My friend Dan certified as a personal trainer during the Pandemic™ which is something you can do if you’re Very Hot™. For a while, my sister and I did a private, personal training session with Dan, which was a good opportunity to work on our shoulders and our issues, but now we do a group class with a few other friends every Saturday morning in Griffith Park.
Unfortunately, this requires waking up on Saturday morning, which some (me) might say is the first “exercise” of the day. I’m not a naturally early riser. In fact, I could happily fritter the entire night away dancing, singing, and watching old episodes of Gilmore Girls, but I’ve learned the “world” tyrannically demands a certain amount of alertness during daytime hours and I’m no one if I’m not frantically trying to fulfill someone else’s expectations of me.
So on Saturday I downed cereal, slathered on sunscreen, and threw on clothes. I walked out into the already bright day and to find our neighbor’s mom, who is visiting and French, sitting out in our front (concrete) yard smoking a cigarette. She wore a light cotton robe made of cotton lawn in a chic floral print and took in the morning sun with what can only be described as a je ne sais quoi. After we exchanged hellos, I toddled to my car. I briefly thought about throwing it all away to sit in the sun and smoke a cigarette, but at a certain age, every woman learns that she’s not and will never be French.
Since my sister was out of town, I was spared the second “exercise” of the day: trying not to get into a blowout fight about her being late and me being uptight about her being late. I found that the drive just wasn’t the same when I wasn’t passively-aggressively fuming and she wasn’t blithely ignoring my irritation and convincing me to come with her to Disneyland or something.
Dan’s training sessions (which my sister and I are pushing him to brand DHX™) take place directly next to an outdoor gym. You know what I’m talking about. They have steel treadmills and pull-up bars and that thing that’s just bicycle pedals. The two demographics that consistently use these machines, in my experience, are 1) children goofing off and 2) straight men doing some kind of cross fit. The latter predictably engage in this activity as enabled and spatially unaware as they engage in everything else (driving, dating, politics).
Our little patch of lawn is filled with gopher holes and occasionally gophers themselves, poking their heads through said holes and causing everyone to stop what they’re doing and marvel at an animal occupying its home. I’m constantly worried my squat jumps are causing cave-ins resulting in gopher family trauma, but my sister reassures me that they have all of Griffith Park and they’re used to being underground because they are gophers.
Other animals I’ve seen in the vicinity at various points: coyotes, deer, hawks, and horses, ridden regularly by a group of men in cowboy dress on the trail that runs next to the area next to the outdoor gym.
Dan is a great trainer, but at the end of the day, doing burpees and hollow holds is not what I would call instinctive, otherwise, we’d just be doing them all the time, like breathing. By the end everyone’s so sweaty and tired we are painfully keeping what were once free-flowing bits alive, fighting through gasps to joke about how we all want our butts to look really flat. No one wants to be doing this and yet no one can stop.
On my drive home I’m always happy I woke up early and (most weeks) have my sister by my side. It’s nice to have a reason to get outside if the morning cigarette isn’t an option for you because you’re not and never will be French.
If you are in LA and want to sign up for Dan’s classes you can do so here!
Love your writing. It is so hilarious. Please send me everything you write. Have you written a book. I want to read it.