something completely different
Jun. 11th, 2002 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mamajoanAnd now, an update on the gym situation. Hey, I bet you didn't even know there WAS a gym situation. :)
The situation is that the gym I nominally belong to is near the old job. I mean it's REALLY convenient; you have to drive past it to get to the highway from the office, which is why I actually had some success in going to the gym thrice a week. With me and gyms, it has to be *extremely* convenient like that. If it's even slightly out of my way, I just know that I'll go faithfully for a little while and then slowly peter out. So the gym that was convenient is now WAY the hell out of my way, and so I haven't gone since I got the boot from that job -- two months plus. Ugh.
The other part of it is that my old employer had negotiated a really good deal with that gym. It was $29 per month, which is a great price relatively speaking, for a conveniently located gym that had two of the three main things I wanted -- good recumbent exercise bikes, a good and extensive selection of Nautilus/weight machines. The one thing the old gym doesn't have is a pool.
So yesterday I finally got my shit together enough to visit another gym. This one is in Waltham (the town I live in) and it's kind of on my way home from work -- that is, it's on my way home if I go home a different way than usual. But it still qualifies as on my way.
And this gym is quite nice. They have a very small selection of bikes and Nautilus machines, compared to the other gym, but they also have smaller membership. The guy giving me the tour said that it was prime time, and yet there were at least three empty bikes and the Nautilus section was almost deserted.
AND, it has a pool. Again, prime time, and yet there was only one person in the pool. The pool has four or five lanes. The gym also has classes -- water aerobics and yoga in particular are things I've thought about trying.
The downsides are a) they close early on Fridays (8pm, which, considering that I usually leave work at 6:30 and it takes 20-30 minutes to get there, is pretty early) and b) it's a lot more expensive. It's $59/month at this gym, which gives you unlimited access to everything except the tennis and racquetball courts (which I don't care about anyway).
So. I'm debating what to do. Bearing in mind that my health insurance will reimburse me up to $150 per year in gym memberships; I've already paid more than that for my current (old) gym (which kinda rankles too, but it's my own damn fault). Oh, and I forgot to mention that the (potential) new place has a deal currently where you can buy a 4-month membership for slightly cheaper -- otherwise you have to prepay for a whole year. My track record suggests that four months is approximately how long my staying power is; I'll go faithfully for three or four, sporadically for a bit, and then stop entirely until something pushes me back into it.
Time-of-day-wise, if I go to the gym, it will always be after work. I can say "I'll change my entire lifestyle and start going to the gym in the mornings," but realistically, that so won't happen. So ... I could go on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, that way avoiding the Friday early-close (and being home in plenty of time for Farscape ;) ). If I'm going to swim I don't need the exercise bikes anyway; the swimming is aerobic and much easier on my various bad joints (knees, ankles, not to mention my back). So I could swim for half an hour and do some weight machines (probably not in that order, heh) and that would be great.
On the other hand (how many hands am I up to now?), it's the summer, and summer means our family's cottage, with lake. Why swim in a lame-o pool when I can be driving out to midwestern MA and swimming in an actual lake? With actual trees and grass and birds and fishes? But of course that's only for the weekends. It's a long enough drive that we just don't go there during the week. (Weekends, my mom is there pretty reliably all the time, unless she has a commitment back in town.) And a good aerobic swim just once a week isn't enough.
And why am I going to all this effort to get my bike back in shape, if I'm just going to start paying for the use of stationary bikes? I had been entertaining notions of riding my bike to and from the commuter-rail stations, of biking and train-ing my commute rather than driving it. It's about three miles from the train station to the office, which is, what, fifteen minutes on a bike? But that plan fell by the wayside when I realized that the cost of the commuter rail would be as much as, or quite possibly more than, the cost of gas. (Saving money isn't the main reason I want to not drive to work every day -- saving my sanity and reducing emissions are more important -- but money is a big factor.) I might do the bike-and-train thing once in a while, but it probably won't become my regular commute method, not even just for the summer. Still, if my bike were functional, I could just ride it around the neighborhood in the evenings, get just as much exercise as twenty minutes on a stationary bike, and be much more entertained. And save $60 a month!
But the pool! And the yoga! Water aerobics! Lifting weights!
But I could buy a set of hand-weights and lift 'em at home. And not feel like a dork.
So it's a dilemma.
Meanwhile, since I prepaid first-and-last-months at the old gym, I'm determined to start going there again, if only until my time expires. Which I presume will be one month from when I write them and cancel. (Yeah, you have to send them actual snailmail to cancel your membership. Isn't that archaic?? ;) ) It may be an inconvenience to me, but I paid for it, dammit. Grump.
The situation is that the gym I nominally belong to is near the old job. I mean it's REALLY convenient; you have to drive past it to get to the highway from the office, which is why I actually had some success in going to the gym thrice a week. With me and gyms, it has to be *extremely* convenient like that. If it's even slightly out of my way, I just know that I'll go faithfully for a little while and then slowly peter out. So the gym that was convenient is now WAY the hell out of my way, and so I haven't gone since I got the boot from that job -- two months plus. Ugh.
The other part of it is that my old employer had negotiated a really good deal with that gym. It was $29 per month, which is a great price relatively speaking, for a conveniently located gym that had two of the three main things I wanted -- good recumbent exercise bikes, a good and extensive selection of Nautilus/weight machines. The one thing the old gym doesn't have is a pool.
So yesterday I finally got my shit together enough to visit another gym. This one is in Waltham (the town I live in) and it's kind of on my way home from work -- that is, it's on my way home if I go home a different way than usual. But it still qualifies as on my way.
And this gym is quite nice. They have a very small selection of bikes and Nautilus machines, compared to the other gym, but they also have smaller membership. The guy giving me the tour said that it was prime time, and yet there were at least three empty bikes and the Nautilus section was almost deserted.
AND, it has a pool. Again, prime time, and yet there was only one person in the pool. The pool has four or five lanes. The gym also has classes -- water aerobics and yoga in particular are things I've thought about trying.
The downsides are a) they close early on Fridays (8pm, which, considering that I usually leave work at 6:30 and it takes 20-30 minutes to get there, is pretty early) and b) it's a lot more expensive. It's $59/month at this gym, which gives you unlimited access to everything except the tennis and racquetball courts (which I don't care about anyway).
So. I'm debating what to do. Bearing in mind that my health insurance will reimburse me up to $150 per year in gym memberships; I've already paid more than that for my current (old) gym (which kinda rankles too, but it's my own damn fault). Oh, and I forgot to mention that the (potential) new place has a deal currently where you can buy a 4-month membership for slightly cheaper -- otherwise you have to prepay for a whole year. My track record suggests that four months is approximately how long my staying power is; I'll go faithfully for three or four, sporadically for a bit, and then stop entirely until something pushes me back into it.
Time-of-day-wise, if I go to the gym, it will always be after work. I can say "I'll change my entire lifestyle and start going to the gym in the mornings," but realistically, that so won't happen. So ... I could go on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, that way avoiding the Friday early-close (and being home in plenty of time for Farscape ;) ). If I'm going to swim I don't need the exercise bikes anyway; the swimming is aerobic and much easier on my various bad joints (knees, ankles, not to mention my back). So I could swim for half an hour and do some weight machines (probably not in that order, heh) and that would be great.
On the other hand (how many hands am I up to now?), it's the summer, and summer means our family's cottage, with lake. Why swim in a lame-o pool when I can be driving out to midwestern MA and swimming in an actual lake? With actual trees and grass and birds and fishes? But of course that's only for the weekends. It's a long enough drive that we just don't go there during the week. (Weekends, my mom is there pretty reliably all the time, unless she has a commitment back in town.) And a good aerobic swim just once a week isn't enough.
And why am I going to all this effort to get my bike back in shape, if I'm just going to start paying for the use of stationary bikes? I had been entertaining notions of riding my bike to and from the commuter-rail stations, of biking and train-ing my commute rather than driving it. It's about three miles from the train station to the office, which is, what, fifteen minutes on a bike? But that plan fell by the wayside when I realized that the cost of the commuter rail would be as much as, or quite possibly more than, the cost of gas. (Saving money isn't the main reason I want to not drive to work every day -- saving my sanity and reducing emissions are more important -- but money is a big factor.) I might do the bike-and-train thing once in a while, but it probably won't become my regular commute method, not even just for the summer. Still, if my bike were functional, I could just ride it around the neighborhood in the evenings, get just as much exercise as twenty minutes on a stationary bike, and be much more entertained. And save $60 a month!
But the pool! And the yoga! Water aerobics! Lifting weights!
But I could buy a set of hand-weights and lift 'em at home. And not feel like a dork.
So it's a dilemma.
Meanwhile, since I prepaid first-and-last-months at the old gym, I'm determined to start going there again, if only until my time expires. Which I presume will be one month from when I write them and cancel. (Yeah, you have to send them actual snailmail to cancel your membership. Isn't that archaic?? ;) ) It may be an inconvenience to me, but I paid for it, dammit. Grump.
