Today was especially busy all morning. There was a work call. The electrician from my landlady came by to check my broken office room heater, there was a delivery and setup of a TV set, more work to do, etc. By the time everything was done it was past 2:00 pm (the sun sets at 4:30 pm today) and I was feeling sort of drowsy.

I had gone to the gym so far every day since joining, and today was the 5th day, and I was thinking “Isn’t it ok to skip a day? My original intent was to go at least every other day after all. So it’s not like I would be cheating.”

But it was gnawing at me, and so I tried to call my friend Dave to ask his opinion. (This blog post is also received by Dave, so he might be surprised to read about himself in the 3rd person.)

Dave is 95 years old, but always has good exercise advice. However he didn’t pick up the phone, so I sat there for a while and thought, “What would Dave do?”

My guess is that first Dave would regale me with some parable relating back to his days in the military like, oh, I don’t know, “They would come in every morning at 4:30 am and throw buckets of ice water on us to wake up up and then send us running for 20 miles” followed by, “man up, Doug, and go over to the gym.”

So with Dave’s imaginary voice in my ear I packed up my gym stuff and rode over to the gym and did all my usual cardio exercise machines and a few weight/resistance machines.

To tell the truth, the exercise is still deathly, tediously boring, and time passes very slowly. But it’s sort of fun to watch the burned calories sync automatically to my iPhone from the machine. And the atmosphere is nice, it’s not crowded and the people are friendly.

And afterwards I feel pretty good for many hours. Instead of tired, I feel somehow more energized, with a slight “buzz” as well.

So I’m glad I went. Thanks, Dave, even though you weren’t there.

I wonder if I’ll ever get to the point where I actually like doing the exercise though.