Does this embarrass you?

So I am at the Four Seasons Aviara last week. It's in Carlsbad, CA. Staying on business. Meetings from Monday to Wednesday and fly home. Whenever I am staying somewhere, I try to make it down to the exercise room at least once. This way I can justify sitting on my duff all day eating constantly and then going to lunch and sitting on my duff and eating. After lunch I sit on my duff and eat. You get the idea. Anyone who has been to a conference can attest. So I sauntered down on Tuesday morning. Early, so I could clean the pipes before I clogged them again. At the Four Seasons you don't just walk in and hop on a machine. You are greeted by a young woman who asks you your room number, then addresses you by "Mr. Ross". I imagine this is to make you feel like you are a regular. She then asks you if you would like a towel and a water to drink before your workout. Maybe she asked me this since I was sweating from the walk down. At any rate, I opened the door and walked into a fairly crowded exercise room. Like me, you probably wonder the room looking for the least crowded space and the most familiar machine. When I say familiar, I am talking about your typical treadmill, bike or elliptical. Neither was to be found. So without too much hesitation, because hesitation creates attention, I walked up to a machine that was open. I had never in my life seen this type of machine. But I figured I could manage. I immediately realized there was a reason no one was on the machine. It was like an elliptical, but just legs. If I may describe it in detail: It was cradled in a cage about waist high. It had two places to put your feet. These were connected to the front of the machine by two bars each. The cage had hand holds and then a disply screen. Simple enough. I placed my towel on the hand holds, placed my iPod in the "on" position, and pushed start. Immediately I lurched forward and had to catch myself on the hand holds. Awkward doesn't really describe it. I hit reset and the movement stopped. I glanced around to see if anyone was looking. I apologize for my pride. This is the point at which I could have gotten off, moved to the free weights, or waited for another, less acrobatic machine opened. But pride set in. When you go to the gym, nothing screams "newbie" more than getting on a machine, having it propell you into the hand holds, hitting reset and moving onto another machine. This was the Four Seasons. I decided to read the directions. Ah hah! Input desired level...1. Input time....45 min. Input weight...same as on my drivers license. (Is that a federal offense?)

After I had begun to master this "gazelle" type runner, I decided that since an elliptical opened up, now that I had worked up a sweat I could comfortably move to another machine. So with grace I stepped out of the contraption, and limped over to the elliptical. I think I saved a lot of face. My iPod volume was too high to hear any giggles.