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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Ancient Egymtian

I thought these would be fun to share.  There's an old gym at the rec center by my neighborhood that I regularly go to.  It's currently in the process of being renovated, so all of the old, obsolete exercise machines are being moved out in favor of new modern ones.  Regardless of all the junk I post on here, I always stress the importance of everyday exercise in some capacity.  Retroactively, other people over the last 17 decades have felt the same with these machines.  Check 'em out:

An exercise bike that William Howard Taft may have used prior to gaining 300 pounds

This is a nifty little exercise bike.  The ski pole-style handlebars serve as a lever for the front wheel, which is actually a built-in manual air conditioner.  That's right: it's a fan.  Pretty cool idea.  Of course the bikes right next to it come with built-in fans that you can turn on and off, whereas this one you get the cooling system whether you want it or not.  There's a computer on board, but it fried itself back when the country still had 48 states.

The fan.  Cool combo deal

Another fried exercise bike that looks like it was made out of Legos

So this bike I've never used or tried to use.  The design of this is just...square.  It's lame.  I think maybe one person has used this in the two years I've been going here.  

I think I saw one of these in those old gym photos from the Titanic

Okay, so, I have no idea what this is.  I use it for pull-ups, but all these other bars and weights and gears are a mystery to me. 


There's weights, there's a sort of bike-chain thing, and there's a little hook down there.  I have no clue.

Stair machine that pre-dates escalators

This machine actually still works okay and it's pretty straight forward.  Get on the steps, go up and down, get ripped calves.  

If the machine a few pictures up was on the Titanic then this one was on the Mayflower

This is a machine for working your mid-section/abs/torso/whatever.  I avoided this one for a long time because it looked so outdated that I thought it would break if I sat on it.  Still gets the job done, though.

Do they even make these anymore?

So this scale here has a ledger on it for when it was last inspected, and the most recent date goes back to February 1985.  To put things into perspective, that was before Marty went Back to the Future.  

I spend most of my workouts using the dead-weight machines, barbels, and the elliptical, but those are a little more modern.  While most of these machines still work, it's pretty obvious how out-of-date the technology is.  It'll be nice to get some new equipment, but these have an understated charm to them.  They also help work off stuff like this:

50 extra pounds for only $3.95

So the Bone Crusher left these for me, unknowingly exposing one of my greatest weaknesses.  I haven't had real donuts in years.  Like, years.  I had Krispy Kremes a couple years back, and prior to that it was in Rocklin when I last had some.  I don't know why I've gone so long or even how I've managed to do it.  But seeing these was like setting off a bomb in my head.  I ate 3 that night, ate the other 3 the following day.  And they were so frickin' good, holy crap.  They came from a place called Christy's Donuts in Point Loma, and upon first glance on the Internets it looks like there's multiple restaurants but I can't tell if it's a chain or coincidence.  

They also tasted just like the donuts my dad and I used to get from the Donut House in Redwood City, CA.  That brought back nice memories.  That old fashioned donut in the upper left was the best.  An oldie but a goodie.  


Man, those were good.  Needed every bit of oil left in those old machines to work them off ahaha.

Thanks for reading!