Gym Rats! Or Rats, Gym!

It had been a long time since I'd been to the gym. Months, no doubt. So I thought I better go this week since I spent money for the membership. First thing I noticed is that my favorite machine, the stairmaster, was gone. That was a great sweat-builder. Twenty minutes aboard the old stairmaster and sweat would be pouring from me like baste off a turkey.

Now they have treadmills and cycle machines and cross-trainers. They're okay but nothing could get that angina building like the old stairmaster.

I thought about going into the free weight room. It's where jocks and ex-jocks hang out. There you hear the constant clang of steel hitting steel as plates are added or substracted from the barbells before some stud tries to better his bench-pressing best.

Yes, I thought about going in there, but then I saw one dude with his sleeveless tee, sporting a tattoo on his bicep that looked like a peacock, flowing tailfeathers and all.

I'm not sure a tattoo of any bird would fit on my upper arm. Maybe Snoopy's Woodstock. I wonder if there are insect tattoos. My son Scott hits the free weight racks. I'm not sure he could fit a peacock on his bicep. Maybe somebody like Woody the Woodpecker. But that might not fly as tattoo art. Anyway, I thought I'd work on the cross-trainer instead.

Now I still sport a pretty good quadricep. Yup, from my days on the stairmaster. Helped me to climb Mt. Washington in New Hampshire a couple years ago. You could probably fit a pretty good sized tattoo on my upper thigh. I'm thinking a Polish eagle would draw stares of admiration.

I was pretty proud of my upper thigh bulge. Sometimes I'd tell somebody to go ahead and press their fingers there to demonstrate its rigidity. My wife didn't think it appropriate my asking women to check firmness of my thigh muscle. Heck, it was just her sister.

So it's a couple days later and I have pains in back of both my knees, courtesy of that cross-trainer obviously. Great! So what muscle's there? Certainly not one you can show off with a tattoo.