Now, consider all of what follows with this taint: I think the prices at the YMCA for their gym membership are a bit much. My current thought is dropping the seventy-five bucks to fight with three spegetti armed hipsters over the one set of dumb bells in the city run Metropolitan Pool & Fitness Center on Bedford. Hell, that scrap between the skinny will probably be enough of a workout by itself.

Still, I am sometimes amazed by the lengths some New Yorkers go to get their excersize in. Case in point, the man on the subway doing squat thrusts. (This is also case in point why I should never leave my camera at home.)

I can see from that glimmer in your eye, that you want to know more. Well, you know I can’t resist that stare of temptation…on we go…

Right…

Taking the L train into Manhattan to catch a suprisingly sold out showing of “Thank You for Smoking” on Sunday, I happened to be seated across from a burly gent with greying temples hanging onto an oversized piece of rolling luguage. When I say the man was burly, I mean that I half expected him to clap his hands together and threaten to “pump…me up!” And yet the greying temples…Maybe the better way to describe the apparent age of the gent is to mention the four-footed cane he had stashed in that oversized rolly-bag. Apparently this particular Hulk needed a little bit of help getting around. Fair enough.

But then, as the train slowed to a cruising speed, his hands slipped forward onto the cane, and onto the bag. He slipped his ass off the seat and with old-man sized grunts went about doing a set of about thirty squats to the stunned amazement of the assembled commuters.

I’m not sure I can rightly describe what it’s like to watch an elder statesman hump the floor of a subway train while it’s in motion, and maybe that’s a good thing.

That look of pleased relief when he’d finished will haunt me for some time.