Still, it is difficult learning the strange and different ways of the gym culture. I study those around me, their habits and their interactions in this social environment. The primary observation I make as I begin to work out: people here do not clean any of the equipment they use. Back in my own gym society, we are all very conscientious about cleaning up after ourselves (I hate to say it, but we all tend to sweat a lot). I spend the first 30 minutes of my workout cleaning up all of the workout equipment. Being skinny is one thing, getting a skin disease is another (by the way, you do not tend to lose weight getting a skin disease, as you may with the flu or a parasite).
Once all of the equipment is clean, I begin my workout. I generally use two workout stations at a time, switching between two muscle groups. Today, I am working on quads and biceps. I place one towel over a leg extension machine and another on a workout bench. Usually, I do four groups of exercises, and I am about half way through my workout routine when a rather livid-looking man in a red shirt, with a name tag that said "Steve" comes up to me.
"Excuse me," he says, this little vein in his forehead pulsating, "but just what do you think you are doing."
Being polite (as always) I respond, "I am sorry?"
"What are you doing?" He says, his eyes beginning to bulge out like my sister Jennifer's shih tzu (believe me, when I say that this dog's eyes bulge, I mean they BULGE). At this point, I fear his eye is actually going to pop out of his head and start thinking about what one does when someone near them has an eye pop out.
"Uhh, I am working out?" I answer, with a little bit of concern in my voice.
"I can see that, buddy, but why are you working out on one of our Turkish terry cloth towels?"
"Why am I what?"
"Why are you working out on one of our Turkish towels!?! Don’t you know that these towels have a 2/2-twill weave had extra-warp loop pile. The cotton is premium and is rare enough that its extra long fiber is grown only in a small, albeit productive, part of the Aegean region.”
At this point, I thought the guy was kidding, and I laughed a little bit. This was a mistake. I picked the towel up that I was using, looked down at it, and as I was about to say, "Are you serious?" when he snatched the towel out of my had and pointed to a pile of small, apparently not Turkish, hand towels at the other side of the room. As I looked around, I noticed that I was, in fact, the only one using the larger, plusher towels to work out with. Everyone else was using the little towels.
I was about to make a snide remark, because for someone my size, one of those little towels was not going to do a bit of good. Then, as I looked the guy over and noticed that everything about him exuded strength, including the finger he was pointing with, I decided against it. I told him I was sorry, grabbed a hand towel, and turned to go back to my work out.
Of course, when I went to go get the hand towel, some sweaty person decided to plop themselves down where I had been working out, perspired all over the place, and then left—without cleaning up after him or herself. I then went back to cleaning before finishing my workout for the day. Observation for the day, this culture takes their towels VERY seriously.
1 comment:
hahahaha. i can only imagine your horror at equipment someone else had used and not cleaned.
I am actually surprised that you do not spend all your work outs pre cleaning the equipment -- how can you be certain that other people's cleaning standards are up to yours.
I mean, really. Even though they cleaned the machine, it doesn't mean that they were thorough or that you might not still get a disease.
I shudder to think of it.
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