As far as home gyms go, this one is a bit better than average. The room is bright and spacious with large windows to allow plenty of sunlight. Equipped with a power cage, leg press, hack squat, full cable system, elliptical, bike and an army’s worth of free weights, one could get in some ass kicking work here. Hell, there’s even a gymnastics mat (remember those from school?) to get one’s stretches in. I’ve often thought of painting – I would go with a battleship grey as the primary colour for the walls but I can’t decide on the trim – either Dodger Blue or Flyer Orange and Black. Maybe I can do half and half. That might look stupid but then again, who really cares what people think, It’s my room. The large closet area could have the shelves taken out and benches put in, to replicate a hockey dressing room stall (In hockey, we change in a dressing room. It’s not a locker room, there are no fucking lockers! Pet peeve of mine when I hear that on tv.). Put in a state of the art sound system and this place will be SERIOUSLY banging!!! And I don’t want any fancy shit in here either, it’s old school, a place to pump iron.
Lady Hurricane uses the bike and elliptical to get in additional cardio but prefers the structure of a fitness class for the more serious work. The cat has made a couple of appearances in the room, he fell through the ceiling tiles while wandering around in the rafters – I think I’ve mentioned before that he’s a dink. I have used the room too – at Christmas I needed a space to wrap presents. I also had to go in there a couple of weeks ago to get my skates, stick, gloves and pucks for my skate around on the pond. I sometimes go in there and unplug the land line when I have to sleep for night shifts (not sure why that set up is in there, Hell, I’m not sure why we even still have a land line for that matter) and then I forget about it and we don’t have a land line phone for a week. Grumpymarty has not however used said room for it’s intended purpose in a very long time. Oh, for shame!
Hey, cut me some slack, I’ve been busy! Now, right at present I can’t quite recall exactly what has taken so much of my time but trust me, it has prevented me from going in there. This however is going to change, tomorrow (I’ve made procrastination into an art form). Yes, tomorrow Grumpymarty is going in! I would do it today, really I would, but the wind has picked up significantly so I might have to bring John out of the shed to dig out the snow drifts in the driveway. See what I mean? The Universe is conspiring against me, using my old nemesis the Wind to block my “Road to Rippedland”. I’m pretty sure you burn a lot of calories plowing snow on a tractor.
All right, okay, no more excuses! Tomorrow is the day for sure, absolutely. It’s hard though, isn’t it? The benefits of exercise are undeniable and the older you get, the more apparent this fact becomes. Your energy levels increase dramatically, those aches and pains which are constantly nagging you suddenly go away. You sleep better, the brakes are applied to the aging process and God damn, you just feel happy (Grumpymarty happy?). My gym was not constructed yesterday on a whim. There was a time when all that mattered to me was getting in the workout for the day. It’s not even that long ago. Things get away from you though, don’t they? Life gets busy. Then there comes a moment when you pass by the mirror to admire the glory God gave you and think “fuck me Man, what the Hell have you done to yourself?” Come now, you know that you’ve done this, we’re all friends here. That dirty rotten bastard Age has crept in while we were distracted (the bugger stole my washboard a few years back and has yet to return it) and rumpled the “birthday suit”. Now something should be done about it. It has to be done, must be done. I may or may not have had an epiphany of this sort lol.
So, tomorrow the Fitness Journey will begin anew. It won’t be easy! We’ll pop in the airpods, select something overly aggressive like Killswitch Engage, crank the volume to max (yes I am aware that listening to music at a skull numbing volume is detrimental to my hearing but I’m as recalcitrant as ever in this regard), pretend to stretch, give a half ass attempt for cardio as warm up (who fucking likes cardio) then jump into the iron. I’ll tell myself that today is the first one so take it easy, move in baby steps. I might even follow my own advice. Then again, I might not because rules don’t apply to this “freak of nature” which I am pretty sure I am (well, maybe not) and if all goes well, I won’t do grievous harm to myself, allowing for the opportunity to do it all again the next day. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Hell yeah it does! Let’s do this, tomorrow!!!