Abubilla Music

My Magical Gym Bag

Written by Jimmy

Okay, my mind has to wander when I’m in the gym; so here’s where it went. I actually have a magical gym bag with all sorts of wonderful objects.  Here’s a short tour….

Before you read, let’s get on some music.  Here’s a song from my ‘fast gym’ playlist of my magical i Pod:

For those who have followed these blogs, you’ll know I’m a morning person (See Life at 4.23 AM) , in questionable fitness (see Running in Richmond Park, Part 1 and Part 2), still recovering from an interesting experience with a Swiss Ball (See, The Ball Thing).  Nonetheless, I persevere with daily trips to the gym, motivated in no small part by my magical gym bag…

1. The Enemy of Spacial Awareness:   Here’s a picture of my headphones.  There are four possibilities for putting them on your head.  25% of these options are correct.  I put them on every morning.  The right option is always, no matter how hard I think about it, the last one I arrive at… seriously.   I have never put these on my head correctly.    It takes four times, every times.  These are very special headphones.

2. The Magic Shaving Cream.  Below is a picture of my shaving cream.   I used 94.3% of the shaving cream in the first two weeks.  The can was nearly empty.  I am on the fourth week now of this can and the last 5.6% seems to go on forever.  It feels empty, it sounds empty, but there’s always one more shave.  Each and every morning.   It is a problem.  I want to throw this can away, because I know it’s magic will end.  I carry around a replacement can.  So two cans.  But this magic can never end.  Always another little shave.

3.  My Perfect i Pod.  This is my i Pod.  It is very old.   Generally, when I run, I listen to my little portable digital radio.  BBC4.  When I bike on the machine, I listen to the Sky News with my magical headphones.  But when I row or lift weights, I like to listen to my i Pod.  It knows this.  And it is always out of battery on rowing and lifting days.  Always.  Full as can be every other moment and hour.  Smells the rower and all its energy disappears.  Forces me to go to the bike.  I don’t like to row.  My perfect Magic I Pod knows this.  Clever. And it is an old one.

4. My Mom’s Wonderful Little Gym.  This isn’t in my gym bag.  My gym bag goes to it.  My mom lives in a retirement home.  It has a gym.  She’s in the States and I’m in the UK.  When I visit, I wake up early and go to the gym.  When I get on the bike, I have to put in my age.   The age starts at 78 (average age of users) and I have to press the down key a seriously large number of times.  Very cool.  In contrast, the bike in the gym in London starts at 21.  There’s a very rigorous workout with the up key.  I like visiting my Mom.

5.  My re-appearing black sock and soggy anti-acid table.  My gym bag isn’t very big.  And I have a little routine of clearing out the scummy clothes each night and packing it for the morning.  Not difficult.   It is empty at one point.   Then I put in black work shoes, toiletry kit and clean underclothes, including black socks.  I get to gym and empty all this into locker before working out.  No matter what, at the bottom of the bag every new morning is a spare black sock. Every time.  Oh, and usually at the bottom is another broken and soggy private label anti acid tablet that has covered by underclothes.  Makes them all spotty and gritty.  Nice.  I absorb anti-acid throughout the day like a nicotine patch.  Cool.  In the evening I take out the spare black sock and put it in the laundry.  Overnight it crawls back to the bottom of the bag, finds a new anti acid tablet, breaks it up and gets it wet (don’t even want to ask how this happens) and gets me ready for the day.

6.  My Magical Gym Bag.   I used to bike into work, but after my gym accident, I decided God didn’t want me to do that any more.  But by this time I had all the bike into work kit, i.e., a set of Altura saddle bags.   They aren’t really good for carrying by human but it is what I have.  No matter what happens, as I walk from the gym at 7.40 up the road to work, no matter how hard I try to control my destiny, my gym bag always smacks into at least three people coming the other way.  3 people in 124 metres (the length of the walk).  One is always carrying coffee.  62% of the time, they manage to hold on to their coffee in the same hand.  26% of the time, they drop the coffee but recover it  with their other hand.  But that leaves a shockingly high number of times that the coffee spills on the ground.  Of these times, 40% of the time I manage to walk on by as though I didn’t notice.  40% of the time, we make eye contact and I’ve learned from watching English football how to do ‘bad word lip reading’.  Generally nasty words fly in my direction soundlessly.  But in the remaining times I am forced to buy that person coffee.  If you do the math that is 20% of the time the coffee spills, which occurs 12% of the time I hit someone, which accounts for 33% of the three people I bump every day.  Or, I am forced to buy coffee for someone after leaving the gym 6% of the time I go to the gym.  Given the frequency with which I actually use the gym, this means I am forced to buy coffee for someone roughly every 7 years.  Which I guess isn’t really that big a deal is it?

That’s enough about my magical gym bag.

Jimmy