Yesterday I was brimming with confidence about getting back into the gym this morning. When the alarm went off at 5am however, I was wondering where that fitness exuberance had gone because my body protested getting out of bed and very nearly went into full-blown rebellion.

It just goes to show that even a few days off, spent doing whatever is most comfortable, can derail your fitness plans in a heartbeat.

Disregarding my flabby body’s disgruntlement at having been awoken and forced to move about way before it was ready, I got up and headed out to the JFZ, but first it was time to put the trash out by the road.

5am is a very peaceful time in my neighborhood. The only sounds are from the nearby “main road” and the occasional barking and yowling of people’s domesticated beasts. I needed to make sure I got the trash out to the road this morning because we currently have party-garbage coming out of our ears. If you have never dealt with party-garbage before, then I envy you because it is an entirely different monster on its own.

While your normal, everyday, garbage probably consists of old newspapers, coffee grounds, banana peels, or junk mail, about the worst thing you will encounter in your everyday garbage is a rotten egg, or stinky shrimp heads (a common garbage component here).

Party-garbage, on the other hand, consists of some of the worst shit you will ever have the displeasure of smelling in your life. I contribute this to many things: rotten, old beer (TONS of that), dried-up, discarded cups of my trademark Zombie Punch (what smells like a delicious tropical alcoholic beverage tonight, smells like Harry Belafonte’s breath after he’s been on a 3-week bender tomorrow, and gets progressively worse), and, of course, miscellaneous weird-o party smells that could be a mix of any number of utterly vile and disgusting things (vomitus, random “sexual” odors, etc.). Plus, while dealing with party-garbage there is always a distinct chance that you may encounter the most repugnant substance in the world: party-garbage juice. If this stuff runs out of some crevice somewhere and gets on you, you must throw away whatever article of clothing it got on. But if it gets on your skin, I hate to be the bearer of bad gnus, but you’re gonna hafta chop it off, whether it be your hand or leg or whatever, because you will never get that body part clean enough for you to feel comfortable eating. So you must choose: lop off the hand, or starve to death. Do not fret, perhaps you will get a Darth Vader hand! Then you can eat and chokeslam bitchass insubordinate officers at the same time!

If you ever had a friend in college who lived in the “Party House”, or if you yourself lived in that house, then you know the types of odors and textures that I’m talking about here.

So with that said, I had to get the garbage out to the street asap this morning, which meant rolling that big noisy fucker out to the street while my neighbors are all asleep. No problem, since my neighbors all suck anyway.

See, there’s this guy who is always out walking when I’m leaving for the JFZ. We’re pretty much on the same schedule, most of the time. As I’m pulling out of the driveway, he comes trucking by, “powerwalking” I think it is called, his little arms just a-chugging away like he was milking a cow. And he looks a bit like Steve Bartman, whom I both hate and feel incredibly sorry for at the same time.

Well, this morning I didn’t even think about Walker, and when I got the garbage can out to the street, narrowly avoiding cascading party-garbage water that came out from under the lid from some dark black hole into another dimension somewhere under there, we startled each other. I didn’t hear him coming because my garbage can sounds like a Sherman tank rolling down the driveway, and I guess he didn’t notice me because he was so concentrated on his fitnessing and not freezing to death (it was cold as a mug this morning, for the Deep South and my tropical blood anyway).

We both had a good startle-y jump, and I smiled and said “Good morning!”

He did not respond.

I checked for earphones or buds. Nothing. He heard me. He just chose not to acknowledge me or my Good Morning.

That kind of shit pisses me off. Who is this turd? Up at 5am doing his stupid powerwalking around the neighborhood, frightening innocent JFZ-goers. Go to the mall, dickhead! That’s where all you ben-gay snorters go for your buttcrack-o-dawn cardio, isn’t it???

Now, you may be thinking, “Perhaps he was so startled by you being there that he was at a loss for words.”

No. I refuse to believe that. I was startled also, and I seriously doubt he didn’t see me before I saw him, he just chose to be a jackass.

So here’s what I’m thinking of doing…

AMBUSH.

That’s right. Tomorrow, when my alarm goes off at 5am, I might get up, skip my yogurt and granola, and go hide in the bushes. I think you can put together the rest of the story…

Yes. I jump out of the bushes when he comes by and yell “GOOD MORNING ASSHOLE!!!!” or something to that effect. Hopefully it will be enough to send him straight-away into cardiac arrest. Karma is a motherfucker, Walker.

Ok, so I probably won’t do that, but I’ll think about it. I will think long and hard and rub my beard on it. And tomorrow when my alarm goes off, I will consider it very carefully, finally deciding that it is too cold for such things, and what if Walker has a damn taser or pepper spray? Then I would have to kill him with my bare hands, and going to jail sucks.

But I will laugh every time I see Walker from now on, imagining him scared out of his sweatbritches and scurrying away like the rat that he is, as I chase behind him, flapping my arms and bellowing about Good Mornings. It’d probably be enough to cure him of his penchant for early-morning powerwalking outside of the mall, and enough to possibly net me a lovely visit with the local police department. “Coffee, gentlemen?”

Anyway. The JFZ was fine today, and while I felt good about myself getting “back on the horse”, there was no point in my workout when my body relented trying to get me to go home and get back in bed. I kept thinking that, eventually, it would realize it had lost and give up, but no, it fought me tooth and nail from the ToT up to the Whirly Bird. In fact, I had to remind the Whirly Bird that, even if I didn’t make it the full 35 minutes, it was because my body was on strike and not because he had beaten me.

Today, as is often the case, I made an ass out of myself. I don’t know about you, but a lot of times I forget where I am while on the Whirly Bird. I haven’t decided if this is a good thing or not because I figure it means I’m either in fitness nirvana or I’m about to have a stroke. I also forget that I have on headphones and that any noise I make with my mouth is going to be infinitely louder in real life than it sounds to me.

Today on one of the tv’s they were showing footage from that speech where Howard Dean made that “Byahhhh!” noise and pumped his fist. The one that Dave Chappelle skewered so brilliantly on his ill-fated television programme.

Here’s footage of that poor bastard, immediately followed by the Chappelle version, which will forever make me think the Howard Dean “Byaaaah!” is funny as all hell…

Unfortunately for me, I think it is so funny that I simply must imitate it every time I see it. So that’s what I did before I even thought about how stupid I would look, whirly-birdying away on the elliptical and going “Byahhh!”

This probably added to my growing list of “titles” in other JFZ-ers COC roster. Now I’m not only “that guy who did a victory dance on the elliptical” but I’m also, “that crazy bearded guy who Byahhh-ed really loud for no reason”. No big deal, at least I’m not “Lumpy” or “Bird Shit Hair”.

The employee guy whose job it is to mop up the treadmills and birds and bulls, I am convinced, already thinks I’m a weirdo. He comes all around the Whirly B that I am on, wiping down all the machines and giving me a stinkeye like I’m gonna attempt to steal the Star Trac Whirly Bird that I use every day.

And yes, it is called a “Star Trac” and I have no doubt that this is an allusion to “Star Trek”. Does this make me love this particular Whirly Bird more than others? No. So why do I use this same one every day? Because it has a fan on it, and because the console looks like this:

Star Trac Voyager

See that deal at the top? The vent thing? That is a fan! Your own personal fan that has 3 settings (if you count “off” as a setting, which you probably shouldn’t)!

Plus, does not this futuristic fitnessing device look like a frackin Cylon toaster? This may explain why I feel the Whirly Bird is responsible for so much evil in the world.

Another good thing about the Star Trac is that it is big, way bigger than the other Whirly Birds, with footpedals that are more than adequate for my gargantuan paws, and the “handles” (or “horns” as I like to call them. What kind of bird has horns, you ask? A Whirly Bird, straight from the bowels of Hell) are really big and high also, which accommodates my excessive height. The other Whirly Birds all have small pedals and short handles, which make me feel like I’m bent over the whole time, and make me think I look awkward, which I probably do, no matter which elliptical device I use, like a crane who is trying to take off from the ground but finds out he is tethered to a rock.

So there it is, we’re back in the gym after a brief hiatus for celebrating the spirit of Samhain, and the future is so bright I gotta wear shades…