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Wednesday, October 16, 2002 Gray. Rainy. Chilly. Drove into Montpelier this morning, went to the gym. It's a nice gym, well equipped, with friendly, cheerful staff and music playing constantly. The music system lives in a small office situated off to one side of the exercise floor in the main exercise salon. The individual in charge of the tunes seems to be the ranking trainer on duty, whoever that is in any shift, and most of the trainers-on-duty are 20-something males with a taste for heavy metal, or if not heavy metal then Bob Seger, ZZ Top, etc. All of which is okay with me in moderation or mixed in with a variety of other stuff. Moderation is often not the case, but what the hell -- I enter the place, I do what I'm there to do, less than two hours later I'm out. We're not talking major torture here. (Still, it would be nice to hear something with, say, a woman on vocals. I think I can count on one hand the number of songs I've heard with a female vocalist in the many visits I've paid to this gym. Is that normal?) One of the things I enjoy about this facility is the range of folks who use it, from early teens to 70-somethings, both genders. You got your serious pump-me-up types, the kind who talk little except when other iron-pumping monsters are around; you got your I-hate-doing-this-to-myself-but-I'm-doing-it-anyway type; you got your folks of all ages who are in far less than optimum shape, carrying plenty excess poundage, who show up, work out, never seem to complain about it; you got your folks with amazing legs, who tend to spend huge amounts of time on the treadmill, cross-trainer or stairmaster. An interesting place, with all sorts of people. For about 16 years, I belonged to the YMCA in Cambridge, Mass -- not a state of the art facility, but possessing a certain energy that made up for that, with lots of members who had clearly gone there for many, many years -- older men with thick Boston area accents who knew each other on a long-standing basis. Loads of black guys who hung around the indoor basketball courts for pick-up games. One of the two basketball spaces -- with a 2/3-size basketball court -- also contained an elevated running track, so that as you did your laps you got to observe the hoops skirmishes below. Almost entirely male. Every once in a long while during the cold season, when I did most of my indoors running, I'd show up, get started on my laps and realize a woman had been added to the mix downstairs. They usually did just fine – not a small thing considering the games tended to be a bit intense. Lots of yelling, the sound of sneakers squeaking against the wood floor, a burst of running feet as the action transitioned from one end to the other, then less sound as people positioned themselves, tossing the ball around until someone finally tossed the ball up, followed either by the sound of ball going through net or renewed yelling as the ball missed and someone rebounded, the action immediately surging toward the other end of the court. Why am I going into all that? Because the gym in Montpelier has nothing like it. It's not an old, dog-eared urban building like the Y. It's a sleek, relatively new facility, maintained with impeccable care, having a whole different feel from the Cambridge Y. No games being played, just exercise. There are TVs in two of the exercise salons, facing the rows of treadmills, stairmasters, etc -- three in the bigger space, with the sound off so the music dominates. A smaller room has a large TV with the sound on, usually playing CNN. That TV fell out of its mounting a couple of weeks back. One member went to change the channel, pressed the button, next thing they knew the set had taken a header, slipping out of its mount-frame, crashing to the floor with huge noise, scaring the bejesus out of everyone in the place. The gym in Madrid is more like the gym here in Montpelier than like the Y, only huge. Three times bigger, with mirrored walls and a radio playing euro-pop over the PA. Slick, much slicker than the gym here. And of course everyone speaks Spanish. Strangely, the gym here in Montpelier is the most expensive of the lot – half again as expensive as the Y, more than twice as expensive as the gym in Madrid. I'm not sure what to make of that. (Maybe there's nothing to make of it.) I blabber. More blabber tomorrow. rws 7:27 PM [+]
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