You know those things you already know, that you don’t really need a lesson about?
Yeah, those things. The things life sometimes likes to throw at you, like that annoying teacher who would randomly ask you a question just to make sure you’ve been awake for the past hour. That.
Hmmm I should maybe be a little more polite about teachers, they do an amazing job, are hugely underpaid and undervalued and all round wonderful people (hey Mum, hey Dad!).
Anyway, this is a brief tale about one of those types of lessons.
I’ve been managing to keep a fairly regular schedule at the gym, visiting 3 times a week, and concentrating on cardiovascular exercise as I’m still focussing on losing weight. In other words I’ve been mostly sitting on a bike pedalling up and down ‘hills’ for 30-40 minutes at a time.
Of course to keep things balanced I have also been using the variety of big mechanical machines, with all those fancy levers and pulleys, and the ability to attempt to try and lift what feels like a small cow. It’s a bit of a strange setup that one, and I think I’m not the only person who is sick and fedup of the cows hogging the treadmills.
I digress.
As most of my time is spent sitting on the bike I’ve taken to watching movies, propping up my iPhone on that clever digital display that tells me how fast I’m going, how many kcalories I’ve burned, the distance I’ve travelled and so on. I get warmed up, hop on the bike, set the time and program I want to complete and then decide what I’m going to watch.
Having run out of movies I started watching episodes of Flight of the Conchords. I’ve seen some of them before but I like the mix of gentle humour, xenophobia and music (always a winning combo!). It can be quite subtle at times, with only the odd real laugh out loud moment.
So, obviously, just as the six foot tall Mr.”I Have No Neck And My Shoulders Are Three Times The Width Of My Waist” decides to hop off the machine directly in front of me, just as he almost catches his foot and has to hop a little to catch his balance, a hop that takes him a half turn in my direction, right at that very millisecond is, as I’m sure you’ve all guessed by now, one of those moments where I’ve blurted out a big “HAAAA!!”.
It must have been funny to have been an onlooker at that point. You would have observed me staring at the screen of my iPhone then bursting into a quick clap of laughter, just as a very large, muscley and quite scary looking man almost trips off the machine directly infront of me.
You’d then have witnessed me suddenly realising that the aforementioned Big Scary Man was glaring at me, my nervous look at him and my odd attempt at an apologetic smile, and then my frantic attempts to cycle away as fast as possible.
On a stationary bike.