Let's get physical

I’ve become a gym rat.

Yeah, you read that right.

Sure, I’ve been a member at my club for more than two years, but it wasn’t until recently I actually started getting something out of those monthly dues.

I like going to the gym. I know it’s crazy, but in college it was my one-hour of quiet time -- when everything slipped away and I would elliptical like a crazy lady.

Since January I’ve been hitting the gym, working out and doing the fitness thing. (No it wasn’t a New Years resolution, I’m calling it a life style change. Stop laughing.) Now I’ve learned something very important – there’s a gym culture and maybe one specific to Jersey.

The thing is, you only see the cliques and the “types” when you go to the gym often and on a regular schedule.

I’ve learned that there are the “hard cores” those men and women who look like Arnold Schwarzenegger of years past.

The odd balls – you know, the people who show up in jeans, a t-shirt and sometimes wear boots. That can’t be comfortable on a Stairmaster.

The rookies who are too shy and timid to go beyond the basic treadmill -- you can spot those easily by their inability to work the TV remote on the machines.

Then you have the well -- how do I put it -- the big men in the tiny shorts and wife beaters, with chest hair everywhere (yuck!). Often they will stare at you with a head nod and “how you doin’ ” look. Usually they are covered with copious amounts of sweat that seems to be coming from everywhere.

The spandex people, mostly women (but some men) who’ll only wear spandex to workout in. The problem is some of them wear it the wrong way (you know what I’m talking about ladies.)

Then there are people like me; we wear comfortable shoes, loose clothing made of natural fibers and are sort of the hippies of the gym. A very relaxed, almost Zen-like quality of to us, we’re often found laughing at the shows on the TV while others stare at us and smirk.

Of course those are only a couple of the top clique. And like high school they’re subsets, offshoots, and those that defy labels.

Like a certain group of high school boys -- who wear baggy shorts circa Kris Kross of the early ’90s, wife beaters and backwards baseball caps while using the weight machines. Often they slam down the weight stack (a big no-no in gym culture) and can be found saying, “No man, this is how it’s done.” In all honesty, I don’t think any of them really know how to use the machines. Plus, those backwards baseball caps must be a hazard to those knuckleheads. I bet money one of them gets it suck in a machine and that most defiantly is not “how it’s done.”

Moral of the story: Please wear spandex wisely, don’t slam down the weights stacks, and don’t laugh at the girl on the elliptical machine laughing her butt off to The George Lopez Show. Thank you.

On Tivo: The New Adventures of Old Christine

Virginia Tech

It made no sense. Then again, these things never do.

I was checking my e-mail like always when I got into work yesterday morning. There was breaking news from CNN. “One person has been killed and one wounded in a shooting at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, a state government official tells The Associated Press.”

I read the next e-mail. “At least 20 people were fatally shot Monday on the campus of Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, police said, according to WDBJ. CNN working to confirm.”

I turned to a co-worker. Had he heard this? Did he know what was going on? No.

We made our way to the TV in the newsroom and flipped it to MSNBC. There it was -- police cars, students running, gun shots. At that moment we didn’t realize what we were seeing, I don’t think anybody did. We didn’t realize it would end up becoming the deadliest mass shootings or school shooting in American history.

I knew coming from Texas (and the University of Texas at Austin) this tragedy was going to have a massive impact -- not only on the community, but the nation.

See until yesterday, the deadliest mass shooting in the US occurred in 1991 in Killeen, Texas, when a man went into a Luby’s cafeteria and killed 23 people, then himself. It took years for me to go to a Luby’s after that.

Until yesterday, the 1966 Charles Whitman shootings at the University of Texas tower was the deadliest shooting on a campus. UT closed the tower after that, and didn’t reopen it for nearly 25 years. But now there are metal detectors, security guards and a new “safety lattice.” There are still bullet holes in the buildings on Guadalupe Street on west campus and the shooting was the reason SWAT teams were created.

Now your saying this happened around you, not to you? Why such an impact. I don’t know. Maybe because just a couple of years ago I was on a college campus, because you don’t think someone will walk into your dorm and shoot you, because when you’re in college – you should be thinking about finals, parties, projects and grades – not whether your friends have survived a mass shooting.

Reading the early accounts from the students, I got the feeling that there was no warning. It was just another morning on a sleepy campus – and then it happened. And as I watch it all unfold on the web, I read each updated report. The death toll rose, 21, 22, 30, 31, 32 and then as I was at the gym at 10 PM – 33 people were dead.

Thirty-three people. I just stared at the TV while on the treadmill. Thirty-three people. I closed my eyes and ran, and ran. Maybe if I believed hard enough I would wake-up from the nightmare. Surly there were not 33 people dead. But instead I saw Date Line interviewing students. I couldn’t take it and turned off the TV.

The woman next to me kept flipping between MSNBC and Family Guy. Then she stopped. She left it on a movie. Maybe she too couldn’t watch anymore. We both just ran.

I hoped that maybe by this morning there would be more answers, there would be more information – at least a hint as to why he did this. Or maybe as this is being posted there are only more unanswered questions as to why Monday, April 16 will be marked as the worst shooting rampage in US history.