splashed. He's like a wet dog shaking to dry off.
Just to keep this post from being entirely negative, I'll leave you with a photo of what I typically look like when I go to work out at the Y. The headband and legwarmers? Very absorbant.
Edited to add: Props to Matt for thinking up this title.
