Bethjoy.com

Though I won’t be able to post it until I get home. At the moment I have Star Wars music playing from itunes(I brought headphones with me and I’m wearing them) which, hopefully, will lend a touch of drama to scene. Now I won’t say that I can see hundreds of persons slowly walking to their doom as most of the people here are jogging or bicycle peddling, and some are lifting weights… I am sitting near the Subway restaurant, which sadly is closed right now. You can buy freshly baked cookies at the subway if you feel that you’ve burned off too many calories.

In order to make sure that you are not bored while exercising there are several, in fact I count twelve televisions stationed at various angles throughout the building so that if you want to watch the television, you can.

Mom and Dad are taking their positions on jogging machines directly in front of me and a little to the left. These jogging machines are very strange looking, for your feet never move. So it is not a treadmill. There are two different sets of handles which, if you use your imagination and some Star Wars music, can look like the arms of some strange alien that is about to box you, or maybe is holding it’s arms up in surprise and astonishment at being stepped on by some one of so ponderous a weight. Not that everybody in the building is wide of girth or ponderous of weight. I for one am an exception:) Though there probably are several people here who weigh less than me, such as but not limited to the staff.

But back to the subject of the jogging machines from which I have diverted. Mom just waved at me temporally taking her hand off the handles, which move back and forth as they are connected to the miniature moving platforms on which you stand. In fact, if you have a lot of arm strength, you don’t have to exert any pressure at all with your feet, you just move the handles. However if you are weak at both, or want to merely work both your arms and legs and everything else in between while deadening your mind by watching television, then these machines are probably the ones of choice.

Personally one of my favorite forms of exercise, and one in which I frequently indulge, is walking rapidly through Walmart. But the form of exercise which I enjoy the most at the YMCA would definitely be the recumbent bicycles. These interesting mechanisms although you to sit and read a book while peddling slowly and fooling yourself and people around you into the assumption that you are exercising more than your mind.

But really, on reconsidering it, I think I prefer sitting and typing on my laptop and watching everyone else exercise is preferable even to a book and recumbent bicycle. For one thing, I’m getting useful things done:)

You know, I never should have compared the jogging machines to aliens. The more I sit and look at the one near me the more alive looking it is becoming, and the more the smaller handles are looking like arms. I can see the mouth quite clearly too as there is a little ledge thing below the screens, which work quite well for eyes. However I am not going to change my positions merely because the exercise machine near me is looking threateningly at me because I prefer sitting and using my computer to enjoying the awful tiredness of brought on by a jogging machine. Maybe listening to exciting Star Wars music while writing a post about the YMCA was a bad idea. Perhaps I should have chosen something more cheerful and classical, like a Strauss Waltz. Ah yes, observe persons exercising to the soft beautiful music of the Blue Danube!

It’s really funny. Two of the television channels are both covering the same thing. And either they are off sync, which I am just realizing that they may be, or else they are covering two different events with people who look very similar and very similar camera moves, or else… They have the same TV feed and one merely is off sync of the other. Because the Fox News Channel will change the camera shot and then about a second later the ABC and HGTV television will change shot. It is so funny. Two people in the background stood up and then while they were still standing up the other two people on the other television stood up. It was also funny when they sat down just as the imperial theme went BOM BOM BOM BOMDA BUM BOMDA BUM if you know which particular phrase of music I am referring to. In case you don’t know this theme is usually played whenever Darth Vader walks into the screen in the Star Wars Trilogy.

Now in this YMCA there is a special screened off area which has several machines in it. Now this area is for self conscious people who want a more private place to exercise, and who also may want to exercise with all of the other self conscious people. This room would be the room in which to go with a notebook and pencil and stare at people and take notes if you really wanted to upset people, and I do not recommend doing it! Just so you know.

I suppose this post is probably quite long enough already but while I’m here in all of this atmosphere (Star Wars music can create atmosphere out of, well, little) I may as well continue writing. Now on of the machines here I really do not like, and perhaps the feeling is mutual. There is only one of the machines here, as far as I have seen, and there only needs to be one. This machine you are supposed to climb up on, and then, firmly squishing yourself to the back of it and supporting yourself on (the dearth star would be exploding about now) the arm/elbow holders you are supposed to step off it and then try to lift your legs up as far as they can go as many times as you can. This is rather hard to do and I never really done it, though I have “sort of” done it. There are jump ropes here too, but I think I’ve only used them once.

An alternate form of exercise which Andrew likes, and I do too, is the fooseball table in the “Fun Zone” area. This ingenious game requires knocking a ball in a hole, however it doesn’t resemble the game of golf in any other way, to my knowledge. It is rather fun. The last time I played here with Andrew the official score was five to zero, in my favor. This happened only because Andrew did not record his goals which was very nice of him since he did score more than five goals. Brothers can be very nice you know:) When they choose…

The time is Nine Thirty, the place, The YMCA, the action, well, I think it is time to close this post before the jogging machine reaches out it’s black hand for my ankle… Wait, it looks as though somebody left their black glove behind them. I hope… If you read this post you will know that I made it home safely. If you do not… Well then, you won’t even know about the Evil Jogging Machine of Doom and it’s plot to take over the world! Or at least, it’s plot to abduct all sixteen year olds who become aware of it’s alien like qualities:) I hope that this post amuses somebody. Oh, my favorite bit of Star Wars music is playing right now!!! It’s the theme heard mainly in The Empire Strikes Back. Princess Leia’s theme I’ve heard it called. And I do apologies if the many references to Star Wars music annoy you since you can’t here them, but as I am just describing things as they happened this evening, I put it in. The two televisions of sync are really funny, a person one of them fidgets and the the same person on the other television fidgets. They color balance is different on each of them too.

It being now 9:39 PM the YMCA is, well let’s put it this way, about the only line in the place would be the line to get out:) And you would have no trouble right now getting your choice of exercise machines:) So now I think I will end this post, as I have been contemplating doing it for some time.