Sunday Morning

Today, Tuesday, I did a certain ritual I do every other Tuesday, which is to do several loads of laundry at the "Soap and Suds" in Ocean View while working out at the Muscle Beach East gym on First View. The pattern is the same every time from Fall through Spring, until summer arrives along with my children's presence.

It breaks down like this: put the 4-7 loads of wash in, add detergent, get quarters, set the machines off, jog to the gym, and work out the first body part within the 29 minutes it takes for the wash cycle to finish. Today, 5 loads and back was the first body part. I watch the clock as I cycle through my sets, in the back of my mind hoping some crackhead won't steal the clothes I can't afford to replace.

Then, sprint to the laundromat, try and find some available dryers, load them, set 'em off, and run back to the gym for the second body part to work: today, shoulders was round 2, with 32 minutes before the laundry nazi starts bagging your clothes up. Mistress Ilga of the "Soap and Suds" is not one to be reckoned with...

I had a good work out and I always feel kind of strange folding my laundry, drenched with sweat and obviously rigorously pumped up after "Round II," as newcomers enter the establishment, looking at me a bit crazed like either the laundromat is too humid or this guy has some kind of drug problem and sweats like a fountain.

I fold my clothes, separate, put them in the two laundry baskets I own, and they are in the WVEC Stealth Blazer quicklike.

Today, with the foresight that my wakeup call won't be 3 a.m. but 7-something, I stop for a 12-pack of the high life, because I am a high life kind of man when I'm too broke to afford Guiness. As I stroll into the 7-11, I say my common courteous "hello" to the girl I always see working the counter at this hour, the one who knows I work for the news and unloaded a story about how her friend was murdered and left on the side of the road somewhere in the bowels of Suffolk, Virginia, the girl whose name, even with a nametag I don't remember. I grab my 12-pack of High Life and head towards the counter, my gray Dropkick Murphys gym shirt drenched with sweat, and she questions my current sticky condition.

"Oh, I was at the gym," I say.

"Oh, I didn't know you work out," she replies, then looks me over and returns, "Oh, I see now. You have boobies."

I am pretty sure I blushed pretty hard at that point. Regardless of the sunburn I was overcoming from the sun, surf, and bbq-ing on a typically seasonal week, or the fact that I was caught completely off-guard by the unexpected compliment, my reply was simply silence as I fumbled with the debit card machine at the counter that I know you all have fumbled with before, sober or inebriated.

As I walked to the truck, I felt a sense of pride. Not because the girl at 7-11 had made a positive observation about my being or because I felt like some kind of "stud," but because someone had noticed thefruits of my labors, in a sense. I work out for myself, and have since I can remember, in whatever ways of fitness are appropriate for the time.

I am not a big guy...the guys at my gym are monsters: firefighters, police officers, and ex-cons, who can bench press Cadillacs and dwarf me in their Conan-like physiques. I do this for me, to be healthy, for the personal gratification I gain along with the discipline and endurance that follows. I learned from the best...a student of Rollins and Schwarzenegger literature creating my own crossfaded discipline of "the riddle of iron" as it works best for me.

It was just nice, on an overcast, rainy day, when the seas had turned to hell and surfing in 45-degree water in rough water was not a pleasant option, to get all my clothes clean, my body inline, and something nice said...people just aren't nice all the time or enough...especially when you have a crazed-looking serial-killer demeanor such as I...

I think I'd make even the Good Doctor Thompson nervous...haha...

so that was my day...not too shabby an afternoon...