Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

It's a funny thing about gyms.

One of the nice benefits of the apartment complex in Syracuse where I now live is the presence of a gym, which we are able to use at will as part of our rental agreement. It's not a big gym: two treadmills, a recumbent exercise bike, a stairclimber, a Nordic-track like device, and a universal weight machine. It's a basic gym, but big enough and nice enough for my needs. The only thing missing that I would like to see is a set of free-weights.

The funny thing is that I think I may have uncovered a law of nature regarding gyms: in any gym, no matter where the gym is or how restrictive its clientele, there will be a regular person at the gym -- always a man, by the way -- who works out in jeans and a flannel shirt, who grunts and grimaces and moans his way through a workout which consists of benchpressing as much weight as he possible can, as quickly as he can, and slamming the weights together as loudly as he possibly can. This guy will, in between sets, wander around the room windmilling his arms and doing that useless stretch that every pseudo-athlete does: the one where you stand on one foot while reaching down and tugging on your other ankle, presumably stretching the quadricep or something like that. Why this guy does that stretch, and no other, is a mystery as his workout regimen is geared exclusively to his upper body.

I truly believe that if one were to open a gym in the wilds of the Yukon, accessible only by dog sled or water-landing plane that takes off from the lake ten miles away, that gym would have a guy like this as a member.