It's not working out

In Vegas, I had the brilliant--but apparently flawed--idea of working out in the hotel gym. We were on vacation; I had extra time. I had brought sneakers. I seemed prepared. What I had not bargained for was the perky smirk on the desk attendant's face as she informed me that the gym fee was $25 a day. I'm quick at math*, so I immediately got pissed. "It's $25 to get on the elliptical machine for 30 minutes?" I said in disbelief. "It's $75 if I want to work out every day while I'm here?"

"That's right!" beamed the gym troll.

"I'll have to rethink this," I said, backing away.

I returned to the room and complained to Rob, who made a valiant (albeit embarrassing) effort to call the front desk and get them to comp my gym entry. No dice.

Eventually, I acquiesced to the Vegas pressure and paid--but only for one day. Of course, during my time in the gym, I critiqued everything (example: the room wasn't even large enough to merit paying for entry) and took extra water bottles from the complimentary cooler.

So now I'm in a suburb of Chicago and I'm sitting in a dodgy room at a Holiday Inn, having just returned from another ill-fated trip to the gym. This "fitness center" was the size of a small college dorm room and had three treadmills, one taken and the other two broken. I sat down on the only other machine in the place, a bike, and rode for 5 minutes before the sauna-like atmosphere became too much for me. I left, bought a bag of pretzels and returned to the room.

It's hard for me to say this, but I probably would have paid $25 if I could have worked out today in a gym that actually had machines and air. And free water.


*No, I'm not.