Me For A Bald Peer

I told myself I’d do it.  I went to bed with the intention of doing it.  But at 5:45AM I had third and fourth thoughts.  I’m up anyway.  I’m heading down the stairs anyway.  But suiting up in shorts and sneakers, throwing on the coat and starting up the car is another matter.   By 6:00AM I was fiddling with the brights on the car and sailing off into the dark, pre-dawn neighborhood.  

 

For too long I tell you, for too long I have been without a gym routine.  The calisthenics drill at home is better than nothing, but it is surely not enough.  Last year I dropped a thousand dollars to join the gym here at the compound I live in.  It’s OK.  The machines are all fifteen to twenty years old though and there aren’t many of them.  It’s far enough away so that you’d want to drive there in the dead of winter.  I’ve resisted topping up with them since I’ve been back this fall and was just about ready to do so.  I need to restart my routine.  Too long.

Talking to a friend, another parent at my children’s school, I was reminded that we parents have access to what is probably one of the best gyms in the city.  Free access mind you.  It’s a drive over for sure, but once you’re in the car there isn’t much difference between driving for three minutes and driving for ten. 

Driving through familiar streets when they're dark and abandoned forces one to confront them anew.  This was the time I needed to schlep my daughter to school a few years back.  I remember stopping to photograph the moon and the dawn.  An hour from now there will be a long queue of cars snaking out to the main street as parents drop off their kids one by one.  At 6:10AM I have the whole enormous parking lot to myself.  Walking in, I hold the door behind me for a bald peer.  He trudges past me quickly, clearly heading to the same place I am, oblivious to anything besides his own dialogue of self-mastery.  "I told myself I'd make it to the gym this morning."

At the top of the stairs there are fifteen or more moms biking along to jarring music, en route to nowhere.  Bad heavy metal blares from the weight room on the first floor.  Soon I’ve blocked all out with some loud Prince Buster, bounding up stairs that have no destination, flipping through digital Chinese flash cards.  Day one at least, has been a success.