Tales From the Gym - 2. Puppies

My work and class schedule for the spring is brutal. The classes and labs with tons of statistics to grind out are enough to make even an old school nerd like me sweat. Add in work on top and it's a shit sundae.

I'm sitting on several contracts now. Most of them are for ongoing work. I'm focused on point of sale systems- it's easy and I've got a ton of experience with it. Whenever one of my customers has one of their point of sale terminals drop dead or they want to add one, they email me with the date and time they want the work done. It's never a nice time. It's either 6am before work starts or late after they are done for the day. Every day is a new adventure.

It's hard to keep up my routine in the gym but I need it. I need the strength and flexibility because I'm often working in tight spaces and negotiating difficult angles. I don't need to be sidelined by a muscle pull.

That night I had to work out late. I showed up a little before eight and got to work. The gym was sparsely populated at that hour in the middle of the week. That's fine by me. I like to get to my routine without having to work around people.

One of my pet peeves is for someone to camp out on a machine gawking at eye candy. OK, fine. Take a picture. It'll last longer. Just don't sit on the rowing machine. That baby is mine.

The rowing machine is my favorite of all of them. If you do it right, you can involve you whole body. I can do a whole session on it. I got on the thing, set my MP3 player to speed metal and got into it. Twenty minutes later I was covered in sweat and I was burned out from the waste up.

I moved over to the leg press and tortured myself there for a while.

I have to be careful with my legs. My right knee is reconstructed. I damaged my ACL playing high school ball and I completely blew it out a few years later. They fixed it the old fashioned way: they cut it open with two long incisions on the right and left of the kneecap and grafted a new ligament in for the one I shredded. It was never quite the same again so I had to be careful not to damage it. Building up the quadricep muscles around the knee was a good idea. I just couldn't handle extreme weight on it. I don't try to push it past 375.

By the time I was done, it was a quarter to nine and the place was dead. The gym stayed open until ten on week nights but that last hour was used by the staff for clean ups and repairs.

I hit the locker room and stripped down to gym shorts and a towel and then went into the "wet area".

The wet area in my gym has four shower stalls on the left, a big whirlpool and a sauna on the right. I headed directly for the sauna to sweat out the fatigue poisons. I was thinking about my work schedule when I opened the door and got the shock of my life.

Four college age kids were having a full on orgy in the hot, steamy little wooden sauna.

I guess they were as shocked as I was because instantly everything stopped and four pairs of eyes were looking at me in near panic.

I raised my right hand and said, "You're NOT busted. I'm sorry I interrupted. I know how frustrating that can be. You guys carry on. I'll sit out here in the whirlpool and greet anyone that comes in loud enough to warn you."

Then I closed the door, turned on the whirlpool and went and sat down in the warm stirring waters. Thankfully the waters were roiling and turbulent enough to hide my growing interest in my perplexing situation.

Wow. That could have been A-list porn.

I guess it was about ten minutes passed when four young men emerged from the sauna giggling and smiling. Whether it was the heat or a well deserved blush, I'll never know. They all four looked at each other, shrugged and got in the whirlpool with me.

They sat across from me grinning and the auburn haired fair skinned one said, "That was really cool of you Mister."

I grinned back and said, "I was twenty once. I know how much it would have hurt to have stopped at that point."

The black kid asked, "Ummm... are you?"

I just nodded.

"Look. I'm a grown up. I know a lot of older guys probably hit on you but, like I said, I was your age once. I know you aren't interested in fossil collecting so, I'm not going to."

The blond kid said, "I was hoping to meet you. You have to be Brad's friend."

"Brad told you about me?"

"Yes he did and, what you did for him was really cool. Do you think... maybe we could work out together?"

I smiled and said, "Anytime. My schedule can be weird but I don't mind. It's more fun when you've got partners."

That's how I ended up with the four puppies: Kurt, Arron, Rodney and Roderick.

My first suggestion to them? Try to be a little more careful.

The next guy that opens that door may not be cool.