Mornings at the Gym

While keeping up the habit of regular exercise is always a challenge, it is especially so for us wanderers. You find a good gym, get into a pattern, start to make some progress – and it’s time to move. So it was a great pleasure to find a gym close to our apartment and to the school, at the right price, and with the appropriately anachronistic atmosphere.

It has felt just right to get up early each weekday, have a cup of coffee and hie off to the gym. Martin, the owner, and his wife are both body builders, so there are none of the aerobic machines found in some gyms, only weights, free and machines. Although he speaks excellent American English, Martin has been kind enough to indulge my need to practice Spanish. By default he has become the teacher of my first class each day. And an excellent class it has been, including new ways to use familiar machines to tone up different muscle groups and new verbal constructions at the same time. Martin and his wife and daughter live upstairs, but their kitchen table, and other domestic spaces are in the gym. So it was usual for me and one or two other early birds to be straining away next to the family having their morning coffee, or whilst their teen age daughter fixed her hair looking in the same mirror I was using to get the position right for behind the back lifts. In a small way, it's been like being part of the family.

The center of the gym, like most buildings in central Morelia is a courtyard open to the sky. So each morning I got to work out watching the sky brighten with the sunrise, while large flocks of purest white cattle egrets flew over from North to South, illuminated in brilliant orange, red or yellow tones, depending on the mood of the dawn. It may be a while before we find another gym as welcoming, or as inspiring.