Did NOT See That One Coming!

Morning!

At 4:15am this morning when my alarm went off, I wandered around the house, made my yam breakfast, changed my clothes and thought about how I was going to tell you today that getting up at 4am the day before, killing a workout on the worst day of that time of the month, working all day, coming home and making and cleaning up dinner, going to yoga for an hour and then staying up until 10pm to watch Biggest Loser does not really make for a very happy morning the next day. But....I got up at 4:15am with no complaining and went to the gym.

Today was Day Six and was slotted as a Cardio Day. Since I have a bike race coming up soon I thought the best use of my time would be the upright stationary bike. Man, that beast can make me work! I did an aerobic training workout on the bike and managed 12 miles in 45 minutes doing interval work the whole time. That's pretty much half of the distance I will be required to ride Pedals in May. Not too shabby! 6 minutes of hard rowing concluded Day Six's workout and off I went, merrily on my sweaty way to go and have a shower.

Aaaaaaaannnnnddddd....then it all went for a shit.

(I will take a moment here to explain how my gym is laid out. When you come in the front door you are at the reception desk in the middle of the gym proper. You walk about 150 feet past the Group Exercise studio and through the co ed stretching stations. Through a set of double doors into the Ladies Only Fitness area. 60 more feet and you're into the relative safety of the Ladies Change Area.)

Now, back to my story. Into the change room I go, strip down, nice hot shower, dry off, walk back to....oh....um....shit....NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! I had locked my locker key IN MY LOCKER with everything that I own. In order to break into my locker (first thought, definitely not the last thought) I had at my disposal a small blue shower scrubby, a squeeze bottle of face wash, my toothbrush and the chest band of my heart rate monitor. Oh, and the wet bath towel that I was wrapped in. That's it. That's IT!

My next thought, after realizing I wouldn't be pulling any MacGyver style locker breakins with what I had, was to go to the next bank of lockers and ask the girl there, when she was dressed, to please go out to the front desk and get them to bring the bolt cutters in. At this point I still didn't really know the gravity of my situation...cut the lock, problem solved, annoying but not the end of the world. Ya. Sure.

Chrissy (helpful stranger-girl) comes back and tells me that the front desk can't find the bolt cutters...and that sorry, they said it wasn't their problem. All of a sudden my problem became much, much worse. There was nothing that I could do to talk to them myself, walking 210 feet (see layout above) through a co-ed gym in a damp towel didn't seem like much option to me at the time. I tried to call Ray with Chrissy's cell phone but at 6:30 in the morning, there is no way he's going to hear the phone (ear plugs). I'm naked, damp and cold, I have NOTHING with which to help myself and the gym wouldn't do a thing. Chrissy went back out to the desk and her plan was to convince them to do SOMETHING. At that moment my dear friend and coworker showed up and also went to 'discuss' this issue with them. The whole time they were out there, I sat in the changeroom, completely helpless to help myself.

When Tamara returned with no bolt cutters and no good news (but very pissed off....which I appreciated!), the next plan was that I would wear her hoodie with my towel as a sarong-style skirt and drive her car back to my house to get the spare key and then come back. Right at that moment the bolt cutters miraculously appeared, lock was snapped off and my impending half naked drive home was averted.

NOT a good morning so far.

When I went to leave, I stopped at the desk and tried, in a very gentle voice, to explain to 'Jasmine' why her attitude and lack of desire to be helpful for a full 25 minutes was unacceptable. And I tried to explain to her that they SELL CLOTHES at the front desk and it would have been a reasonable thing to offer me some (which I would obviously purchase once my wallet was free) so that I could try to help myself. She just sat there....staring at me....like I was an alien. Yes, it was my fault, my mistake. But is there not some level of responsibility from the gym and the staff that when things like this happen that they are obligated to fix the problem that I have created?

So, while I would have like to just tell you about how hard it was to get up this morning because of yesterday's activities, unfortunately fate decided that was too boring/lame of a story to tell and created this instead.

ANYWAY, it's over, we're having taco salad for dinner tonight and I have to go and purchase a new lock for tomorrow morning. Day Six, you rocked my workout but the rest of you sucks bobo!