Day 16, 5.25 Miles, another night at the United Nations of Richardson

Day 16, Ran 5.25 Miles/ Total so far - 40.75 Miles/ Miles to go - 959.25 Over 1/25th of the way to 1000 miles!

Went back to LA Fitness, Richardson last night. Got there earlier, around 7 p.m. There were even more people there at that hour. I was determined to run an hour so I found the treadmill on the farthest end, next to the railing that rings the second floor, which is really half a floor, where they have located all the cardio machines so you can run and watch either TV or the people working out below on the first floor weight room. I set the machine on one hour, manual run, and off I went. Most of the time I focused on the little red arrows that marked my progress around the electronic quarter mile track. I felt good, energized and the 5 miles were surprisingly easy. I started at a 12 minute per mile pace and increased it one increment per mile I ran (machine increments being about 14 seconds per mile) so that by the end I was running almost an 11 minute per mile pace. People came and went on the other machines but I tried to ignore them as best I could.

It was true, though, that it is harder to ignore people once you get off the treadmill and have to navigate through them to reach the stretching area (so necessary for me after a run) and then the locker room. I was struck by how many nationalities and languages I encountered. I felt like I was on the streets or subway in New York. No really! Richardson is a huge ethnic melting pot. There is a large mosque not far from my house where police monitor traffic for Friday noon prayers, just like they do for the Christian churches on Sundays in Highland Park. Texas Instruments I am sure has a large Indian and Pakistani Muslim employment base. UT Dallas has a large foreign student population. There are many Mediterranean restaurants with Lebanese and other Arabic food. You will even find Hookah bars on old Main Street in Richardson. There are shopping centers with all the signs in Chinese, full of all kinds of Asian restaurants and markets when you can eat Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese etc., and buy all kinds of native foods, many of which you will no recognize and some you probably don't want to know about.

And it seemed that each group had their representatives at LA Fitness, Richardson last night. I am now understanding how this mixture might account for the locker room behavior I previously observed, people showering in clothes etc. I realize that some cultures are more modest about the human body. I got to the locker room and since I was running in utility type shorts that could also serve as a bathing suit, (the prior times I had been in sweats) I was looking forward to my first use of the coed Jacuzzi. I showered and walked down the long hallway to the wet area with its pool and whirlpool, but alas, I saw the sign, Out of Order, and remembered that in most clubs I have belonged to, the Jacuzzi is out more than in. Probably one of the reasons SMU does not have one...too much maintenance costs.

I went back to the showers, and then, wrapped in my towel, went to the sauna. Another UN experience. There was a Nigerian cab driver (how do I know...remember, saunas are like airplanes and people talk...too much) laughing with an Asian of indeterminate origin. Then an Arab guy fully clothed in gym clothes, including running shoes, with his bag, came in and stood. I know he was Arabic because he was singing along with the Arabic music that his ipod was blaring loud enough for us to hear over his earphones.

I had a flashback to my time in Kuwait when I had joined a neighborhood health club called Flex. We lived in a Kuwaiti neighborhood. The club was managed by a former Russian national team gymnast, Sergie, who had brought two other Russians with him to work in the club, one to teach aerobics and the other to be the massage therapist. The four of us "westerners" became fast friends and played tennis at an indoor facility that Sergie had access to since he also did personal training for some wealthy members of the Royal Family who owned the club. I have fond memories of the first half of a birthday party that Sergie and and his Russian friends organized for me the last summer I was in Kuwait, my family having already escaped the heat to return for the summer to Texas (wait...I thought I said escape the heat? Well there is a difference I guess between 100 degrees and 130 degrees...like 30 degrees deeper in hell).

I say I remember the first half of the birthday party because, after eating the wonderful food the guys Russian girlfriends had prepared, we pulled out the pepper flavored vodka that they had been able to buy from the British bootlegger who sold everything for 25 dollars a bottle out of his trunk in the parking lot of the McDonald's near my house. He sold what he had at the time, and for some reason this shipment of vodka was pepper flavored. Undaunted, we drank it in straight shots followed by a bite of orange. I am sure I had a good time, at least, they told me the next day that I did.

I flashed back to my days at the Kuwaiti Flex gym when I say the fully clothed Arab guy in the sauna, because I remember that first time I was in the gym in Kuwait I took off my clothes in the locker room after my work out and proceeded with towel in hand to go to the shower. It was a men only gym but an old Kuwait admonished me that this was not America and I must be covered up. I learned how to dress with the towel wrapped around me, etc. It had not been like this at the Hotel SAS club on the beach where he had stayed when we first arrived in Kuwait looking for a house, and where we still belong and went for family fun.

I have only a couple of days left on my Richardson LA Fitness pass. I won't buy a membership. I will leave my multicultural gym experience behind and return to SMU. I actually enjoy the LA Fitness Richardson very much and like the UN atmosphere. I like being reminded of good memories of my days oversears and of trips and friends from other backgrounds. But I pay $10 a month for my SMU membership and I cannot justify a second gym membership, unless I join one with Gym Rat some day and get free training from my friend.... Good news, bad news, who is to say? But I do know that Life is Good.