The Butthole of All Gyms

Last night I made the mistake of trying out a new gym. You see, I belong to a national chain of gyms (hmmm...really difficult to narrow that one down) and I can work out at any of their locations. We usually go to the one downtown. It's awesome. I have always wanted to be one of those people you see when you make your occasional trip into town and they look like they are so very urban. Well now that I live just across the river from downtown Portland, the closest gym to me is downtown. The only bad part about it is the parking, or lack thereof. It's all street parking, on one-way streets. I typically circle the block 4 or 5 times before I find a spot. This is usually at 8pm.

So last night we had the bright idea that we wanted to try out one of the locations in the more suburban area, one with its own parking lot. What a concept. So we drive 15 minutes in the opposite direction of downtown. It's in the middle of freakin nowhere. There's a brand new Lowe’s and an abandoned K-Mart in the area. Other than that you could dump a body there and nobody would find out.

The first sign that this place was total crap was the fact that they let a bunch of leaves blow in to the reception area. And by reception area I mean the old-ass desk behind which the crachwhore sits. I think they misunderstood when they hired her. Skinny from meth is not the same as skinny from exercise.

I go into the locker room and immediately notice the bathroom. There's only one toilet. In a bright orange room. Sitting in the middle of the locker room. I step on the scale. Hmmm...I weigh 8 pounds more than I did yesterday. Could the extra weight be from the incredible amount of calcium build-up on the scale from the nearby showers?

I step outside to the workout area and am immediately hit in the face by the smell of sweat. It's like I'm swimming in it. So my goal here is to just do my cardio and get the hell out. Screw the weights. I want out. So I'm looking for the elliptical machines. All they have is these really old ones. So we go to the treadmills instead. I couldn't even tell you how old these things were. I used to go to the gym a lot with my Mom when I was 12. Back then they had more updated equipment than this place had. So we did the treadmill thing for 45 minutes and got the hell out of there.

I miss you, downtown location! I promise I will never cheat on you again!

1 comment:

The Unprocessed Project said...

Thanks for the posts on my blog. I love new people!

I feel your pain on the gym situation. I moved about a year and a half ago (within the same city) and I had to switch gyms because of convenience. My old gym was new and bright and friendly. The new one is old and dingy. The equipment is fairly new, but you have to wait years to get on any machine because they only have a few of each. Bummer.