It's fun to tour the Y...M...C...A!

First of all, let me just tell you that I flunked out of the 5th grade spelling bee on the word "exercise". It's true. I spelled it "exercize", and my teacher made fun of me in the classroom when we all got back there after the bee. Really. The whole world of exercise has been stacked against me since I was 10.

That being said, we toured the East YMCA Monday night. We purposely went on Monday night at about 5:00 to see how horribly packed the place might be. (That's supposed to be the busiest time of the week.) It WAS horribly packed, but there were still a few free treadmills and ellipticals and such. I have to say that I was really impressed with the girl who gave us the tour. She did a great job of showing us every corner of the place, including the part we'd be most likely to use, the new Wii stations... just kidding! But only about using them - they really did just install three Wii stations at the Y. Anyway, we found out at the very end of the tour that our hostess goes to our church, so that was kind of cool. The place was also full of very normal looking people of all ages and fitness levels, so we knew we'd fit in fine. Everyone was modestly dressed, which was great. We both came out of the place semi-excited about joining.

Then, in the middle of the night, I woke up and proceeded to think myself out of joining. I was reminded of all the crowded rooms, the equipment jammed side by side, the lack of personal televisions for each workout station, the huge amount of sweat and miscellaneous germs from other people that I'd come into contact with, the need to buy real workout clothes that are appropriate for public viewing (at home, I usually just go for worn out pajama tops and too short shorts that are no where near modest because I get soooooo hot when I move), the need to wash said workout clothes between workouts, and on and on. All this invaded my brain at about 3 am (couldn't say for sure about that time, because I'm blind, and the clock's on Jeff's side of the bed, but you get the point).

However, over the last couple of days, I've pretty much talked my way back into it. I think we're going to give it a shot for a while. It would take us over three years of paying the membership fees at the Y before we would even start to get close to paying same price of the treadmill we're considering buying. We'd also get three free sessions with a personal fitness coach/trainer if we joined, which would be a good thing for one of us who has never been sporty, and for one of us who hasn't been sporty since her college days. We're going to try and set up a schedule so we get over there on a regular basis and actually make use of the place. They will be opening a brand new Y in Andover next spring that will be even closer to our house than this one is, so hopefully that will alleviate some of the crowding at the current one.

We have a crazy busy weekend ahead of us - Saturday is our annual neighborhood cleanup in the morning, then in the afternoon we are co-captains of a team from our church that is going to be assembling and installing playground equipment at one of the city elementary schools as a service project, then on Sunday we have our neighborhood picnic in the evening. I'm sure we'll be quite exhausted when it's all said and done.