On a helpful note

This sign is in the same building, in one of the stairwell landings:

I like to think of BLOBBY as a sort of reminder to keep climbing those stairs instead of taking the elevator.

Grape stomp workout

My latest idea is that a tony spa could make a mark for itself by offering guests the opportunity to crush wine grapes by foot (link broken). There's the aerobic benefit for starters, the way in which it encourages good balance (video unavailable, and the health effects of grape extract (link broken). I think videos of the spa experience would be a must.

Autumn harvest in an English vineyard,
originally uploaded by Fred Dawson.

Of couse, participants would have to be warned beforehand of the possible ill effects (link broken).

Locker room talk

Lockers,
originally uploaded by milkfish.

(Composed while locked out of Blogger by the nefarious spam-prevention robots.)

I have been spying on conversations in the men's locker room over the last few months and present these excerpts as close to verbatim as I have been able to record them.

• 6/5/07 Man those f*cking ridiculous people with their f*cking ellipticals (lipids?)


• 5/22/07 One man owns a restaurant and works 10am to close 3-4 days a week. Another has a friend with a restaurant, works 12noon to 2am six days a week, no AC in the kitchen with hot ovens.


• 5/19/07 Incoming phone call regarding an appointment, nature unspecified. “No, it wasn’t for this Saturday…next Friday is okay…do you want us to call?...no, it’s okay, it’s all part of what we do.” Pause to pull on shorts. “Okay, next Friday. Congratulations on the new baby.”


• 5/15/07 An account of an accident while stopped at a light, a “lady” rear-ended him while he was taking his kid to school. Now has to go to the auto body shop.


• 4/14/07 A fellow talking about one Christmas Eve years ago, when he was called in during a storm which had dropped 8” of snow to operate on a fellow who’d been out riding his bike. Said he’d needed some wine for dinner, and knew he was too drunk to drive to the liquor store. Claimed he wasn’t stupid, spoke six languages. Just before putting him under, told the patient that if he really knew all the languages he claimed, to talk to the Chinese anesthesiologist. A conversation in fluent Mandarin ensued.


• 4/10/07 A discussion of the old days when the Atlantic City casinos were something special.


• 4/8/07 With a Tenafly bike-riding club during the warm-weather, which has organized a trip to New Mexico this year as incentive


• 3/20/07 Bragging that his resting heart rate is 66 “after 20 ounces of Starbucks.”

Burglar's workout

They have kickboxing workouts, pole dancing workouts, military boot camp workouts, and prison workouts but I don't think the fitness experts have turned to the criminal world for inspiration. I imagine a Breaking and Entering Workout where participants learn how to move stealthily, climb improvised ropes, break through doors and windows, and sprint wildly for their lives under extreme time pressure. The instructors would be chosen for the depth of their first-hand knowledge, on either side of the penal system, and music would be chosen from among the vast assortment of caper film soundtracks, punctuated by loud alarm sounds when a student muffs one of the moves.
The students would have to sign a statement beforehand pledging that anything they happen to learn in the course of their instruction would be used only for good, not evil. Maybe they should be fingerprinted as well, just to be safe.

I decline to discuss specifically how this idea came to my mind today, but just wish to mention that I am sometimes very glad that I do take the time to try to stay in shape.

Ripped

I stuck my hand in my pocket the other day and found that my pass for the gym with the optical barcode on it had fallen into two pieces.

That's the new card they issued me underneath the old one, which had been sitting on my keyring maybe seven years or so now.

My old membership number: 0038 (I'd actually signed up before they opened their first facility)
My new membership number: upwards of 16000

I wish I could say that this is reflective of the dramatic physical changes brought about by three- or four-times weekly trips to work out. (Especially now that they changed the spin class schedule so I had to drop that particular agony.) Perhaps if they had instead a biometric scanner to identify their members, a sort of gate like they have at airport security, which would look at your weight and physical appearance as you entered, one could visualize the change wrought for the positive and the negative.