Anti-Gym Rats

I got back to the Gym today.

I got off track in the past week and a half or so. Before that, because of the Holidays and my retreat to Corona Del Mar (Thanks, Polly and Joe!), my regimen was a little spotty.

But I went back. I actually enjoy it now. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, yet. I tend to overdo things I like, so gotta keep an eye on that. Yet, I know I really need the workout, too. The whole writing life makes it all to0 easy to live a sedentary, keyboard tapping, In N’ Out burger eating, dinner at 1 in the morning, Oreo’s and Ice Cream for breakfast lifestyle. At least it does for me.

So, I’m there working on the “guns” when I see this guy. He’s a regular at the West L.A. Bally’s Total Fitness. I’ve seen him there before. You really can’t miss him, because for all the toughness he tries to exude, he’s largely there for you to see him. That’s painfully obvious.

He’s Mr. Outfit – completely coordinated, right? I’m not joking, color scheme, the works, all the way down to the key lanyard artfully dangling out of his pocket. Today it was blue. He must have every lanyard color of the rainbow. It’s a stunning level of detail. The kicks are always super expensive. Sometimes there’s a do-rag, sometimes not (today it was two toned – blue and white, which went with the aforementioned lanyard.)

There are two kicker’s here. The first of which are the shades. He sports Gucci wraparounds with diamonds on the temple (albeit small ones, but you can’t miss the sparkle.) And, he paces. Back and forth on one end of the first floor, in this slow, puffed up, kind of way, Alternately, he’ll sit at a machine – not use it, just sit. He looks like a peacock actually, or a rooster when he struts. It’s almost bordering on some strange performance art mandate.

Now, I had never seen him lift a weight or jump on a machine, until today. He sat down at the bench press and started doing a rep. Not reps, mind you. A rep. At about ten pounds (I would not lie to you about this.) It’s why I’m writing about this at two in the morning, when I should be asleep or, possibly, writing something more meaningful – like what I had for lunch (fruit shake with protein powder!) I have not seen something so utterly anti-climatic in awhile. At least not in person.

As soon as he was “done” he took to the barnyard for a stroll again – for the next forty minutes or so. That’s a heckuva a rest in between reps!

He was the Anti-Gym Rat.

Only in L.A.

Tags: Gym, Los Angeles, Workout

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 2:14 am and is filed under Health, Los Angeles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.