STAYIN' ALIVE

Given I’ll be 70 years old in about 7 months, I figured it would behoove me to do SOMEthing in the name of health and fitness. Boom. To help me stay alive, I broke down and joined Planet Fitness about 6 months ago.

It’s acually a pretty popular place.  A kinda cool place, too. Naturally I would never consider getting up early in the morning when the hordes of other people go, given I’m still in bed, snoozing and probably in the throes of some sort of a dream. Instead…

I like going anywhere between 5 and 7 in the evening let’s say, when yes, there are lots of people, but it’s not overwhelming at all. Which works out pretty well because this place is HUGE.

With zillions of all kinds of work out machines, I might add. I mean ZILLIONS. Plus… there are alot of different work out areas depending on what type of workout you want.  Weights, muscle building circuits, ellipicals, treadmills, etc. etc.

Me… I take the lazy way out. I find a perfect little spot tucked away in one of the side areas and lay my yoga mat down for about a 40 minute stretching session. Then I go on the treadmill for about 20 more minutes. Plus… I love never having to miss out on my addiction to political news shows since there are hordes of TVs at most workout stations. I pop on my earphones… catch the latest updates and discussions and bingo. I’m excercising up the kazoo while also feeding my need to know.

It’s also kinda neat because after your workout, if you fell for the higher priced membership, which naturally I did, you can go to the special relaxation rooms. As in: a water massage bed, a tanning room, a massage chair, etc. Plus… it’s open 24 hours a day which is a major bonus for me. Of course I totally miss  out on the Pizza Mondays and Bagel Tuesdays since that is served pretty much before noon but whatever. In the meantime…

For a couple of weeks this past summer I went with my out of town guest to Planet Fitness, who by the way, gets to accompany me for free use of the gym as often as we’d like. It’s a pretty good set up, actually. Totally like 2 for the price of 1. In the meantime… of all the excellent features this gym offers what REALLY stunned my friend most of all was: uh… the picture up above. THE KEY BOARD. Not for the computer but rather… car keys. Locker keys. House keys. ANY kind of keys.

The bottom of this board is about 3 1/2 feet up from the floor and is huge. It probably goes up another 2 feet to the top. Which means: it’s also a definite haven for anyone wanting to steal your car. Or enter your house. Or whatever. 

Except for one thing:  NO ONE EVER EVER EVER DOES.

In fact my set of keys are right up there… right at the inner bend of the middle finger. I don’t know… I guess I have about 4 keys and 3 grocery store scanning cards on my ring. ANYone could have access to my entire life. Except: they apparently could care less about me or my keys.

Talk about trusting your neighbors!!! Granted… it’s a major gamble, sort of like a theft just waiting to happen, but in my little town? Man… if I can’t trust my fellow workout folks here, then I can’t trust them anywhere. My friend was aMAZed at my trust. And eveyone else’s trust, too! They were simply astonished that every car in the gigantic parking lot wasn’t being driven away, one by one, by the minute!

And yes. I do have to admit it’s pretty stunning to me too, that crime at this place is basically non-existent. Well… I don’t know for SURE, but it’s definitely pretty safe compared to large ass cities. But to my friend?? Whoa. They thought this trust in each others’ key rings was by far the most astounding occurrence since Americans landed on the moon! For this sort of decency would NEVer occur in their home city.

Which of course why I so love where I live. Drop a wallet somewhere? Boom. You’ve got an 89% chance that you’ll get a call from someone saying HEY. GUESS WHAT? I FOUND YOUR WALLET IN A PARKING LOT! I should know… it totally happened to me. In the meantime… working out at a gym is always a good thing. Working out in a gym where you can trust strangers? That’s a BETter thing.  

ABSOLUTELY THRILLING

Oh man. I’m such a sucker for events like this and I was totally into all of it. Naturally… I’m speaking about viewing the recent eclipse.

Granted... I am writing about this a few months later but whatever. I just have had one of the busiest few months this past summer thus finding time to write was a major challenge. Which makes it a good thing that I'm not being paid by some boss for my output, for I would have been fired years ago, believe me. In any case...

As luck would have it… I live in a city that was able to see the eclipse at 99.79% totality and okay, it didn’t get comPLETEly pitch black, but whoa, the sky did get reallllly kinda eerie looking. Kinda like a hurricane was going to make landfall right smack on top of me within mere minutes. It was pretty mind blowing and had I seen this in my 20s or 30s, when I was hard core stoned, whoa. It would have been all out freaky! I had several friends btw, who traveled a couple of hours away to see 100% totality and frankly, they sort of wasted their time if you ask me. Plus… they had to leave really early and the traffic coming home was often a jam packed problem. Regardless….

I stayed here in my beloved city and decided I had a great bird’s eye view of everything. At 1 o’clock 3 of went to the country club for lunch where the huge windows look down upon the golf course. At about 2 o’clock the wait staff pretty much began getting excited because they’d run out every few minutes to see what was doing up in the sky and would come back in totally psyched. Which of course was our cue to get up and go check it out for ourselves.

OMG. THE FIRST TIME I LOOKED UP AND SAW THE MOON BEGINNING TO COVER THE SUN I WAS STUNNED AT THE MAGNIFICENCE OF WHAT WAS HAPPENING. 

It was amazing to say the least! What shocked me even more was the fact the moon was so black and the sun was so ORANGE. I will never forget my first glimpse of it, is all I can say. It gave me a huge sense of sheer awe.

After the initial sighting we came back in to finish more of lunch and then we’d hop back up every few minutes. Finally…. at about 2:20 we went outside for good, given the totality of the eclipse was but minutes away. Several more people began congregating together and all of us were in the same state of amazement. I even shared my sun blocking glasses with a couple of dweebs who never bought any to begin with. I mean seriously... 

Who lives in a city where 99% of the sun was going to be covered at 2:40 in the afternoon and doesn’t even buy eclipse glasses? Losers, that's who. Jeez. In fact, up above you can see the exact glasses I wore, which for now seems to have worked pretty well given a.) so far, I'm not blind and b.) I got from mine optometrist, in the first place. Anyway…


It was totally one of the most exciting days of my life, no pun intended. Man… Mother Nature is a miracle, indeed. For those of you who missed this event btw, I feel badly for you which means you have to now wait until 2024 for the next eclipse to come across the U.S. And then, you'll have to plant yourself somewhere between Maine and Texas. But trust me... it will oh so worth it!