Awkwardly taking notes…

I wish there were staff at my gym who patrolled and smacked people around for doing dumb stuff while working out.

One Sunday, I did all of my errands at home, and I had time for a good workout before the afternoon festivities. I changed into my workout gear and went to the gym for a 50 minute stress reliever on the elliptical trainer. There is a row of five Life Fitness elliptical trainers I really like, and only one was available, so I jumped on.

As I was peddling away, I glanced over at the woman to my left. Actually, she was being extremely visually distracting, and not in a good way. I’m usually good at focusing, especially since I have my music blasting. So I look over, and she’s shuffling a stack of 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheets of printer paper. On this paper were a bunch of notes written diagonally in all different directions.

I made nothing of this.

Until…

I’m continuing to pedal on, and, all of a sudden, I get hit in the left leg with something. I look down to see what it was, and it’s a mechanical pencil. So I look over and see the woman scurrying to get another one out of her pocket. Since the one she dropped was right under my pedals, she didn’t attempt to get it. I also wasn’t stopping for that bullshit.

So I get focused again, and I get hit by a second pencil. It lands just about where the other was, and, again, I wasn’t stopping.

Moments later, I don’t know how it happened, but I must have hit the cord to my headphones, and my iPod shuffle went flying about 4 feet in front of me. I quickly jumped off to retrieve it, and the woman more quickly barreled off of her machine and put her hands under the pedals of my elliptical.

Then, in a turn of further ridiculousness, when I got back on, she looked at me, held up the two pencils, and went “Ha Ha!” as if she were some kind of villain who had just gained the upper hand over the hero.

The moral of the story is that taking notes on an elliptical trainer is not a productive use of your time. Also, don’t be awkward.