At the gym, all the fitness equipment is stored in the middle of the room, with a walking track encircling it all. At the end of the room and beyond the track near the great panes of glass is the weight area. Here, men and women flex and lift, grunt and groan. I never use the weights. I feel kind of awkward asking people how to use the Nautilus equipment, and have no clue where to begin with the handweights. Because of the track though, I walk by the area every ten minutes or so. I go from the eliptical to the bike to the treadmill, excercising on each machine for 10 full minutes, pretty hardcore. After each ten minutes, I'm more relieved than you could imagine.I shut the machine down and stroll for a few laps before hopping onto the next one. I repeat the whole damned process again, which means I work out hard for a total of 60 minutes and have approximately 10 minutes of laps, and 20 minutes of cooldown. I'm there pretty much for a full hour and a half, and I hate every bloody second of it, but enjoy it in a warped kind of way, too.
But that's a long time to spend in one place, six days a week. So, of course, you look around, watch other people doing their thing. You get to remember the regulars' faces and there's a weird kind of acknowledgement that happens at this stage. I've slowly begun nodding good morning to people, and give a wave to a few on the way out the door. I don't know anybody's name yet, but I'm sure that its only a matter of time before actual words are exchanged. (Except with the college boys. When I walk past them, all sweaty and out of breath, I avert my eyes so I don't seem like some sort of cougar/pervert, eyeing their muscles and equal sweatiness.)
Afterwards, I head directly to my local cafe, order a coffee with a little bit of milk and one sweetener. I then smoke cheap res smokes. It's not all good, all the time... yet.