Return of the Dirty Hippies

I recently joined a gym – yet again – to try to get into better shape.

I’ve belonged to Pure Fitness down on Westlake since moving to Seattle. At first it was an okay place, but then it turned into nothing I like about a gym. The owners changed, and the place became more sterile looking and less inviting. To access it, I had to drive down Mercer after work, which is equivalent to sitting on the 520 bridge; it sucks. To top it off, I get bored on treadmills and elliptical trainers, so it didn’t help when there was never any good magazines to read and you couldn’t see the TVs to read the shitty subtitles, let alone hear them.

Conclusion: I stopped going to the gym.

So, I joined All Star Fitness on lower Queen Anne. It’s a little bit more inviting, I drive by it nearly every day or can jog down to it, and it has private TV screens in front of each workout machine. Plus, I dug the idea of going to their location downtown on my lunch hour, and the gym also has a pool and hot tub. Major bonus.

Baby Daddy and I have been dying to go hot tubbing for some time now. (G-rated hot-tubbing; just for relaxation, really.) Since we’re not crazy enough to brave Tubs in the University District, which is closed anyway, I decided to sneak him into my gym. (Although I did go to Tubs once in college, and they have beds next to the hot tubs. Beds!)

The poolroom is a really nice set up, albeit a little muggy for mid-summer. But, the hot tub has Jacuzzi jets, the lap pool is a comfortable temperature, no one from the gym can see in, and there is a sauna and steam room. I’ve never been in a steam room, so I suggested that we check it out. I stepped inside, and was hit with a cloud of eucalyptus steam. Very niiiice! We sat in there for a bit, but then I started to feel extremely hot and like I couldn’t breathe. I kept opening the door to stick my head out and gulp fresh air.

“God! I’m hot!” I exclaimed. I picked up a water bottle sitting on the ledge. “This has to be water to spray on you, right?” I asked Baby Daddy.

“Uh. I don’t know. I don’t think so…”

“Well, why else would it be here?” I said in my usual know-it-all way. "It's probably to cool you off, duh!"

I proceeded to spray it all over my body—my neck, my legs, my chest. And then all over Baby Daddy’s body too.

“I don’t think that’s water,” he continued. “You just sprayed it in my eye, and it stung.”

And then my whole body started to sting.

“Shit!” I smelled the contents of the bottle, which burned my nose. It smelled like very strong, pure eucalyptus oil.

And it was.

It was so strong my eyes and nose were stinging, even after we had dressed and left the gym. It gave me a huge headache, and both of our bodies continued to sting through the night.

"We're going to die from, like, eucalyptus oil overdose or something!" I said.

“Smooth move, 20-Something,” he said as we walked home.

Worse part about it—we smelled like a couple of dirty hippies. And you all know how much I love hippies.

Currently Feeling: Sleepy with a bit of a wine headache.
Currently Anticipating: The Bite of Seattle this weekend and Jana’s bachelorette party.
Currently Wishing: I can sell all this ad space before the August deadline!