People At the Gym

Jumping rope like this guy will help you get ripped in no time

I know I've commented before on the parade of humanity one can find at the gym but as the gym is a variable menagerie I once again feel compelled to share my (un)scientific findings.  Today I observed the habits of the American hippie, what I believe to be a lesbian couple (but could also have been two teenage boys...not sure), a man whom I momentarily mistook for my husband, and a galloping horse type creature on the treadmill.  This may be one of the horsemen sent as a sign that the Apocalypse is near.

As to the man whom I mistook for my husband; that one is pretty simple.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man of approximately the same skin color, height and build as my husband.  I had to do a double take because he was also wearing glasses (as my husband does) and was wearing the same type of clothes that my husband would wear.  This precipitated a several seconds long stare before I could be assured that he was not, in fact, my husband.  I realize that an unintended side effect of this was that the man probably thought I was checking him out.  Well, at least I bolstered someone's ego today.

Then there was the hippie fellow.  If this were a gym in California or some other place where one often finds hippies (a Mellow Mushroom?), it wouldn't be as unusual.  A gym in suburban Georgia that's part of a well-known national chain is not a place I expect to find a hippie.  After all, aren't they anti-big business? He was wearing the usual hippie workout attire (which also happens to be the usual hippie beach attire and casual wear) of knee length frayed shorts, baggy tank top, tattoos and the gnarly dreadlocked hair along with jewelry made of some hemp related material.  He was in shape though.  I'll give him that.  I just didn't think someone who's stoned (as I assume most hippies are) is really interested in working out.

The lesbian couple is still a bit of an enigma to me.  I have nothing against lesbian couples and fully support their right to workout in a gym.  What does bother me is when I'm unable to determine if they are, in fact, lesbians because I'm not sure of their respective genders.  That could lead to many an embarrassing situation and I could only hope that they wouldn't ask me where the locker room was located as I'd have no idea which one to direct them to.  I'm fairly certain that at least one of them was female.  The problem lay in the fact that they were both overweight and had short hair.  It makes it hard to determine if they have man-boobs or for-real boobs.  To further complicate matters I had pretty much determined that they were both female as they appeared to be wearing sports bras and then I noticed that one of them had hairy legs.  Male or female who chooses not to shave her legs?  Despite all that I'm about 65% sure they were both females.  They could very well be heterosexual females but based on everything I've mentioned you can draw your own conclusions.

Finally, there's the galloping man.  Well, it was really more like a cantor.  I'm not sure....I'm no equestrian expert.  Suffice it to say, he was "running" on the treadmill with a gait I can only attribute to four legged creatures.  He was running at a moderate pace but lifting his legs much higher with each step than I would have thought mechanically efficient.  As you can imagine, he was making a lot of noise in the process.  I bet he burned a bazillion calories. In conclusion, here's a video of his kind in their natural habitat.....