The First Day Back in the Gym

Five in the morning and my alarm goes off. I stumbled into the closet and tripped over my packed gym bag. Oh yeah.

Amazing how my initial enthusiasm had worn off after only one night's sleep.

After avoiding it as long as I could, I took the once familiar route to the office gym. The locker room hadn't changed; cramped, small, adorned with institutional puke green tile on the walls and floor, it reeked of man sweat and mildew.

I was determined to take it easy, having been here so many times in the past - fat, out of shape, starting yet another work-out routine. After stretching out, I walked on the treadmill for a whole ten minutes, then got my weight lifting card from the filing cabinet for a very light session of lifting.

My goal for the day was to reacquaint myself with the gym, a kind of, "body, gym....gym, body. Don't hurt us please!" routine.

"David, over here!"

I turned. It was Bob, my work-out buddy from years past.

Bob and I go back to when I first got to my current work site and was a work-out nut. He's about my height, with greying hair, a goatee, and sports a weightlifter's deep chest and arms. Bob turns 51 this year. I hate him.

I really don't, but you'd never know it the way we argue politics, religion, and discuss our respective families. The rest of the gym collectively groaned when they saw Bob and I start right up where we left off the last time we saw each other: "hey liberal," I called. "Ha, fascist, what's going on," he shot back.

He looked at my belly, "so what are you up to?" He wasn't asking about inflation or the Dow Jones.

"As of two minutes ago, 226 pounds."

Filling him in on the bet I had going on with my son, he thought I had pretty good chances of winning. We'll see.